Samuel Bostaph wrote: >----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- >But the English common law was a legal "spontaneous order," as are all >common law systems. > >And, I don't understand Peter's deeming the division of labor in the pin >factory part of "a vast hierarchical command system." The division of labor >in any economy is an example of an absolute economic law--more can be >produced by employing the division of labor than can be produced in its >absence. It works in a command economy or a laissez faire market economy. > >Perhaps Peter could explain what he means by "command system." See Steven Marglin's "What do Bosses Do?" The misnamed division labor is not an efficient production technique, and any "efficiency" it gains is lost in the inefficiency of added management overhead. I call it misnamed because it is really the "specialization" and "de-skilling" of labor, which also means that labor losses any political and economic power. The division of labor simply means that one man is a carpenter and another a cobbler. In Smith's pin-factory, men who were pin-makers are now confined to a few simple tasks, or to one. Smith himself backtracked on this and recognized the problem in the second edition of the Wealth of Nations. Current trends in job design, by the way, abandon the specialization of labor in order to give wider scope and greater freedom to workers, thereby improving productivity while reducing management overhead. When our work is confined to one or two simple operations, then there is little opportunity for growth and development. Smith himself came to recognize this problem; in the second edition of his great work, he added the following qualification to his theory: "In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour� comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two� The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations� has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become."[1] This loss of innovative spirit leads to a third difficulty. As men cease to be �pin-makers� and become instead �wire-pullers� or �sharpeners� or one of the other eighteen jobs involved in the process, then knowledge of the process is lost among the workers. This means, in turn, that a new function is required, that of the professional manager. When men had knowledge of the whole process, then �management� was a minor consideration, and any one of the workers could, in theory, manage the process; management was a negligible expense. But with the loss of knowledge, management becomes the decisive factor and a huge overhead cost. Any gains in efficiency from the division of labor is lost to the need for increased management overhead. Smith placed a dichotomy between minute specialization and the crafting of each separate pin. But this is a false dichotomy; it was never a case of one person making one pin at a time versus a group of specialists making thousands. Rather, it is a question of the sequencing of the tasks, whether by a few craftsmen or by a group of specialists. The real efficiencies come from properly sequencing the tasks. Thus, a single craftsman who draws out all the wire for a batch at one time, then straightens the whole batch, then cuts the wire, etc., will achieve the same efficiencies as does the division of labor.[1] The division of labor succeeds not because of the specialization of jobs, but because it also sequences the tasks. This sequencing eliminates the set-up times between tasks, one of the three reasons that Smith claimed for the superiority of the division of labor. The other two were the dexterity that a worker acquires when doing a single task and the amount of innovation that specialized labor brings to the assembly line. The argument for the former is unconvincing; a craftsman becomes accomplished at the various tasks of his trade without being forced to specialize. As for the latter argument, innovation brought about by specialization, the opposite seems to be the case: specialization decreases innovation, as Smith himself came to recognize when he noted that the specialized worker loses the habit of innovation and becomes �as stupid� as it is possible for a human being to become.� A craftsman might, for example, notice that the pulling, straightening, and cutting of the wire might be combined, with a few mechanical changes, into one operation. The specialist either doesn't notice this, or if he does, he fears it because it means the elimination of two jobs. This is borne out by the history of industry in the 19th and 20th centuries, when workers opposed or even sabotaged machinery precisely because they perceived, often quite correctly, that such innovations were not in their best interests. Of course, there has been a great deal of innovation in industry, but it does not ordinarily arise from the division of labor. Rather, it depends on the fact that inventors are granted a monopoly for a period of time in the form of a patent.[2] Recognizing the true source of industrial efficiency gives us tremendous freedom in job design. The division of labor concentrates on separation and isolation, reducing the worker to a �cog� in the assembly line. It therefore loses most of the values that the worker can contribute, save for the value of his muscle-power. Thus it throws away one of the most important assets of a firm. The separation of tasks, on the other hand, allows us to design jobs that call for a greater development of the worker and hence for more productivity. Management overhead can be greatly reduced, and a workforce more knowledgeable about the process can contribute more in the way of innovations. The shop floor workers can be the authors of their own jobs. And with such �authorship� comes a kind of authority. We can begin, at this point, to see the outlines of possible solutions to the problem of low wages. In short, the "division of labor" is one of those "absolute economic laws" which turn out to be, upon inspection, absolute nonsense. [1] Ibid. [1] Stephen A. Marglin, "What Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production," The Review of Radical Political Economics 6, no. 2 (1974): 70. [2] Ibid.: 90. Monopolies are not necessarily the best way to ensure the flow of inventions. As Stephen Marglin notes, �An invention, like knowledge generally, is a �public good�: the use of an idea by one person does not reduce the stock of knowledge in the way that consumption of a loaf of bread reduces the stock of wheat. It is well understood that public goods cannot be efficiently distributed through the market mechanism; so patents cannot be defended on efficiency grounds.� Two counter-examples to patents suffice to make the point. For the first, recall the revival of agriculture in the 9th and 10th centuries, a revival which depended on an explosion of innovation, none of which was patented and all of which were freely shared. But the wealth of the high Middle Ages and the expansion of trade and urban life depended on these innovations. A second example comes from our own time with the success of open systems software, such as Linux, where nobody has an exclusive right and any improvements to the system must be offered free of charge. John C. Medaille