Division of Labour = Private Property?

[Wyboth]

In The German Ideology, Marx says:


Division of labour and private property are, moreover, identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to the activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity.

I don't understand this sentence. As I understand it, division of labour is different people doing different tasks (for example, in a chair factory, some people make the chair legs, others make the seat, etc). I understand private property to be means of production that are not owned by the workers, but by the bourgeoisie. If division of labour and private property are identical expressions, then in a communist society, where there is no private property, there would be no division of labour? That doesn't make sense. I am misunderstanding something.

[Blake's Baby]

Sort of. There won't be any enforced division of labour in a communist society. If I want to make chair legs in the morning, seats in the afternoon, and write opera in the evening, I can.

But If I'm good at making chair legs, and not so good at writing operas, I will probably want to more of the former than the latter.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What Marx calls the division of labour is not simply the division of tasks within one production process, so that e.g. one worker produces chair legs (of truth?) and another chair seats. In fact, in their later works Marx and Engels insist that this will remain the case in socialism, Marx particularly noting that the labour of supervision and management is necessary in any combined mode of production. The division of labour entails each individual having one fixed sphere of activity; the example Marx dwells on the most is the separation between the city and the countryside. This is possible only in a class society, i.e. one where private property in some form (not necessarily bourgeois private property; Marx mentions private property in slave-based economies etc.).

I also think it's wrong to contrast workers' property and private property. A co-operative, owned by its workers, is private property. In communism, it's not just that there will be no bourgeois property, there will be no property in general.

[ckaihatsu]

[A]s I understand it, division of labour is different people doing different tasks (for example, in a chair factory, some people make the chair legs, others make the seat, etc).


In other words there are *two* meanings of the term 'division of labor' -- the one *you're* describing (by-task), and the one meant in the political literature, which is the one that resulted from the initial production of a social *surplus*, by the Agricultural Revolution.

So 'division of labor' means that division into the *managerial* (ownership) class, versus that of the *working* class -- or, who 'calls the shots', and who does the actual work required, for realization. *That's* the 'division of labor' -- a formerly *comprehensive* group effort, now separated and divided into stratum-specific roles, on a fixed basis.

[Wyboth]

Thanks to everyone who replied - I understand it now.

[RedMaterialist]

In The German Ideology, Marx says:



I don't understand this sentence. As I understand it, division of labour is different people doing different tasks (for example, in a chair factory, some people make the chair legs, others make the seat, etc). I understand private property to be means of production that are not owned by the workers, but by the bourgeoisie. If division of labour and private property are identical expressions, then in a communist society, where there is no private property, there would be no division of labour? That doesn't make sense. I am misunderstanding something.

Marx, from Capital, Vol I, Ch. 1, Section Two:


This division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such products can become commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private individuals.

Thus, if I read this right, division of labor is necessary for the production of commodities, i.e., for capitalism; however, not all division of labor produces a capitalist society. Native Americans had a social division of labor, but no capitalism. And every modern factory has a division of labor, every factory uses an organized, systematic, planned production based on division of labor; some people make chair legs, seats, etc. But this systematic division of labor is not what produces commodities. In order to produce commodities this labor must be performed for the account, or benefit of, private individuals, i.e., capitalists.

So, there is no necessary mutual exclusion of socialism and the division of labor. As long as the division of labor is socially planned and the production is for the account of society, then commodity production is impossible.

But what if you substitute, in Marx's phrasing, production for the account of the "state" for "private individuals?" Does state ownership of the means of production necessarily re-establish capitalism? Is the state a private individual? Obviously the Soviet Union had an extensive system of division of labor, but that alone, according to Marx, did not mean it was capitalist.

[ckaihatsu]

But what if you substitute, in Marx's phrasing, production for the account of the "state" for "private individuals?" Does state ownership of the means of production necessarily re-establish capitalism? Is the state a private individual? Obviously the Soviet Union had an extensive system of division of labor, but that alone, according to Marx, did not mean it was capitalist.


So this is simply a matter of *scale* -- we could say that the benefits / profits / surplus labor value was 'quasi-collectivized' in the fSU, relative to strictly *private*, individualistic dividend-based rewards for ownership.

And, even, likewise, the joint-stock system of fractional ownership -- shares of a private company -- could be roughly compared to the whole bureaucratic apparatus of the fUSSR, except that outright private ownership allows for a *far greater* unequal distribution of wealth than a quasi-collectivist (bureaucratic) one.

[DOOM]

I always thought of it as division of production into different individual capitals, which would mean that the division of labor and private property are identical expressions.

This obviously wouldn't be the case in socialism if production is socially planned.
The wet dream of communalists et al. isn't really socialism for precisely this reason. Such a society would fail to sublate the (international) division of labor and thus private property.