Division Of Labour Quotes

“The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful or plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo Sapiens, rather than vice versa.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“I know I can’t drive a truck. And I can’t run a bank. And I can’t count. And I can’t lead a movement. But I can f*ck up your mind.”
― James Baldwin

“In another building, I was shown his [Mr Brunel's] manufactory of shoes, which, like the other, is full of ingenuity, and, in regard to subdivision of labour, brings this fabric on a level with the oft-admired manufactory of pins. Every step in it is effected by the most elegant and precise machinery; while as each operation is performed by one hand, so each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, who complete from the hide, as supplied by the currier, a hundred pair of strong and well-finished shoes per day. All the details are performed by ingenious applications of the mechanic powers, and all the parts are characterized by precision, uniformity, and accuracy. As each man performs but one step in the process, which implies no knowledge of what is done by those who go before or follow him, so the persons employed are not shoemakers, but wounded soldiers, who are able to learn their respective duties in a few hours. The contract at which these shoes are delivered to government is 6s. 6d. per pair, being at least 2s. less than what was paid previously for an unequal and cobbled article.

While, however, we admire these triumphs of mechanics, and congratulate society on the prospect of enjoying more luxuries at less cost of human labour, it ought not to be forgotten, that the general good in such cases is productive of great partial evils, against which a paternal government ought to provide. No race of workmen being proverbially more industrious than shoemakers, it is altogether unreasonable, that so large a portion of valuable members of society should be injured by improvements which have the ultimate effect of benefiting the whole.”
― Richard Phillips, A Morning's Walk from London to Kew

“The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo Sapiens, rather than vice versa.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The division of labour means labelling and stamping men for life—some to splice ropes in factories, some to be foremen in a business, others to shove huge coal-baskets in a particular part of a mine; but none of them to have any idea of machinery as a whole, nor of business, nor of mines. And thereby they destroy the love of work and the capacity for invention that, at the beginning of modern industry, created the machinery on which we pride ourselves so much.”
― Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

“We know the consequences of the division of labour full well. It is evident that, first of all, we are divided into two classes: on the one hand, producers, who consume very little and are exempt from thinking because they only do physical work, and who work badly because their brains remain inactive; and on the other hand, the consumers, who, producing little or hardly anything, have the privilege of thinking for the others, and who think badly because the whole world of those who toil with their hands is unknown to them.”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings

“Political economy has always confined itself to stating facts occurring in society, and justifying them in the interest of the dominant class. Therefore, it pronounces itself in favour of the division of labour in industry. Having found it profitable to capitalists, it has set it up as a principle.”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings

“In principle the human productive community may be constituted in either
of two ways. First, it may be consciously regulated. Whether its scale
is that of a self-sufficient patriarchal family, a communistic tribe, or
a socialist society, it creates the organs which, acting as the agents
of social consciousness, fix the extent and methods of production and
distribute the social product thus obtained among the members. Given the
material and man-made conditions of production, all decisions as to
method, place, quantity and available tools involved in the production
of new goods are made by the /pater familias, /or by the local regional
or national commissars of the socialist society. The personal experience
of the former gives him a knowledge of the needs and productive
resources of his family; the latter can acquire a like knowledge of the
requirements of their society by means of comprehensively organized
statistics of production and consumption. They can thus shape, with
conscious foresight, the whole economic life of the communities of which
they are the appointed representatives and leaders in accordance with
the needs of the members. The individual members of such a community
consciously regulate their productive activity as members of a
productive community. Their labour process and the distribution of their
products are subject to central control. Their relations of production
are directly manifest as social relations, and the economic relations
between individuals can be seen as being determined by the social order,
by social arrangements rather than by private inclination. Relations of
production are accepted as those which are established and desired by
the whole community.

Matters are different in a society which lacks this conscious
organization. Such a society is dissolved into a large number of
mutually independent individuals for whom production is a private matter
rather than a social concern. In other words, its members are individual
proprietors who are compelled by the development of the division of
labour to do business with one another. The act by which this is
accomplished is the exchange of commodities. It is only this act which
establishes connections in a society otherwise dismembered into
disparate units by private property and the division of labour. Exchange
is the subject matter of theoretical economics only because, and to the
extent that, it performs this mediating function in the social
structure. It is of course true that exchange may also take place in a
socialist society, but that would be a type of exchange occurring only
after the product had already been distributed according to a socially
desired norm. It would therefore be merely an individual adaptation of
the distributive norm of society, a personal transaction influenced by
subjective moods and considerations. It would not be an object for
economic analysis. It would have no more importance for theoretical
analysis than does the exchange of toys between two children in the
nursery, an exchange which is fundamentally different in character from
the purchases made by their fathers at the toy shop. For the latter is
only one element in the sum of exchanges by which society realizes
itself as the productive community which it really is. A productive
community must express itself in such acts of exchange because only in
this way can the unity of society, dissolved by private property and the
division of labour, be restored.”
― Rudolph Hiferding, Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development