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15 - The Division of Labor - The Conquest of Bread · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen. The division of labor political economy has always
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  Speaker 1: confined itself to stating facts occurring in society and justifying
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  Speaker 1: them in the interest of the dominant class. Thus it
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  Speaker 1: is in favor of the division of labour created by industry.
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  Speaker 1: Having found it profitable to capitalists, it is set it
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  Speaker 1: up as a principle. Look at the village smith, said
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  Speaker 1: Adam Smith, the father of modern political economy. If he
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  Speaker 1: has never been accustomed to making nails, he will only
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  Speaker 1: succeed by hard toil in forging two to three hundred
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  Speaker 1: a day, and even then they will be bad. But
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  Speaker 1: if the same smith has never done anything but nails,
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  Speaker 1: he will easily supply as many as two thousand, three
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  Speaker 1: hundred in the course of a day. And Smith hastened
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  Speaker 1: to the conclusion, quote, divide labor, specialize, go on specializing.
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  Speaker 1: Let us have smiths who only know how to make
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  Speaker 1: heads or points of nails, and by this means we
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  Speaker 1: shall produce more, we shall grow rich. Unquote that a
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  Speaker 1: smith sentenced for life to the making of heads of
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  Speaker 1: nails would lose all interest in his work, would be
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  Speaker 1: entirely at the mercy of his employer. With his limited
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  Speaker 1: handicraft would be out of work four months out of twelve,
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  Speaker 1: and that his wages would decrease when he could be
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  Speaker 1: easily replaced by an apprentice. Smith did not think of
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  Speaker 1: it when he exclaimed, quote, long live the division of labor.
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  Speaker 1: This is the real gold mine that will enrich the
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  Speaker 1: nation unquote, and all joined in the cry. And later
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  Speaker 1: on when a Sismondi or a Jbsay began to understand
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  Speaker 1: that the division of labor, instead of enriching the whole nation,
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  Speaker 1: only enriches the rich, and that the worker, who for
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  Speaker 1: life is doomed to making the eighteenth part of a pin,
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  Speaker 1: grows stupid and sinks into poverty. What did official economists propose? Nothing.
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  Speaker 1: They did not say to themselves that by a lifelong
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  Speaker 1: grind at one and the same mechanical toil, the worker
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  Speaker 1: would lose his intelligence and his spirit of invention, and that,
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  Speaker 1: on the contrary, a variety of occupations would result in
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  Speaker 1: considerably augmenting the productivity of a nation. But this is
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  Speaker 1: the very issue now before us. If, however, only economists
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  Speaker 1: preached the permanent and often hereditary division of labor, we
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  Speaker 1: might allow them to preach it as much as they pleased,
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  Speaker 1: but ideas taught by doctors of science filter into men's
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  Speaker 1: minds and pervert them. And from repeatedly hearing the division
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  Speaker 1: of labor, profits, interest, credit, et cetera spoken of as
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  Speaker 1: problems long since solved, men and workers too, and by
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  Speaker 1: arguing like economists and by venerating the same fetishes. Thus
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  Speaker 1: we see a number of socialists, even those who have
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  Speaker 1: not feared to point out the mistakes of science, justifying
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  Speaker 1: the division of labor. Talk to them about the organization
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  Speaker 1: of work during the revolution, and they answer that the
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  Speaker 1: division of labor must be maintained. That if you sharpened
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  Speaker 1: pins before the revolution, you must go on sharpening them after. True,
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  Speaker 1: you will not have to work more than five hours
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  Speaker 1: a day, but you will have to sharpen pins all
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  Speaker 1: your life, while others will make designs for machines that
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  Speaker 1: will enable you to sharpen hundreds of millions of pins
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  Speaker 1: during your lifetime, and others will be specialists in the
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  Speaker 1: higher branches of literature, science, and art, et cetera. You
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  Speaker 1: were born to sharpened pins, while past your way born
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  Speaker 1: to invent the inoculation against anthrax. And the revolution will
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  Speaker 1: leave you both to your respective employments. Well. It is
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  Speaker 1: this horrible principle, so noxious to society, so brutalizing to
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  Speaker 1: the individual, source of so much harm, that we propose
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  Speaker 1: to discuss it in its diverse manifestations. We know the
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  Speaker 1: consequences of the division of labor full well. It is
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  Speaker 1: evident that we are divided into two classes. On the
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  Speaker 1: one hand, producers who consume very little and are exempt
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  Speaker 1: from thinking because they only do physical work, and who
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  Speaker 1: work badly because their brains remain inactive. And on the
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  Speaker 1: other hand, the consumers, who producing little or hardly anything,
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  Speaker 1: have the privilege of thinking for the others, and who
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  Speaker 1: think badly because the whole world of those who toil
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  Speaker 1: with their hands is unknown to them. The laborers of
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  Speaker 1: the soil know nothing of machinery. Those who work at
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  Speaker 1: machinery ignore everything about agriculture. The ideal of modern industry
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  Speaker 1: is a child tending a machine that he cannot and
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  Speaker 1: must not understand, and a foreman who finds him if
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  Speaker 1: his attention flags for a moment. The ideal of industrial
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  Speaker 1: agriculture is to do away with the agricultural labour altogether,
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  Speaker 1: and to set a man who does odd jobs to
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  Speaker 1: tend a steam plow or a threshing machine. The division
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  Speaker 1: of labour means labeling and stamping men for life, some
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  Speaker 1: to splice ropes in factories, some to be foreman in
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  Speaker 1: a business, others to shove huge coal baskets in a
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  Speaker 1: particular part of a mine. But none of them have
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  Speaker 1: any idea of machinery as a whole, nor of business,
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  Speaker 1: nor of mines. And thereby they destroyed the love of
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  Speaker 1: work and the capacity for invention that, at the beginning
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  Speaker 1: of modern industry created the machinery on which we pride
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  Speaker 1: ourselves so much. What they have done for individuals, they
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  Speaker 1: also want to do for nations. Humanity was to be
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  Speaker 1: divided into national workshops, having each its speciality. Russia, we
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  Speaker 1: were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn, England
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  Speaker 1: to spin cotton, Belgium to weave cloth, while Switzerland was
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  Speaker 1: to train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate s city
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  Speaker 1: was to establish a specialty. Leone was to weave silk,
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  Speaker 1: Alverne to make lace, and Paris fancy articles. Economists believed
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  Speaker 1: that specialization opened an immense field for production and consumption,
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  Speaker 1: and that an era of limitless wealth for mankind was
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  Speaker 1: at hand. But these great hopes vanished. As fast as
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  Speaker 1: technical knowledge spread abroad. As long as England stood alone
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  Speaker 1: as a weaver of cotton and as a metalworker on
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  Speaker 1: a large scale, as long as only Paris made artistic,
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  Speaker 1: fancy articles, et cetera, all went well. Economists could preach
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  Speaker 1: so called division of labor without being refuted. But a
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  Speaker 1: new current of thought induced all civilized nations to manufacture
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  Speaker 1: for themselves. They found it advantageous to produce what they
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  Speaker 1: formerly received from other countries or from their colonies, which
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  Speaker 1: in their turn aimed at emancipating themselves from the mother country.
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  Speaker 1: Scientific discoveries universalized the methods of production, and henceforth it
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  Speaker 1: was useless to pay an exorbitant price abroad for what
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  Speaker 1: could easily be produced at home. Does not, then this
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  Speaker 1: industrial revolution should strike a crushing blow at the theory
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  Speaker 1: of the division of labor, which was supposed to be
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  Speaker 1: so sound. End of Chapter fifteen.