What's the opposite of the division of labor?

[R_P_A_S]

Hey guys... I was wondering what would be the opposite to the division of labour? Are we to go back to feudalism? Craftsman ship? How can we if we need to increase productivity and give people jobs?

I am against the division of labor as for it creates the alienation that marx talks about and it just helps capitalism more than the workers.

But how can we move forward if we get rid of it? Im confused

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Why does it have to have an 'opposite'?

[Yehuda Stern]

I'm not sure how I would call the opposite of the division of labor - it would probably be something like every individual working on his own, a mode which would be reactionary and not at well what Marxism means. I think that we do not seek to create a society without a division of labor, but with a rational division of labor. To paraphrase Marx, instead of having to be just a fisherman, or just a worker, or just a lecturer, I could be any of those things and more, at different times.

[R_P_A_S]

Why does it have to have an 'opposite'?

=P

[trivas7]

Classless society is the "opposite" of class society. Primitive communism is its historical example. For millions of years human beings shared what they had in common.

[R_P_A_S]

I'm not sure how I would call the opposite of the division of labor - it would probably be something like every individual working on his own, a mode which would be reactionary and not at well what Marxism means. I think that we do not seek to create a society without a division of labor, but with a rational division of labor. To paraphrase Marx, instead of having to be just a fisherman, or just a worker, or just a lecturer, I could be any of those things and more, at different times.

Ok. this makes a little more sense. thank you

[ComradeRed]

It's a good idea to review what we really mean by the "division of labor", because it's something that appears to be tossed around a lot without actually being specified.

In a nutshell, it's dividing up tasks to different people to speed up production.

That's why Adam Smith illustrated the point of the division of labor by the pin maker analogy:


To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations, Chapter 1 (http://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch01.htm) by Adam Smith (1776).

So what would be the opposite of dividing up a task into smaller tasks?

(Why the opposite of this even matters in the least to anyone is beyond me!)

[Lynx]

Division of labour led to an increase in efficiency of production at the expense of individual self-sufficiency.

Alienation comes from boring work or from spending too much of your time making other people rich.

[trivas7]

Division of labour led to an increase in efficiency of production at the expense of individual self-sufficiency.

You're confusing the division of labor with the development of the productive forces IMO. The division of labor is the result of the increase of efficiency of production. IOW the division of labor is it the result of an economic surplus, not its cause. Perhaps I don't understand your point.

[spice756]

You're confusing the division of labor with the development of the productive forces IMO. The division of labor is the result of the increase of efficiency of production. IOW the division of labor is it the result of an economic surplus, not its cause. Perhaps I don't understand your point


Many jobs use division of labor like car makers .You put the window on ,you put the door on ,you put the truck on and so on .That is how assembly lines work.




Alienation comes from boring work or from spending too much of your time making other people rich.


no alienation is when you don't own the means of production and it feels foreign and you are treated has a slave.

[gla22]

Without division of labor we would be living in primitivist societies. We aren't trying to remove division of labor, just the current way it is structured today.

[mikelepore]

what would be the opposite to the division of labour?

"... 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...." -- Marx and Engels, in _The German Ideology_

[Hit The North]

Marx made a distinction between the social division of labour and the technical division of labour. The latter is due to technical advantages within production, the former is the result of the imposition of division on the basis of class and hierarchical power. It is the first form which results in (working class) individuals being locked into the least desirable jobs and compels a situation whereby individuals cannot lead the kind of existence mikelpore quotes from the German Ideology.

[Lynx]

You're confusing the division of labor with the development of the productive forces IMO. The division of labor is the result of the increase of efficiency of production. IOW the division of labor is it the result of an economic surplus, not its cause. Perhaps I don't understand your point.
I should have wrote that the division of labor is necessary for increased efficiency of production. The pursuit of profit led capitalists to assemble workers in factories, and to train them to do specialized tasks. The owners were producing commodities to be sold and wished to increase the volume of sales. Industry itself also became specialized, with each factory producing one component.

[ComradeRed]

I'm still lost: why does the opposite of this idea even matter? Or are you trying to apply "dialectics" to it :lol:

[Die Neue Zeit]

Marx made a distinction between the social division of labour and the technical division of labour. The latter is due to technical advantages within production, the former is the result of the imposition of division on the basis of class and hierarchical power. It is the first form which results in (working class) individuals being locked into the least desirable jobs and compels a situation whereby individuals cannot lead the kind of existence mikelpore quotes from the German Ideology.

I believe that Pat Devine reiterated this distinction, but using the word "functional" to describe the "technical" division of labour.

[JimmyJazz]

I am against the division of labor as for it creates the alienation that marx talks about and it just helps capitalism more than the workers.

I'm not. I'm simply for workers' democracy. If they want to reduce the rather extreme division of labor that now exists in some workplaces, they will be free to do that. It will cost them some productivity, but considering how rote and mechanical certain factory jobs are, they'll probably consider it to be worth the price.

I don't think we have any business telling workers what they want. Not on any issue: length of the work day, extent of the division of labor, or anything else. We simply want to give them the power to determine these things for themselves, by democratic means.

[Niccolò Rossi]

I'm still lost: why does the opposite of this idea even matter? Or are you trying to apply "dialectics" to it :lol:

I think what the OP is trying to ask is, if modern capitalist production causes an alienating division of labour and communism expresses the abolition of the division of labour and thus man's alienation (as expressed in the German Ideology), what is this hypothetical state of affairs and what does it look like?

[BIG BROTHER]

I always understood that with the elimination of wage slavery, and the common ownership of the means of production alienation caused by division of labor would be countered since a person could perform any type of job he wanted(well of course he would have to learn how to do it first and all that)