The Division of Labour

Marx's account: the division of labour develops with the forms of property, and its detailed form under capitalism serves the extraction of surplus by making the worker a fragment of a process they do not control.

The social consequences

MU names this expressly as a topic, so the answer must be organised rather than impressionistic. Give the gains and the costs.

The gains

1. Productivity, and therefore the material surplus on which everything else rests.
2. Interdependence, which is the most important sociological consequence: specialists cannot survive alone, so specialisation binds people together. This is the whole of Durkheim's argument.
3. Skill and expertise, since concentrated practice produces competence that a generalist cannot reach.
4. Social differentiation, the emergence of distinct occupational groups with their own cultures, which enriches a society.
5. The growth of institutions. Specialisation produced the specialist institutions of Module I: separate economic, educational, medical, religious and legal institutions exist because the work was divided.
6. The professions and the possibility of formal law. A society without a division of labour has no full-time lawyers, judges or officials, so it can have custom but not a developed legal system. The legal profession itself is a product of the division of labour, which is worth saying in an answer on this topic.

The costs

1. Alienation, treated in [Work and Alienation].
2. Deskilling, treated in [The Economic System, Work and Occupation].
3. Inequality. Occupations are unequally rewarded and unequally esteemed, so the division of labour generates stratification.
4. Dependence and vulnerability. A specialist whose speciality disappears has nothing to fall back on, which is why technological change is felt as a threat.
5. Narrowness. Adam Smith himself observed that a man whose whole life is spent on a few simple operations becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human creature to become, and it is worth noting that the classic advocate of the division of labour saw the cost clearly.
6. The pathological forms, which is Durkheim's contribution.

Durkheim's abnormal forms

Durkheim held that the division of labour normally produces solidarity, and identified the conditions in which it does not. These are examinable and often omitted.

The anomic division of labour, where the specialised parts are not adequately regulated and their relations are not settled, so that conflict rather than cooperation results. Industrial conflict was his example.

The forced division of labour, where positions are allotted not by ability and inclination but by inherited advantage or constraint, so that people are held in tasks they did not choose. The forced division of labour is the concept that speaks most directly to caste, and to any society where birth decides occupation, and a student who links the two writes a strong answer.

The poorly coordinated division, where the work is specialised but the parts are not properly integrated, so effort is wasted.

Durkheim's remedy for the first two is not less specialisation but regulation: occupational associations, and rules governing the relations between the specialised parts. That is a direct argument for labour law, professional regulation and the machinery of industrial relations, and it is the point at which this chapter meets a law student's own subject.

Durkheim's conclusion, in one paragraph

The division of labour changes the basis on which a society holds together. Where people are alike and do the same work, they are bound by their likeness and by a strong common morality, which Durkheim called mechanical solidarity, and law is chiefly repressive, punishing offences against the shared conscience. Where labour is divided, people are unlike and are bound by their need for one another, which is organic solidarity, and law becomes chiefly restitutive, restoring relations rather than punishing. The whole argument, with its evidence and its critics, is in [Durkheim: Division of Labour and Social Solidarity].

A worked example

In a village where every household farmed and made most of what it used, a dispute about a boundary was settled by elders who knew both parties, knew the land, and had no speciality in settling disputes. The settlement restored the relationship, because the parties had to go on living together.

In a city where labour is fully divided, the same dispute is handled by an advocate, who is a specialist; before a judge, who is another; on a record prepared by a clerk; under rules drafted by a legislature; enforced by a bailiff. Nobody in the process knows the parties, and the parties need not deal with each other again.

Both features follow from the division of labour, and both are gains and losses at once. The specialised system is more expert, more consistent and more impartial. It is also slower, more expensive, and unable to restore a relationship, because nobody involved has any interest in the relationship continuing. A student who can state that trade-off has understood why dispute resolution outside the courts keeps being invented, and it connects Module I directly to the alternative dispute resolution a law course covers elsewhere.

Quick revision

1. The division of labour is the differentiation of a society's work into distinct tasks performed by different people. Forms: by sex, by age, simple or social, complex or detailed, territorial, and in India by caste.
2. Adam Smith: specialisation raises output; the pin factory; limited by the extent of the market. He also saw its cost to the worker.
3. Durkheim: it grows with material and moral density, and is the peaceful resolution of competition.
4. Gains: productivity, interdependence, skill, differentiation, specialist institutions, and the possibility of a legal profession and a developed legal system.
5. Costs: alienation, deskilling, inequality, vulnerability, narrowness.
6. Durkheim's abnormal forms: the anomic (unregulated), the forced (positions allotted by birth or constraint, which is caste), and the poorly coordinated. His remedy is regulation, not less specialisation.
7. In India the division of labour is also a division of labourers, because caste fixes the person to the task.

Test yourself

1. Define the division of labour and give its main forms. The differentiation of a society's total work into distinct tasks and occupations allotted to different persons, so that each performs a part and all depend on the others. Its forms are by sex and by age, found in every society; the simple or social division into distinct occupations; the complex or detailed division of a single occupation into separate operations, which industry brought; the territorial division between regions and countries; and, in India, division by caste.

2. How did Durkheim explain the growth of the division of labour? By the increase of material and moral density, that is the number of people in contact and the intensity of their interaction. As population grows and contact intensifies, competition for the same resources rises, and specialisation is the peaceful resolution of that competition, since people occupy different niches instead of contending for one. On this account the division of labour is a response to competition and not merely a device for raising output.

3. State the social consequences of the division of labour. Gains: higher productivity and the surplus that rests on it; interdependence, which binds specialists to one another and becomes the basis of solidarity; expertise; the emergence of distinct occupational groups and specialist institutions, including the legal profession and a developed legal system. Costs: alienation of the worker from the work; deskilling; inequality, since occupations are unequally rewarded and esteemed; vulnerability when a speciality disappears; and narrowness of the specialised worker.

4. What are Durkheim's abnormal forms of the division of labour? The anomic form, where relations between the specialised parts are inadequately regulated so that conflict rather than cooperation results, industrial conflict being his example; the forced form, where positions are allotted by inherited advantage or constraint rather than by ability and inclination, which describes a caste order precisely; and the poorly coordinated form, where the parts are specialised but not properly integrated. His remedy is regulation through occupational associations and rules, not a return to less specialisation.

5. Why does a developed legal system presuppose a division of labour? Because full-time judges, advocates, legislators, officials and enforcement agencies can exist only where a society produces enough surplus to support people who do not produce their own subsistence, and where work has been differentiated far enough for dispute settlement to become a separate occupation. A society without a division of labour can have custom and elders who settle quarrels alongside their ordinary work, but not a specialised legal profession or a standing machinery of adjudication.