DIVISION OF LABOR AND MACHINERY
T he division of labor, according to M. Proudhon, opens the series of economic evolutions.
"Considered in its essence, the | division of labor is the manner | in which equality of conditions | and intelligence is realized."
Good side of the |(Vol.I, p.93)division of labor
"The division of labor has | become for us an instrument of | poverty."
(Vol.I, p.94)
Variant
"Labor, by dividing itself | according to the law which is | peculiar to it, and which is the Bad side of the | primary conditions of its fruit-division of labor| fulness, ends in the negation of | its aims and destroys itself."
(Vol.I, p.94)
To find the "recomposition Problem to be solved | which wipes out the drawbacks | of the division, while retaining | its useful effects."
(Vol.I, p.97) The division of labor is, according to M. Proudhon, an eternal law, a simple, abstract category. Therefore the abstraction, the idea, the word must suffice for him to explain the division of labor at different historical epochs.
Castes, corporations, manufacture, large-scale industry, must be explained by the single word divide . First study carefully the meaning of "divide", and you will have no need to study the numerous influences which give the division of labor a defintive character in every epoch.
Certainly, things would be made much too easy if they were reduced to M. Proudhon's categories. History does not proceed so categorically.
It took three whole centuries in Germany to establish the first big division of labor, the separation of the towns from the country. In proportion, as this one relation of town and country was modified, the whole of society was modified. To take only this one aspect of the division of labor, you have the old republics, and you have Christian feudalism; you have old England with its barons and you have modern England with its cotton lords.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, when there were as yet no colonies, when America did not yet exist for Europe, when Asia existed only through the intermediary of Constantinople, when the Mediterranean was the centre of commercial activity, the division of labor had a very different form, a very different aspect from that of the 17th century, when t he Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and the French had colonies established in all parts of the world. The extent of the market, its physiognomy, give to the division of labor at different periods a physiognomy, a character, which it would be difficult to deduce from the single word divide , from the idea, from the category.
"All economists since Adam Smith," says M. Proudhon, "have pointed out the advantages and drawbacks of the law of div- ision, but insist much more on the first than on the second, because that was more serviceable for their optimism, and none of them has ever wondered what could be the drawbacks to a law.... How does the same principle, pursued vigor- ously to its consequences, lead to diametrically opposite results? Not one economist before or since A. Smith has even perceived that here was a problem to elucidate. Say goes to the length of recognizing that in the division of labor the same cause that produces the good engenders the bad."[I 95-96]
Adam Smith goes further than M. Proudhon thinks. He saw clearly that "the difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very dif- ferent genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not so much the cause as the effect of the division of labor."[I 20]
In principle, a porter differs less from a philosopher than a mastiff from a greyhound. It is the division of labor which has set a gulf between theM.
All this does not prevent M. Proudhon from saying elsewhere that Adam Smith has not the slightest idea of the drawbacks produced by the division of labor. it is this again that makes him say that J. B. Say was the first to recognize "that in the division of labor the same cause that produces the good engenders the bad." [I 96]
But let us listen to Lemontey; Suum cuique .[34]
"M. J. B. Say has done me the honor of adopting in his excellent treatise on political economy the principle that I brought to light in this fragment on the moral influence of the division of labor. The somewhat frivolous title of my book [35] doubtless prevented him from citing me. It is only to this motive that I can attribute the silence of a writer too rich in his own stock to disavow so modest a load."(Lemontey, OEuvres completes , Vol.I, p.245, Paris 1840)Let us do him this justice: Lemontey wittily exposed the unpleasant consequences of the division of labor as it is constituted today, and M. Proudhon found nothing to add to it. But now that, through the fault of M. Proudhon, we have been drawn into this question of priority, let us say again, in passing, that long before M. Lemontey, and 17 years before Adam Smith, who was a pupil of A. Ferguson, the last-named gave a clear exposition of the subject in a chapter which deals specifically with the division of labor.
"It may even be doubted, whether the measure of national capacity increases with the advancement of arts. Many mech- anical arts... succeed best under a total suppression of sentiment and reason; and ignorance is the mother of indus- try as well as superstition. Reflection and fancy are sub- ject to err; but a habit of moving the hand, or the foot, is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most, where the mind is least consulted, and where the work- shop may, without any great effort of imagination, be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men....
"The general officer may be a great proficient in the knowledge of war, while the skill of the soldier is confined to a few motions of the hand and the foot. The former may have gained what the latter has lost....
