show how division of labour seizes upon, not only the economical, but every other sphere of society, and everywhere lays the foundation of that all engrossing system of specialising and sorting men, that development in a man of one single faculty at the expense of all other faculties, which caused A. Ferguson, the master of Adam Smith, to exclaim: “We make a nation of Helots, and have no fine citizens.”[1]
But, in spite of the numberous analogies and links connecting them, division of labour in the interior of a society, and that in the interior of a workshop, differ not only in degree, but also in kind. The analogy appears most indisputable where there is an invisible bond uniting the various branches of trade. For instance the cattle breeder produces hides, the tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoemaker, the leather into boots. Here the thing produced by each of them is but a step towards the final form, which is the product of all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker with the means of production. Now it is quite possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference between the above social division of labour, and the division in manufacture, is merely subjective, exists merely for the observer, who, in a manufacture, can see with one glance, all the numerous operations being performed on one spot, while in the instance given above, the spreading out of the work over great areas, and the great number of people employed in each branch of labour, obscure the connexion.[2] But what is
- ↑ A. Ferguson: “History of Civil Society.’ Edinburgh, 1767; Part iv. sect. ii, p. 285.
- ↑ In manufacture proper, he says, tbe division of labour appears to be greater, because “those employed in every different branch of the work can often he collected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great manufactures, (!) on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse … the division is not near so obvious.” (A. Smith: “Wealth of Nations,” bk. i. ch. i.) The celebrated passage in the same chapter that begins with the words, “Ohserve the accommodation of the most common artificer or day labourer in a civilized and thriving country,’ &c., and then proceeds to depict what an enormous number and variety of industries contribute to the satisfaction of the wants of an ordinary labourer, is copied almost word for word from B. de Mandeville’s Remarks to his “Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits,” (First ed., without the remarks, 1706; with the remarks, 1714.)
