William Petty Sir
William Petty was the first modern writer to take note of the division of labour, showing its worth in existence and usefulness in Dutch
shipyards. Classically, the workers in a
shipyard would build ships as units, finishing one before starting another. But the Dutch had it organised with several teams, each doing the same tasks for successive ships. People with a particular task to do must have discovered new methods that were only later observed and justified by writers on
political economy. Petty also applied the principle to his survey of
Ireland. His breakthrough was to divide the work so that people could do large parts with no extensive training.
Bernard de Mandeville Bernard de Mandeville discussed the matter in the second volume of
The Fable of the Bees (1714). This elaborates on many of the matters raised in the original poem about a 'Grumbling Hive'. He says:
David Hume - David Hume,
A Treatise on Human Nature Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau of the first page of du Monceau's introduction to ''Art de l'Épinglier'', with "division de ce travail" highlighted In his introduction to
The Art of the Pin-Maker (''Art de l'Épinglier'', 1761),
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau writes about the "division of this work": The contradiction has led to some debate over Smith's opinion of the division of labour.
Alexis de Tocqueville agreed with Smith: "Nothing tends to materialize man, and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind, more than extreme division of labor."
Adam Ferguson shared similar views to Smith, though he was generally more negative. The specialisation and concentration of the workers on their single
subtasks often leads to greater skill and greater productivity on their particular subtasks than would be achieved by the same number of workers each carrying out the original broad task, in part due to increased quality of production, but more importantly because of increased efficiency of production, leading to a higher nominal output of units produced per time unit. Smith uses the example of a production capability of an individual pin maker compared to a manufacturing business that employed 10 men:One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day.Smith saw the importance of matching skills with equipment—usually in the context of an
organisation. For example, pin makers were organised, with one making the head and another the body, each using different equipment. Similarly, he emphasised that a large number of skills, used in cooperation and with suitable equipment, were required to build a ship. In modern economic discussion, the term
human capital would be used. Smith's insight suggests that the huge increases in productivity obtainable from
technology or technological progress are possible because human and physical capital are matched, usually in an organisation. See also a short discussion of Adam Smith's theory in the context of
business processes.
Babbage wrote a seminal work,
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, analysing perhaps for the first time the division of labour in factories.
Immanuel Kant In the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785),
Immanuel Kant notes the value of the division of labour:All crafts, trades and arts have profited from the division of labour; for when each worker sticks to one particular kind of work that needs to be handled differently from all the others, he can do it better and more easily than when one person does everything. Where work is not thus differentiated and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, the crafts remain at an utterly primitive level.
Karl Marx Marx argued that increasing specialisation may also lead to workers with poorer overall skills and reduced enthusiasm for their work. He described the process as
alienation: workers become increasingly specialised, and work becomes repetitive, eventually leading to complete alienation from the process of production. The worker then becomes "depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine." Additionally, Marx argued that the division of labour creates less-skilled workers. As work becomes more specialised, less training is needed for each specific job, and the workforce overall is less skilled than it would be if one worker did one job entirely. Among Marx's theoretical contributions is his sharp distinction between the economic and the
social division of labour. That is, some forms of labour co-operation are purely due to "technical necessity", but others are a result of a "social control" function related to a class and status hierarchy. If these two divisions are conflated, it might appear as though the existing division of labour is technically inevitable and immutable, rather than (in good part) socially constructed and influenced by
power relationships. He also argues that in a
communist society, the division of labour is transcended, meaning that balanced human development occurs where people fully express their nature in the variety of creative work that they do.
Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau criticised the division of labour in
Walden (1854), on the basis that it removes people from a sense of connectedness with society and with the world at large, including nature. He claimed that the average man in a civilised society is, in practice, less wealthy than one in a "savage" society. The answer he gave was that
self-sufficiency was enough to cover one's basic needs.
Émile Durkheim In his seminal work,
The Division of Labor in Society,
Émile Durkheim observes that the division of labour appears in all societies and positively correlates with societal advancement, as it increases with societal progress. Durkheim arrived at the same conclusion regarding the positive effects of the division of labour as his theoretical predecessor,
Adam Smith. In
The Wealth of Nations, Smith observes that the division of labour results in "a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labor." While they shared this belief, Durkheim believed the division of labour applied to all "biological organisms generally"; Smith believed this law applied "only to human societies." This difference may result from the influence of
Charles Darwin's
On the Origin of Species on Durkheim's writings. As social solidarity cannot be directly quantified, Durkheim indirectly studies solidarity by "classify[ing] the different types of law to find...the different
types of social solidarity which correspond to it." •
criminal laws and their respective punishments as promoting
mechanical solidarity, a sense of unity resulting from individuals engaging in similar work who hold shared backgrounds, traditions, and values; and •
civil laws as promoting
organic solidarity, a society in which individuals engage in different kinds of work that benefit society and other individuals. Durkheim believes that
organic solidarity prevails in more advanced societies, while mechanical solidarity typifies less developed societies. He explains that in societies with more mechanical solidarity, the diversity and division of labour are much less, so individuals have a similar worldview. Similarly, Durkheim opines that in societies with more organic solidarity, the diversity of occupations is greater; individuals depend on each other more, resulting in greater benefits to society as a whole.
Ludwig von Mises Marx's theories, including his criticisms of the division of labour, have been criticised by the
Austrian economists, notably
Ludwig von Mises. The primary argument is that the economic gains from the division of labour far outweigh the costs, thereby supporting the thesis that it leads to cost efficiencies. It is argued that it is entirely possible to achieve balanced human development within
capitalism, and that
alienation is downplayed as mere romantic fiction. According to
Mises, the idea has given rise to the concept of
mechanisation, in which a specific task is performed by a mechanical device rather than by an individual labourer. This method of production is significantly more effective in both yield and
cost-effectiveness, and utilises the division of labour to the fullest extent possible.
Mises saw the very idea of a task being performed by a specialised mechanical device as being the greatest achievement of the division of labour.
Friedrich A. Hayek In "
The Use of Knowledge in Society",
Friedrich A. Hayek states: == Globalisation and global division of labour ==