Division of labor - Why is it good for capitalists and bad for workers?

[Questionable]

Topic title pretty much says it all. I keep reading a lot about the division of labor, but I'm having trouble understanding it. How did it come about, why do capitalists seem to need it so much, and why did Marx and Engels state that the division of labor needed to be eliminated? Furthermore, how did they, or any other leftists, plan to eliminate it?

[Rooster]

It's not bad for anyone. It's a necessity in this era of productivity. Marx and Engels did not state that the division of labour needed to be eliminated. A division of labour is one that happens on the work floor in a factory, where individual parts are made, and on an international level, etc. It is socialised labour in it's essence. Marx and Engels were primarily concerned with the this division being a forced, or what they called a natural division of labour (see: The German Ideology), preferring the idea of a free association between labourers instead.

[citizen of industry]

Division of labor is just what happens when people work together. If three of us were in a room doing a task, we would find a way to distribute our labor in the most efficient manner. One person folds letters, the other stuffs envelopes, the third licks and stamps, etc. The best discription I've read is in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

The downside is it destroyed small -craft industry and helped to force small-scale producers into wage laborers. But it resulted in large-scale, global industry which is a pre-requisite for socialism.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Because if there were no division of labor, there would be no capitalist class. Adam Smith was an anti-capitalist.

He's pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.
Noam Chomsky

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Capital needs live human labor that creates a surplus value for the capitalist to make more money out of money, capital. If no humans hire other masses of humans, capital is reduced to an ancient form of market and wage relations. So the division of labor makes capital grow.

"The progressive historical role of capitalism [division of labor] may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour."-Lenin, The 'Mission of Capitalism'

[Yugo45]

and why did Marx and Engels state that the division of labor needed to be eliminated?

They were against the current state of the division, because it's too static and it forced certain jobs on certain people. If you're lucky, you get to have one of the prestigous jobs, such as doctor etc. If you're not, you end up scrubbing the toilets, which no one wants to do. There are two types of jobs, one that you need to be specialised for, and one that you don't (usually manual jobs). In the divison of labour as it is now, you do one of those. Even though you don't need any knowledge to scrub the toilets, you end up doing it until the rest of your life. Well, obviously, Marx & Engels were against this. Basically, jobs need to be equaliy distrubuted. That everyone should have a share once in a while in the "bad" jobs.

For example, in a hospital, if the hospital has 400 employees, every employee should scrub the toilets once a year.

So basically, instead of specialising only in one thing and doing only that, you specialise in one thing and also do things which you don't need to be specialised for.


“And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

- Karl Marx, The German Ideology

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

They were against the current state of the division, because it's too static and it forced certain jobs on certain people. If you're lucky, you get to have one of the prestigous jobs, such as doctor etc. If you're not, you end up scrubbing the toilets, which no one wants to do. There are two types of jobs, one that you need to be specialised for, and one that you don't (usually manual jobs). In the divison of labour as it is now, you do one of those. Even though you don't need any knowledge to scrub the toilets, you end up doing it until the rest of your life. Well, obviously, Marx & Engels were against this. Basically, jobs need to be equaliy distrubuted. That everyone should have a share once in a while in the "bad" jobs.

For example, in a hospital, if the hospital has 400 employees, every employee should scrub the toilets once a year.

So basically, instead of specialising only in one thing and doing only that, you specialise in one thing and also do things which you don't need to be specialised for.


“And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

- Karl Marx, The German Ideology

Yes, thanks, it is an important point. But one should add that this will mostly likely not yet be the case (the immediate dissolution of the division of labor that is) in lower stages of communism or rather socialism, as the productive forces need to be increased to not require much skill and as well to simply fill in/increase the productive output of the individual worker that might be lost due to inexperience in certain jobs.