Question about Principles of Communism

[CartCollector]

Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations.
From here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm Principle 20

Has this really come to pass? Is it really possible for someone to have the ability to understand and work in all fields of production? From what I've seen, industrialization has created more complexity in production, not less. Of course, you might argue that the rise of industry makes it easier to do rote work, however people are still needed to understand how the machines work and how to engineer them.

What's your take on this?

[¿Que?]

Here's a thread I started, I think coming from the same or a similar angle. I didn't get too many responses, though...

http://www.revleft.com/vb/division-labor-and-t131698/index.html?t=131698&highlight=division+labor

[Proletarian Ultra]

Has this really come to pass? Is it really possible for someone to have the ability to understand and work in all fields of production? From what I've seen, industrialization has created more complexity in production, not less. Of course, you might argue that the rise of industry makes it easier to do rote work, however people are still needed to understand how the machines work and how to engineer them.

What's your take on this?

My off the cuff take is...

1. Education will not be ruthlessly hierarchical, hyperspecialized and careerist oriented, as it was in 19th century Germany. Students will be given a broad view of social production and encouraged to learn further, not rote-schooled into zombiehood.

2. Wage labor having been abolished, social ties will no longer bind a person relentlessly to one career or another. People will be free to learn a new craft and practice it without the immense transition costs that exist in capitalist society.

Does that sound anywhere close to the mark?

[Jimmie Higgins]

From here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm Principle 20

Has this really come to pass? Is it really possible for someone to have the ability to understand and work in all fields of production? From what I've seen, industrialization has created more complexity in production, not less. Of course, you might argue that the rise of industry makes it easier to do rote work, however people are still needed to understand how the machines work and how to engineer them.

What's your take on this?

I'm not that familiar with this quote so I'd have to read the link and see in context. But my guess would be that since Marx and Engels were living at a time when skilled-crafts were swiftly becoming unskilled labor, he may have been over-estimating the effects of this tendency. As far as unskilled work goes, I think this is largely correct - people would probably want to rotate boring but essential tasks like assembly line manufacturing or customer service. In fact, I'm pretty sure most co-ops already handle tasks like this in that way.

[cenv]

Today, people undergo a process of rigorous specialization. Thanks to a highly fragmented education and lifestyle in which we are increasingly compartmentalized for the sake of economic efficiency, we are forced to interact with the rest of society through the lens of our rigidly specific, relentlessly repetitive roles in capitalism's overarching economic machine.

In a post-revolutionary society, however, we would no longer be constrained by purely economic purpose. We would be free to follow our creative impulses and develop a broader understanding of production, social organization, and life. In fact, since production would be determined by the desires and abilities of working people, not specialists and cold economic logic, the survival of communism would demand this wide-reaching understanding, creativity, and de-specialization on a universal scale. Just as capitalism pushes us into increasingly specialized roles without requiring us to develop an understanding of the larger social and economic forces at work, a society based on working-class empowerment would require a radically far-reaching, unitary foundation of understanding and creativity.

So transcending the constraints of bourgeois power structures also implies transcending the narrow, fragmented world view instilled by bourgeois education.

[RED DAVE]

Is it really possible for someone to have the ability to understand and work in all fields of production? From what I've seen, industrialization has created more complexity in production, not less. Of course, you might argue that the rise of industry makes it easier to do rote work, however people are still needed to understand how the machines work and how to engineer them.Sure specialists are needed. But members of the Technocracy cult notwithstanding, even under capitalism that kind of education isn't that hard to come by. People change careers by inclination or because of the whip of capitalist necessity all the time.

RED DAVE