Division of Labour - Now and Then - Essay Example

?Division of Labour - Now and Then It was inevitable for the concept of division of labor to be identified with the emergence of economic thought. The specialization of the study of economics has established that productivity and development would not have occurred in early and contemporary societies without it. Division of labor or some crude form of it have existed in ancient Egypt and India and has been credited to have spurred the creation of social forms such as the caste system. With this in mind, it is easy to understand how the very concept is considered a necessity and not a mere economic model that can be dispensed with and a community could move on with some other alternative. Its importance is analogous to the various organs, muscles, tendons, veins and cells of the body – that each must play its part and coordinate in order for the entire human body to function and live normally. Adam Smith (2003) explained this by positing how division of labor is the foundation of the wealth of nations. In his book, Wealth of Nations, he underscored this by immediately discussing its merits in the very first chapter of his work, which essentially pointed to the fact that such division of work is the reason for the increase in productiveness of labor and, henceforth, a country’s wealth. Division of Labor in History There are so many explanations that seek to define the roots of division of labor. For example, Karl Marx (2007)in the Capital, stated: The foundation of every division of labor which has attained a certain level of development, and has been brought about by exchange of commodities, is the separation of town from country. One might say that the whole history of society is summed up by this antithesis. (p. 287) Marx’s theory emphasizes a sociological characteristic wherein an economy is portioned into independent firms and industries. Perelman (2000) demonstrated this further by commenting that for Marx, “the conventional social division of labor concerns the organization within the factory [for instance], where the employer divides the work among the employees,” hence it describes hoe work is actually divided up between different workplaces that are, in turn, coordinated by market relations instead of an authority figure within the workplace. (p. 59) Marx’s theory implies that the phenomenon a little bit later than the antiquity and was only fully realized during the modern period when machinery and capitalism had been invented. Other thinkers posit different opinions. Smith, for instance, was bent on the contrasting idea of division of labor as simply the organization and specialization of work within the workplace. If one is to follow this thinking, then division of labor has existed in the ancient times. As previously mentioned, some semblance to it could be identified in the ancient Egyptian and Indian societies. Perhaps the simplest example that could be provided in this regard is that of the family. Since time immemorial, gender or sexual differences had played key roles in the division of labor within it. In ancient China, for instance, this division is considered as an ideal virtue, crucial in maintaining harmonious family relationship. (Gamble 1963, p. 245) Here, husbands dealt with external matters while the wives managed the affairs within the family. Also, figurines from the Classic Maya island site of Jaina in the Yucatan peninsula suggest division of labor based on gender as well. They showed variety of activities, showing women grinding corn, weaving and using pots while men’s were focused on activities that require strength. (McKillop 2004, p. 123) The family also played an important part in the division of labor outside of the domestic realm. One can turn to the example provided by ancient American metalworking. Bruhns and Stothert (1999) recounted that Peruvian smelters were worked by family groups: Men and adolescents would have supplied the lung power for smelting, while other members of the family could break up the ore for charging furnace and later extract the prills, a job that requires patience but no physical strength or stamina and could easily have been done by the young and the elderly working together. (p. 144) Division of labor in the ancients is undeniable. It would develop further and assume more sophisticated forms as new economic developments emerged. For example, there was the emergence of slavery. The antiquity is primarily equated with it due to the lack of technological progress. Ancient Greece, Rome and Africa were societies driven by slave systems: the mines of ancient Greece, the building of Egyptian monuments and the feverish public works that gripped ancient Rome. This was also true in the ancient Orient, which Yavetz (1988) explained, cultivated an Asiatic model that is distinct from the Graeco-Roman slavery system. (p. 124) Nonetheless, specialization of work occurred in big slave houses or slave-estates of the old and they spurred economic growth. In the division of labor, wrote Sawyer, each slave has his specific duty that admitted no variation and families toil with their entire lives – father, mother, sister and brother, together, working from their birth until the day they died. Weber and Swedberg (1999), emphasized “the higher the standard of living of the slave-owning top-stratum of society rises and the more, therefore, the extensive development of commerce increases.” (p. 142) Evolution The specialization that has been mentioned by Marx or the division of labor the result in the emergence of towns and urban centers and as a consequence of the development of sophisticated forms of exchange began to take place in the ancient world and the Middle Ages. This was first demonstrated during the height of the slave trade wherein slave-owners are able to produce more for the market. During the Middle Ages, division of labor expanded intensively within the economic area of the city in the form of production for specific clients and for the local market, and, afterwards, it further expanded to cater to foreign market. According to Weber and Swedberg, “the transition of the division of labor from production for a local clientele to production for an interlocal market is prepared by the slow infiltration of (capitalistic) enterprise and the principle of competition.” (p. 142) Central to the Middle Ages labor force were the serfs, which functioned in place of the slaves that have toiled in the past. Then of course, there were the guild system in Europe. While the guild primarily is above division of work according to trade and that a guild workman controlled his product and the production process, a guild divided production into separate tasks as well that are, in turn, overseen by specialists. In addition, the guild system made use of the capitalist as intermediary to integrate a workman’s labor with those of the others and transform the entire output into marketable products. (Lippit 1996, p. 22) The period of the guild system of the Middle Ages would be the end of the era of natural division of labor, which has permeated since the ancient times, as characterized by the specialization dictated by differences in sex and age. With regards to the guild, Marx and Engels still considered it a type of natural division of labor because the specialization did not take place between individual workers since each must know “a whole range of labors and know how to make everything that was to be made with his tools” in addition to the fact that there was a limited traffic, weak ties between the individual towns, lack of population and the narrow realm of wants, preventing the development f a more complex and sophisticated form of division of labor that would characterize later periods. (cited in Beamish 1992, p. 43) The development of division of labor from the Middle Ages until the industrial and, afterwards, capitalistic societies were summed up by Marx and Engels (1987) in the Communist Manifesto. They said: “The guild masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.” (p. 28) As new and large markets emerged, demand has steadily risen resulting into the emergence of modern industry, with its steam and machinery that has been known since as the Industrial Revolution. The modern division that we know today is a consequence of the creation of a global market that features a highly complex and wide environment of commerce, technology, navigation and communication, wherein work and occupation are highly specialized. Modern Division of Labor Negishi (2001), in his discourse of Smith’s division of labor theory, wrote that the simplest form and all inclusive form of division of labor that one could identify today is that found in agriculture. The idea is that this sector cannot be divided into an independent manufacture and agriculture unless a certain stock of capital is accumulated. (p. 25) This supposedly led to a type of expansion that support independent specialization of the industry that may result in the requirement of occasional jobs in a community it is located. International trade based on the international division of labor is considered by Negishi as the highest stage of the modern division of labor. Elements such as investment supposedly make this possible. As previously mentioned, wealth of nations in Smith’s argument depended much on the productivity of labor or the sheer number of productive laborers. This, in turn, is driven by specialization or the extent to which labor is divided among workers. Smith believed that, “the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.” (p. 3) This statement is further expounded on the now famous analogy of the production of pins, which led to the conclusion that the division is limited by the extent of the market. The analogy described the dynamics of work within a workshop, which supposedly demonstrated how division of labor is economical, driving people to choose to arrange their employments in such a way that create a progressive social division of labor. (Perelman, p. 220) It effectively broke down the production process into several specialized parts and functions so that they all could be efficiently performed. The application of this principle can be demonstrated in the case of Henry Ford’s automobile assembly-line system. Along with the principles of interchangeable parts, continuous flow and reducing wasted effort, division of labor made it possible for the car maker to mass produce cheap automobiles with less cost. The principle behind the breaking down of the assembly of a car into different, specialized and smaller tasks would be adopted by many other industries, changing the labor practices in America in the process. Rueschemeyer (1986) observed: Assembly-line production was part of a larger transformation of the labour process in the decades around the turn of the century, a transformation which wrested more radically that ever before de facto control of work from workers and transferred it to management. (p. 80) Today, with all the developments that have transpired, industrially and technologically, the division of labor that characterized Ford’s factories is still the same. Sabel (1982), for example, wrote: Wire cables for General Motors are likely to be twisted together in a parts plant near Detroit employing at most a few hundred workers, or in a much smaller firm in Mississippi; parts of some IBM computers might be assembled in a backyard factory just across the border of Mexico; some parts for Fiat cars are cast in factories no bigger than shacks. (p. 34) The above variables highlight the fact that division of labor today is equated with the move to reorganize the production process in order for a capitalist to collect profit. Such reorganization transpires, wrote Mott, Shapiro and Steindl (2005), in three stages: first, the capitalist brings workers together in a single place of work; then, labor is allocated among them in an effective manner; and, concentration and division of labor set the foundation for mechanization to reduce the part played by labor, and increase profitability. (p. 12) This explanation also underscored the fact that division of labor can also be interpreted as an organizational change, wherein specific division and stages of production are altered, modified or eliminated and always distributing work according to component parts, transforming the entire production process into an effective and profitable enterprise. Another example that demonstrates how Smith’s division of labor is applied is in the way occupational systems are stratified. Human resource managers, for instance, of American companies today focus on individual attributes in hiring their employees. The variables such as education, work experience, personal interest, behavioral profile, and intelligence score, among other personal variables are scrutinized so that workers can be placed in the correct division wherein his personal and professional attributes could be of use best for the organization’s profitability. Then, there is globalization or the integration of the world into one single humungous market. This has brought about a form of international division of labor that is embedded in the world’s systems theory. This new division of labor is supposed revolutionary because it shatters traditional systems that have been dominant in the past and transformed economic structures and economic activities. Here, the world is seen as one that is divided into core, semiperipheral and peripheral states wherein “capital is accumulated in the core countries, while peripheral countries provide raw materials to be exported to core countries, where they are used for production purposes.” (Budde 2005, p. 32) Out of all the previously outlined modern forms of division of labor, it is still significant to note that in some societies, gender differences define the specialization of occupations. For instance, this is demonstrated in the case of Saudi Arabia. Its society is extremely patriarchal and that women’s role is subordinated to those of men. Such assignation of tasks according to sex persists because it is ideological in origin, making it more than just a category that indicates the differential value placed on “men’s work” versus “women’s work”. (Mohanty & Russo 1991, p. 68) Saudi’s experience with division of labor is also highlighted in the way it imports foreign workers. The bulk of its population has been supported by the country’s wealth through the country’s oil exports. The government cannot force its citizens to work or seek employment, much less perform menial tasks such as carpentry or farming. The sheer wealth of its citizens prevented many from learning skills and this has been aggravated by the fact that the Saudi population is relatively small. The country has financial capital and all it needed was to import labor to do the work that its citizens cannot render. Problems Smith himself argued that division of labor has its downside. He cited, for example, how it stunts man’s growth because it can force his whole life to perform very few simple operations, which could lead to ignorance: “The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.” (p. 782) Ferguson agrees to this position, stressing that many mechanical arts require no capacity and actually call for total suppression of sentiment and reason and that the “workshop” thrives better in an environment that least consults the mind and imagination. (p. 174) Marx also points to the tragedy about the loss of man’s character due to his extensive use of the machinery, becoming – in the process – a mere appendage of the machine. This problem in division of labor is, as cited by the authors above, is dispelled by the emergence of the so-called Lyon’s business model. Mason (2010) cited that in 1830, there had been an instance wherein skill, economy, radicalism, and self-respect have gone side by side not unlike the way Silicon Valley is characterized today. The model is about a network of skilled specialists and entrepreneurs wherein capital is locked up in designs not machinery, driving a culture of autonomy and invention in the workplace. (p. 47) This example demonstrate how division of labor could actually encourage the development of man as an individual. The way Silicon Valley, for instance, has prospered today is testament that specialization need not result in the mechanization of workers and instead bring out the best in them – a factor that perhaps enabled humans to better himself and his condition through division of work – an achievement that eclipses the productivity and profitability the model brings for a society and a nation. Conclusion As Lippit succinctly put it, the division of labor and the specialization of occupation and function are fundamental characteristics of all complex societies, rather than a peculiar feature of industrialized or economically advanced ones. (p. 22) Its importance is driven by the fact that it is the only engine that could propel a society into progress. All economic models presuppose its existence. There had been changes to its dynamics, particularly changing into forms according to the variables of the contemporary community it operates in. But the basic Smithian concept remains – tasks are divided into smaller parts so that they can be effectively performed. An important dimension to Smith’s conception of division of labor is his insistence that the phenomenon follows the natural progression of man’s development in his continuous attempt to improve his condition. And so, it makes sense to say that division of labor differs from one period to another or from industry to another or from one country to another because of the differences of the variables present. For example, division of labor is specifically important in today’s globalized market wherein production must meet the requirements of a huge global market. This recent development has brought about a seemingly better form of specialization. In comparison with the traditional division of labor, which many thinkers found to hinder man’s growth as an individual, there is now an emphasis to a kind of relative freedom and innovation in the workplace as well as an increase in entrepreneurial activity across the globe. Reference Beamish, R. (1992). Marx, method, and the division of labor. University of Illionois Press. Bruhns, K. and Stothert, K. (1999). Women in ancient America. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. Budde, R. (2005). Mexican and Central American L.A. garment workers: globalized industries and their economic constraints. Munster: LIT Verlag Munster. Gamble, S. (1963). North China villages: social, political, and economic activities before 1933. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lippit, V. (1996). Radical political economy: explorations in alternative economic analysis. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Mason, P. (2010). Live Working Or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 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