Abstract
The Ricardian Socialists had been fascinated by the mechanical inventions spawned by the industrial revolution and which were reported daily in the contemporary press and discussed at the meetings of the Mechanics’ Institutes. But neither they nor Smith before them had grasped the true significance of the introduction of machinery in the context of capitalist relations of production. Their definition of the division of labour remained tied to forms of work organisation based primarily on manufacture rather than factory production: their analyses presumed, that is, that mechanisation and the division of labour consisted largely of the technical rationalisation of manual operations, rather than a fundamental restructuring of patterns of work and the differentiation of skills as part of capitalist strategies for control and regulation of the labour process.138 A more adequate conceptualisation of the division of labour in the machine-based factories of early industrial capitalism emerges in the writings of Andrew Ure (1778–1857) and Charles Babbage (1792–1871).
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Notes and References
See, for instance, V. Foley, ‘The Division of Labour in Plato and Smith’, History of Political Economy, vol. 6 (1974).
For different versions of the discontinuist thesis in the historiography of the natural and social sciences, see T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn (University of Chicago Press, 1970);
M. Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1971). and The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1972).
The contributions of Bachelard and Canguilhem are explored in D. Lecourt, Marxism and Epistemology (London: New Left Books, 1975).
For an acute history of economic thought inspired in part by Foucault, see K. Tribe, Land, Labour and Economic Discourse (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).
For other translations of the same passage see, inter alia, Plato: The Republic, trans. H. Lee (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) p. 196; Republic, trans. P. Shorey in E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds), The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton University Press, 1973) p. 685.
That Aristotle did not possess a notion of the ‘economy’ in the sense assumed by modern (primarily neo-classical) historians of economic thought is argued by M. Finley in ‘Aristotle and Economic Analysis’, Past and Present, no. 47 (1970).
The Republic, bk II, p. 102. All references are to the translation by Lee. Cf. Aristotle, The Politics, trans. T. Sinclair (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967) bk I, ch. 2, p. 29. All references are to this edition.
The Politics, bk IV, ch. 4, pp. 156–68. For a discussion of Aristotle’s ‘functionalism’ and an assessment of the influence of biological studies on his thinking, see J. H. Randall, Jr, Aristotle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) esp. pp. 65–7, 186–8, 219–71.
Xenophon, Cyropaedia, trans. W. Miller (London: Heinemann, 1943) p. 33.
That the thought of Plato and Aristotle represented a systematisation of antidemocratic, aristocratic ideology is argued in E. Wood and N. Wood, Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).
R. J. Littman, The Greek Experiment: Imperialism and Social Conflict 800–400 BC (London: Thames & Hudson, 1974) p. 99.
See also A. Gouldner, Enter Plato: Classical Greece and the Origins of Social Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967) pp. 3–40;
A. Andrewes, Greek Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) pp. 97–160.
On the problem of slavery, see M. Finley (ed.), Slavery in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Heffer, 1960).
Cf: M. Finley, The Ancient Economy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1973) pp. 40–1.
Xenophon, Oeconomicus, trans. L. Strauss (Cornell University Press, 1970) p. 17. It is sometimes suggested that Plato’s doctrine is essentially meritocratic. For a detailed critique of such an interpretation, see Wood and Wood, Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory, pp. 144–53.
R. Bambrough, ‘Plato’s Political Analogies’, in P. Laslett (ed.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, First Series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).
Wood and Wood, Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory, p. 133. Cf. C. Mossé, The Ancient World at Work (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) pp. 25–30; 75–96.
Cf. G. E. R. Lloyd, Greek Science after Aristotle (London: Chatto & Windus, 1973) pp. 154–74, esp. pp. 166–7;
E. Roll, A History of Economic Thought, 2nd edn (London: Faber, 1973) pp. 35–8.
For the social background to Roman thought see, inter alia, P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971);
D. Dudley, Roman Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975);
P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971).
Cf. Cicero, De Officiis, trans. W. Miller (London: Heinemann, 1947) bk I, pp. 153–5.
For an important example of medieval ‘economics’, see the extracts from Aquinas in A. E. Monroe (ed.), Early Economic Thought (Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 51–77.
Cf. B. Gordon, Economic Analysis before Adam Smith (London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 153–86.
For divergent interpretations of this fundamental restructuring of the social and intellectual order see, inter alia, R. Hilton (ed.), The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1976);
M. J. Kitch (ed.), Capitalism and the Reformation (London: Longmans, 1967);
V. L. Bullough (ed.), The Scientific Revolution (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970).
The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, ed. C. H. Hull (Cambridge University Press, 1899) vol. I, pp. 355–6; vol. II, p. 473.
The quotation is from his essay, ‘A Search into the Nature of Society’, which was included in the 1723 edition of the book. Cf. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. P. Harth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970) p. 368. For Francis Hutcheson, see R. L. Meek (ed.), Precursors of Adam Smith 1750–1775 (London: Dent, 1973) p. 29;
W. L. Taylor, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume as Predecessors of Adam Smith (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965) pp. 56–68.
Cf. R. L. Meek, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, 2nd edn (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1973) p. 20.
See R. Williams, Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1976) pp. 145–8.
Cf. A. McIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967) pp. 124–8.
C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford University Press, 1964).
Cf. L. Goldmann, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) pp. 18–20.
S. Lukes, Individualism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).
Cf. G. Therborn, Science, Class and Society (London: New Left Books, 1976) pp. 121–2. Goldmann is one of many who mislead by an over-extension of ‘individualism’: cf. Goldmann, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, pp. 20–1. See also the critique of Macpherson in Tribe, Land, Labour and Economic Discourse, pp. 40ff.
P. Gay, The Enlightenment: an Interpretation (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970) vol. II, p. 319.
The originality of some of the best-known Enlightenment schemes of evolution is painstakingly established by R. L. Meek, in Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge University Press, 1976).
Cf. R. L. Meek (ed.), Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1973) pp. 43, 89, 121, 145.
Cf. G. Bryson, Man and Society: the Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 1945) p. 7.
For a more detailed exploration of Scotland’s changing social and economic structure during this period, see D. Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (Ohio University Press, 1965) pp. 15–32.
J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954) p. 187.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. E. Cannon (London: Methuen, 1961) vols I and II. All references are to this edition.
This critique of Smith is detailed in S. Marglin, ‘What do Bosses do? The Origins and Function of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production’, in A. Gorz (ed.), The Division of Labour (Hassocks: Harvester, 1976) pp. 18–20.
For a discussion of Smith’s epistemology and its relation to Locke’s writings, see D. A. Reisman, Adam Smith’s Sociological Economics (London: Croom Helm, 1976) pp. 22–37.
Cf. W. C. Lehmann, John Millar of Glasgow 1735–1801 (Cambridge University Press, 1960) p. 132. The passage illustrates, moreover, the variety of terms with which the division of labour was conceptualised (’trades’, ‘professions’, ‘employments’), and the continuing influence of Greek discriminations (’liberal’ and ‘mechanical’) although now incorporated into a transformed theoretical structure.
Ibid, p. 401. The theoretical centrality occupied by exchange and the market in Smith’s work, however, prevented him from recognising the importance of changes in the relations of production which were a prerequisite for the successful operation of his model of self-sustaining growth. That is, he failed to see the necessity of ‘free’ labour, labour divorced from the means of production, if the transfer of labour power between agriculture and manufacture, country and town, was to respond to market opportunities. Cf. R. Brenner, ‘The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism’, New Left Review, no. 104 (1977) pp. 33–8.
Ibid, p. 35. This exposition of his argument illustrates, of course, the basic confusion in Smith’s theory of value, which led him to reject the notion that in a capitalist economy labour could be regarded as the sole source of value: Smith conflated the proposition that the value of a commodity was determined by the amount of labour it could purchase in the market through an exchange with other commodities, with the proposition that the value of a commodity was determined by the quantity of labour embodied in it. Cf. M. Dobb, Theories of Value and Distribution since Adam Smith (Cambridge University Press, 1973) pp. 43–9.
R. A. Nisbet, Social Change and History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) p. 139.
Cf. A. Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) ed. D. Forbes (Edinburgh University Press, 1966) p. 87; Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage, pp. 37–67.
Quoted in R. L. Meek, ‘The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology’, Economics and Ideology and Other Essays (London: Chapman & Hall, 1967) p. 37.
See Smith’s ‘Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms’, in H. W. Schneider (ed.), Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970) pp. 290–301. Cf. Reisman, Adam Smith’s Sociological Economics, pp. 129–38;
A. S. Skinner, ‘Adam Smith: an Economic Interpretation of History’, in A. S. Skinner and T. Wilson (eds), Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, 1975). For contemporary French versions of historical development by stages, see Meek (ed.), Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics, pp. 64–83;
A. N. Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795) ed. S. Hampshire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955);
K. M. Baker, Condorcet: from Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago University Press, 1975) esp. pp. 343ff.
Cf. Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, p. 157; Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. I, p. 75. In his Early Draft of The Wealth of Nations Smith was even more critical of employers, arguing at one point that ‘those who labour most get least’. Cf. R. L. Meek and A. S. Skinner, ‘The Development of Adam Smith’s Ideas on the Division of Labour’, Economic Journal, vol. 83 (1973).
Cf. W. C. Lehmann, Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Sociology (University of Columbia Press, 1930) p. 121.
Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. II, pp. 302–3. There was also a group of apologists in the eighteenth century who failed to recognise any of these effects of the division of labour: cf. M. Myers, ‘Division of Labour as a Principle of Social Cohesion’, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. 33 (1967).
Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, pp. 182–3. Marx had erroneously believed that Smith had been Ferguson’s student and had merely echoed his critique; in fact Smith had made his observations public well before Ferguson, in his lectures at Glasgow. Cf. R. Hamowy, ‘Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour’, Economica, vol. 35 (1968). Lukács repeated Marx’s error: see The Young Hegel (London: Merlin Press, 1975) p. 329.
Cf. E. G. West, ‘Adam Smith’s Two Views on the Division of Labour’, Economica, vol. 31 (1964);
N. Rosenberg, ‘Adam Smith on the Division of Labour: Two Views or One?’, Economica, vol. 32 (1965).
For a recent exploration of Smith’s political views, see D. Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1978) esp. pp. 113–20.
There are by now some excellent expositions of Hegel’s thought as a whole: see, especially, J. N. Findlay, Hegel: a Re-examination (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958);
W. Kaufman, Hegel: a Reinterpretation (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1966);
R. Plant, Hegel (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973);
C. Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge University Press, 1975).
A good introduction to the phenomenology can be found in R. Norman, Hegel’s Phenomenology (Sussex University Press, 1976).
Cf. H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, 2nd edn (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967) pp. 13–16. The influence of the Scottish writers on German thought is explored in Plant, Hegel, pp. 17–22.
An excellent analysis of these writings, and an argument for the continuity between them and the Philosophy of Right can be found in S. Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge University Press, 1972) esp. pp. 87–114.
This theme, of course, overlaps with his concept of alienation. For a detailed study of the various meanings of Hegel’s use of ‘alienation’, see R. Schacht, Alienation (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971) pp. 30–64; Norman, Hegel’s Phenomenology, pp. 86–104.
A good discussion of Hegel’s notion of labour is to be found in R. Plant, ‘Hegel and Political Economy’, parts I and II, New Left Review, nos 103 and 104 (1977). See also Lukács, The Young Hegel, pp. 338–64;
K. Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1967) pp. 262–7.
Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford University Press, 1942) para. 201.
Ibid. para. 207. Classes are not the only mediators between individuals and society; like Tocqueville and Durkheim many years later, Hegel advocated the development of intermediate structures -’corporations’–based on the division of labour to link the individual to society, and especially, the state. These were seen, like the family, as entities which would counter the egoism and atomisation generated by the process of individuation in civil society, would unite members of the same profession and trade in cooperative organisations, and could even form the basis for a system of political representation. See addition to para. 255. Cf. G. Heiman, ‘The Sources and Significance of Hegel’s Corporate Doctrine’, in Z. A. Pelczynski (ed.), Hegel’s Political Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1971) pp. 111–35.
The implication of my remarks is definitely not that Hegel was simply a reactionary and chauvinistic upholder of the Prussian state. For a spirited and convincing defence of Hegel against those who would see him in this light, see the essays by Avineri and Kaufman in W. Kaufman (ed.), Hegel’s Political Philosophy (New York: Atherton Press, 1970).
Cf. G. D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, vol. I, The Forerunners 1789–1850 (London: Macmillan, 1953) p. 4 and passim.
G. Lichtheim, The Origins of Socialism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969) p. 31.
Cf. Fourier, The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier: Selected Texts on Love, Work and Passionate Attraction, ed. J. Beecher and R. Bienvenu (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972) p. 44.
Cf. Saint-Simon, Henri Saint-Simon 1760–1825: Selected Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organisation, ed. K. Taylor (London: Croom Helm, 1975) pp. 194–7.
Manuel has suggested that this ‘spiritualisation’ of labour may well have contributed something to the influence of Saint-Simon’s doctrine in Catholic France — as opposed to Protestant countries — for it was an ideal bourgeois credo for a culture that required something more positive than an affirmation of the Rights of Man’. F. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon (Harvard University Press, 1956) p. 253.
Cf. Saint-Simon, The Political Thought of Saint-Simon, ed. G. Ionescu (Oxford University Press, 1976) p. 182.
For Saint-Simonian views on property, see The Doctrine of Saint-Simon, trans. G. G. Iggers, 2nd edn (New York: Schocken, 1972) pp. 113–38. This document had its origins in a series of public lectures in 1828 and 1829 given by Enfantin, Bazard and Buchez.
David Ricardo, On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, ed. P. Sraffa (Cambridge University Press, 1951) p. 5.
Thomas Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy (1827) (New York: Kelley, 1966) pp. 27–8;
Cf. John Gray, A Lecture on Human Happiness (1825) (London School of Economics, 1931) p. 15;
William Thompson, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth (1824) (New York: Kelley, 1963) pp. 6–17.
Gray, A Lecture on Human Happiness, pp. 15–21. Gray was convinced, moreover, that the contemporary organisation of society was inimical to happiness: the wealthy were tyrannised by the pressures of rivalry and fashion, retailers had constantly to resort to deceit, and most of the other unproductive and useless occupations also required actions that no rational being could engage in with sincerity and happiness. The constant appeals to, and belief in, rationality betray an Enlightenment residue which marked the discourse of all the early Owenites and came inevitably to grief when faced with political hostility and opposition from both Left and Right. Cf. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, revised edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) pp. 857ff.
Cf. Hodgskin, Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825) (New York: Kelley, 1963) p. 46; Popular Political Economy, pp. 79–90.
Thomas Hodgskin, The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832) (Clifton: Kelley, 1973) p. 30.
This statement may seem surprising, but only because Fabian historiography has succeeded in glossing over the limited nature of Owen’s own project. As with Saint-Simon, the real radicalisation is to be detected in some of the strands of the social movement and not in the original doctrine. For a balanced assessment of Owen, see the editor’s introduction to A New View of Society and Report to the County of Lanark, ed. V. A. C. Gatrell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969); all references are to this edition. See also, J. F. C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).
Cf. William Thompson, Labour Rewarded (1827) (New York: Kelley, 1969) p. 106.
See also J. F. Bray, Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy (1839) (London School of Economics, 1931) esp. pp. 154–92.
Cf. A. Briggs, ‘The Language of “Class” in Early Nineteenth Century England’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History (London: Macmillan, 1960); Williams, Keywords, pp. 51–9.
Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures (1835) (London: Frank Cass, 1967).
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Rattansi, A. (1982). The Deskilling of Labour and the Factory System: Ure and Babbage. In: Marx and the Division of Labour. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16829-3_7
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