THE DIVISION OF LABOUR
Political Economy has always confined itself to stating facts occurring
in society, and justifying them in the interest of the dominant class.
Therefore, it pronounces itself in favour of the division of labour in
industry. Having found it profitable to capitalists, it has set it up as
a _principle_.
Look at the village smith, said Adam Smith, the father of modern
Political Economy. If he has never been accustomed to making nails he
will only succeed by hard toil in forging two or three hundred a day,
and even then they will be bad. But if this same smith has never made
anything but nails, he will easily supply as many as two thousand three
hundred in the course of a day. And Smith hastened to the
conclusion--"Divide labour, specialize, go on specializing; let us have
smiths who only know how to make heads or points of nails, and by this
means we shall produce more. We shall grow rich."
That a smith condemned for life to make the heads of nails would lose
all interest in his work, that he would be entirely at the mercy of his
employer with his limited handicraft, that he would be out of work four
months out of twelve, and that his wages would fall very low down, when
it would be easy to replace him by an apprentice, Smith did not think of
all this when he exclaimed--"Long live the division of labour. This is
the real gold-mine that will enrich the nation!" And all joined him in
this cry.
And later on, when a Sismondi or a J. B. Say began to understand that
the division of labour, instead of enriching the whole nation, only
enriches the rich, and that the worker, who is doomed for life to making
the eighteenth part of a pin, grows stupid and sinks into poverty--what
did official economists propose? Nothing! They did not say to themselves
that by a lifelong grind at one and the same mechanical toil the worker
would lose his intelligence and his spirit of invention, and that, on
the contrary, a variety of occupations would result in considerably
augmenting the productivity of a nation. But this is the very issue we
have now to consider.
If, however, learned economists were the only ones to preach the
permanent and often hereditary division of labour, we might allow them
to preach it as much as they pleased. But the ideas taught by doctors of
science filter into men's minds and pervert them; and from repeatedly
hearing the division of labour, profits, interest, credit, etc., spoken
of as problems long since solved, all middle-class people, and workers
too, end by arguing like economists; they venerate the same fetishes.
Thus we see most socialists, even those who have not feared to point out
the mistakes of economical science, justifying the division of labour.
Talk to them about the organization of work during the Revolution, and
they answer that the division of labour must be maintained; that if you
sharpened pins before the Revolution you must go on sharpening them
after. True, you will not have to work more than five hours a day, but
you will have to sharpen pins all your life, while others will make
designs for machines that will enable you to sharpen hundreds of
millions of pins during your life-time; and others again will be
specialists in the higher branches of literature, science, and art, etc.
You were born to sharpen pins while Pasteur was born to invent the
inoculation against anthrax, and the Revolution will leave you both to
your respective employments. Well, it is this horrible principle, so
noxious to society, so brutalizing to the individual, source of so much
harm, that we propose to discuss in its divers manifestations.
We know the consequences of the division of labour full well. It is
evident that, first of all, we are divided into two classes: on the one
hand, producers, who consume very little and are exempt from thinking
because they only do physical work, and who work badly because their
brains remain inactive; and on the other hand, the consumers, who,
producing little or hardly anything, have the privilege of thinking for
the others, and who think badly because the whole world of those who
toil with their hands is unknown to them. Then, we have the labourers of
the soil who know nothing of machinery, while those who work at
machinery ignore everything about agriculture. The idea of modern
industry is a child _tending_ a machine that he cannot and must not
understand, and a foreman who fines him if his attention flags for a
moment. The ideal of industrial agriculture is to do away with the
agricultural labourer altogether and to set a man who does odd jobs to
tend a steam-plough or a threshing-machine. The division of labour means
labelling and stamping men for life--some to splice ropes in factories,
some to be foremen in a business, others to shove huge coal-baskets in a
particular part of a mine; but none of them to have any idea of
machinery as a whole, nor of business, nor of mines. And thereby they
destroy the love of work and the capacity for invention that, at the
beginning of modern industry, created the machinery on which we pride
ourselves so much.
What they have done for individuals, they also wanted to do for nations.
Humanity was to be divided into national workshops, having each its
speciality. Russia, we were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn;
England to spin cotton; Belgium to weave cloth; while Switzerland was to
train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate city was to
establish a specialty. Lyons was to weave silk, Auvergne to make lace,
and Paris fancy articles. In this way, economists said, an immense field
was opened for production and consumption, and in this way an era of
limitless wealth for mankind was at hand.
However, these great hopes vanished as fast as technical knowledge
spread abroad. As long as England stood alone as a weaver of cotton and
as a metal-worker on a large scale; as long as only Paris made artistic
fancy articles, etc., all went well, economists could preach the
so-called division of labour without being refuted.
But a new current of thought induced bye and bye all civilized nations
to manufacture for themselves. They found it advantageous to produce
what they formerly received from other countries, or from their
colonies, which in their turn aimed at emancipating themselves from the
mother-country. Scientific discoveries universalized the methods of
production, and henceforth it was useless to pay an exorbitant price
abroad for what could easily be produced at home. And now we see already
that this industrial revolution strikes a crushing blow at the theory of
the division of labour which for a long time was supposed to be so
sound.