sentence, to assassinate liim if he does not...The sub- division of labour is the assassination of a people."^ Co-operation based on division of labour, in other words, manufacture, commences as a spontaneous formation. So soon as it attains some consistence and extension, it becomes the re- cognised methodical and systematic form of capitalist produc- tion. History shows how the division of labour peculiar to manufacture, strictly so called, acquires the best adapted form at first by experience, as it were behind the backs of the actors, and then, like the guild handicrafts, strives to hold fast that form when once found, and here and there succeeds in keeping it for centuries. Any alteration in this form, except in trivial matters, is solely owing to a revolution in the instruments of labour. Modern manufacture wherever it arises — I do not here allude to modern industry based on machinery — either finds the disjecta membra poetse ready to hand, and only waiting to be collected together, as is the case in the manufacture of clothes in large towns, or it can easily apply the principle of division, simply by exclusively assigning the various operations of a handicraft (such as bookbinding) to particular men. In such cases, a week's experience is enough to determine the pro- portion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the various functions.^ By decomposition of handicrafts, by specialisation of the in- struments of labour, by the formation of detail labourers, and by grouping and combining the latter into a single mechanism, division of labour in manufacture creates a qualitative grada- tion, and a quantitative proportion in the social process of production; it consequently creates a definite organisation of the labour of society, and thereby developes at the same time 1 (D. Urquhart: Familiar Words. Lond., 1855, p. 119.) Hegel held very heretical views on division of labour. In his Eechtsphilosophie he says: " By well educated men we understand in the first instance, those who can do everything that others do."
2 The simple belief in the inventive genius exercised a priori by the individual capitalist in division of labour, exists now-a days only among German professors, of the stamp of Herr Roscher, who, to recomj^ense the capitalist from whose Jovian head division of labour sprang ready formed, dedicates to him *' various wages " (diverse Arbeitslohne). The more or less extensive application of division of labour depends on length of purse, not on greatness of genius.
Division of Labour and Mamtfacture, 359 new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist form — and under the given conditions, it could take no other form than a capitalistic one — manufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative surplus-value, or of augmenting at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital — usually called social wealth, " Wealth of Nations," &ic. It in- creases the social productive power of labour, not only for the benefit of the capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but it does this by crippling the individual labourers. It creates new conditions for the lordship of capital over labour. If, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a progress and as a necessary phase in the economic develop- ment of society, on the other hand it is a refined and civilised method of exploitation.
Political economy, which as an independent science, first sprang into being during the period of manufacture, views the social division of labour only from the standpoint of manufacture,^ and sees in it only the means of producing more commodities with a given quantity of labour, and, conse- quently, of cheapening commodities and hurrying on the accumulation of capital. In most striking contrast with this accentuation of quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of classical antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use-value.^ In consequence of the separation of the social branches of production, commodities are better made, the various bents and talents of men select a suitable 1 The older writers, like Petty and the anonymous author of "Advantages of the East India Trade," bring out the capitalist character of division of labour as applied in manufacture more than A. Smith does.
2 Amongst the moderns may be excepted a few writers of the 18th century, like Beccaria and James Harris, who with regard to division of labour almost entirely follow the ancients. Thus, Beccaria: " Ciascuno prova coll' esperienza, die applicando la hiano e I'ingegno sempre alio stesso genere di opere e di produtte, egli piii facili, piii abbondanti e migliori ne traca lisultati, di quello che se ciascuno isolatamente le cose tutte a se necessarie soltanto facesse...Dividendosi in tal maniera per la comune e privata utilitjl gli uomini in varie classi e condizioni." (Cesare Beccaria: "Elemonti di Econ. Pubblica," ed. Custodi, Parte Moderna, t. xi., p. 28.) James Harris, afterwards Earl of Malmesbury, celebrated for the ' ' Diaries " of his embassy at St. Petersburg, says in a note to his " Dialogue Concerning Happiness," Lond., 1741, reprinted afterwards in " Three Treatises, &c., 3 Ed., Lond., 1772:" "The whole argument to prove society natural {i.e., by division of employments)...is taken from the second book of Plato's Kepublic."
360 Capitalist Production.
field/ and without some restraint no important results can be obtained anywhere.^ Hence both product and producer are improved by division of labour. If the growth of the quantity produced is occasionally mentioned, this is only done with reference to the greater abundance of use- values. There is not a word alluding to exchange-value or to the cheapening of commodities. This aspect, from the standpoint of use-value alone, is taken as well by Plato,^ who treats division of labour as the foundation on which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xenophon/ who with characteristic bourgeois 1 Thus, in the Odyssey xiv,, 228, ""AXXo? yhp tHWoktiv a.vyif WiTipTSTKi ^pyor,," and Archilochus in Sextus Erapiricus, " uWos Sixxu It" ^pyu xap^inv lahirai."
2 "riaxx' riTlffTciTe ^pyet^ xeexu; VriTtsTaro -rcivTa." Every Athenian considered him- self superior as a producer of commodities to a Spartan; for the latter in time of war had men enough at his disposal but could not command money, as Thucydides makes Pericles say in the speech inciting the Athenians to the Peloponnesian war: (Tet/f^aa-i rt eToifiorspot ol airrovpyoX rut av^paTu* ij ^prifjt,a<rt uroXtf.iiv,'* (Thuc: 1. I. C. 41.) Nevertheless, even with regard to material production, airapKUK^ as opposed to division of labour remained their ideal, •' trap* Zv yup to iS, ^apei toutuv xal to ff.vTKpxii.'^ It should be mentioned here that at the date of the fall of the 30 Tyrants there were still not 5000 Athenians without landed property.
3 With Plato, division of labour within the community is a development from the multifarious requirements, and the limited caj)acities of individuals. The main point with him is, that the labourer must adapt himself to the work, not the work to the labourer; which latter is unavoidable, if he carries on several trades at once, thus making one or the other of them subordinate. " Oi) yap tfiXu to ■rparTOfzivov tjjv toO trp&TTovTOi (Tp^oXriv 'TiptiiUiiv^ aXA.* avdyxT} rov vrpaTTovrx tm <rpaTTOfit,i>iio l<raxo\ouhiv fjcii Iv 'ffapipyou fiipti. — *Avdyxti, — 'Ex ^r] toutuv ^Xi'iu Ti ixoLffra. ylyviTat xal xdXXtov xal petov, oTuv ili iv xetra <puffiv xal iv xaipZ tr^oXhv Tuv S.k'Kuv &yuv TpexTTi^^^ (Rep. 1. 2. Ed. Baiter, Orelli, &c). So in Thucydides 1. c. c, 42: " Seafaring is an art like any other, and cannot, as circumstances require, be carried on as a subsidiary occupation; nay, other subsidiary occupations cannot be carried on alongside of this one." If the work, says Plato, has to wait for the labourer, the critical point in the process is missed and the article spoiled, 'ipyou xaipov ^ioWvtoh.*' The same Platonic idea is found recurring in the protest of the English bleachers against the clause in the Factory Act that provides fixed meal times for all operatives. Their business cannot wait the convenience of the workmen, for *' in the various operations of singeing, washing, bleaching, mangling, calendering, and dyeing, none of them can be stopped at a given moment without risk of damage...to enforce the same dinner hour for all the work-people might occasionally subject valuable goods to the risk of danger by incomplete operations." Le platonisme ou va-t-il se nicher!
4 Xenophon says, it is not only an honour to receive food from the table of the King of Persia, but such food is much more tasty than other food. "And there is nothing wonderful in this, for as the other arts are brought to special perfection in the great towns, so the royal food is prepared in a special way. For in the small towns the same man makes bedsteads, doors, ploughs, and tables: often, too, he builds houses into the bargain, and is quite content if he finds custom sufficient for his sustenance.
Division of Labottr and Manufacture. 361 instinct, approaches more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato's Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealisation of the Egyptian system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country to many of his contemporaries also, amongst others to Isocrates,^ and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Roman Empire.^ During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period during which manufacture is the predominant form taken by capitalist production, many obstacles are opposed to the full development of the peculiar tendencies of manufacture. Although manufacture creates, as we have already seen, a simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled, simultaneously with their hierarchic arrangeuient in classes, yet the number of the unskilled labourers, owing to the pre- ponderating influence of the skilled, remains very limited. Although it adapts the detail operations to the various degrees of maturity, strength, and development of the living instru- ments of labour, thus conducing to exploitation of women and children, yet this tendency as a whole is wrecked on the habits and the resistance of the male labourers. Although the It is altogether impossible for a man who does so many things to do them all well. But in the great towns, where each can find many buyers, one trade is sufficient to maintain the man who carries it on. Nay, there is often not even need of one com- plete trade, but one man makes shoes for men, another for women. Here and there one man gets a living by sewing, another by cutting out shoes; one does nothing but cut out clothes, another nothing but sew the pieces together. It follows necessarily then, that he who does the simplest kind of work, undoubtedly does it better than anyone else. So it is with the art of cooking." (Xen. Cyrop. 1. viii., c. 2.) Xeno- phon here lays stress exclusively upon the excellence to be attained in use-value, although he well knows that the gradations of the division of labour depend on the extent of the market.
1 He (Busiris) divided them all into special castes commanded that the same individuals should always carry on the same trade, for he knew that they who change their occupations become skilled in none; but that those who constantly stick to one occupation bring it to the highest perfection. In truth, we shall also find tha; in relation to the arts and handicrafts, they have outstripped]their rivals more than a master does a bungler; and the contrivances for maintaining the monarchy and the other institutions of their State are so admirable that the most celebrated philo- sophers who treat of this subject praise the constitution of the Egyptian State above all others. (Isocrates, Busiris, c. 8.)
2 Of. Diodorus Siculus.
o 62 Capitalist Production.
splitting up of handicrafts lowers the cost of forming the work- man, and thereby lowers his value, yet for the more difficult detail work, a longer apprenticeship is necessary, and, even vvliere it would be superfluous, is jealously insisted upon by the workmen. In England, for instance, we find the laws of apprenticeship, with their seven years' probation, in full force down to the end of the manufacturing period; and they are not thrown on one side till the advent of Modern Industry. Since handicraft skill is the foundation of manufacture, and since the mechanism of manufacture as a whole possesses no framework, apart from the labourers themselves, capital is con- stantly compelled to wrestle with the insubordination of the workmen. " By the infirmity of human nature," says friend Ure, "it happens that the more skilful the workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is apt to become, and of course the less fit a component of a mechanical system in which...he may do great damage to the whole." ^ Hence throughout the whole manufacturing period there runs the complaint of want of discipline among the workmen.^ And had we not the testimony of contemporary writers, the simple facts, that during the period between the 16th century and the epoch of Modern Industry, capital failed to become the master of the whole disposable working-time of the manufacturing labourers, that manufactures are short-lived, and change their locality from one country to another with the emigrating or immigrating workmen, these facts would speak volumes. " Order must in one way or another be established," exclaims in 1770 the oft- cited author of the " Essay on Trade and Commerce." " Order," re-echoes Dr. Andrew Ure ^Q years later, " Order " was wanting in manufacture based on " the scholastic dogma of division of labour," and " Arkwright created order."
At the same time manufacture was unable, either to seize upon the production of society to its full extent, or to re- volutionise that production to its very core. It towered u]) as an economical work of art, on the broad foundation^ of the town 2 This is more the case in England than in France, and more in France than in Holland.
Divisio7i of Labour and Manufactttre. 363 handicrafts, and of the rural domestic industries. At a given stage in its development, the narrow technical basis on which manufacture rested, came into conflict with requirements of production that were created by raanufacture itself.
One of its most finished creations was the workshop for the production of the instruments of labour themselves, including especially the complicated mechanical apparatus then already employed. A machine-factory, says Ure, "displayed the division of labour in manifold gradations — the file, the drill, the lathe, having each its different workman in the order of skill." (p. 21.) This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufac- ture, produced in its turn — machines. It is they that sweep away the handicraftsman's work as the regulating principle of social production. Thus, on the one hand, the technical reason for the life-long annexation of the workman to a detail function is removed. On the other hand, the fetters that this same principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall away.