Why and How Do Capitalists Divide Labour? From Marglin and Back again through Babbage and Marx

Abstract

Nearly four decades ago, Stephen Marglin explored the origins of hierarchy in capitalist production with a divide and conquer hypothesis based on the idea that the monopolisation of knowledge about production technology plays a major role in explaining how workers are deprived of control over the labour process. Nevertheless, this explanation has some shortcomings that Marx and Babbage had avoided. Those two authors provided a highly accurate and convincing interpretation of the division of labour that remains relevant. The present paper proposes a general synthesis of their analysis. Two points are emphasised: (1) the division of labour plays a major role in wage determination; and (2) the division of labour largely determines the form of subjection of labour to capital.

Acknowledgment

This paper has benefited from the very helpful comments of Ben Fine, Alice Martin, Jérôme Maucourant, David Spencer, Nadine Thèvenot and Carlo Vercellone on an earlier draft. The critical and constructive comments of an anonymous referee helped to improve substantially the final version.

Notes

¹Spencer adds: ‘If contemporary trends towards precarious employment and intensified labour are not to be accepted as “necessary evils” but instead understood in their specific connection with capitalist production, then the position of “critique” must once again take precedence in labour process analysis.’

²For an overview and assessment of Marglin's contribution to radical political economy during the 1970s, see Tinel (2004).

³See Groenewegen (1977) for an assessment of Smith on the division of labour.

⁴Marglin's ambivalence between the Marxian argument based on property in the means of production, on the one hand, and the knowledge argument, on the other, is starkly evident in his story of the sandal maker: ‘I know a man who was for a time a sandal maker. To learn the trade, he went to work for a “master” sandal maker. This worthy systematically taught him all there was to know about making sandals—except how to buy leather. My friend could have learned this vital aspect of the trade on his own by the familiar and time-honored method of trial and error—if he had had $1000 or so to set aside for the mistakes inherent in the learning process. Lacking the capital, his boss's unwillingness to share one particular skill effectively obliged him to remain a worker as long as he remained in the trade’ (Marglin, 1974, p. 72).

⁵Babbage (1832, p. 113) notes that, in addition to its affect on wages, the minute division of labour also reduces waste of raw material: ‘if each man commit this waste [of raw material] in acquiring successively every process, the quantity of waste will be much greater than if each person confine his attention to one process; … therefore, the division of labour will diminish the price of production.’

⁶It is striking to see how authors who advocate the ‘Smith-Marshall-Young’ model, such as Lavezzi (2003) and Rima (2004), thoroughly ignore the logical shortcomings raised by critics such as Babbage and Marglin.

⁷The draft entitled ‘Chapter 6. Results of the Direct Production Process’ was probably written in 1864. Marx had apparently intended at one point to include it in Capital Volume I, but in the end he set the argument aside. This manuscript remained unpublished until the 1960s, when portions of it appeared in Italian and French.

⁸As used here, the word has nothing to do with any normative idea of common good or common interest; it merely designates the collaborative nature of production. For a critical discussion of Marx's notion of cooperation, see Lazonick (1990, pp. 58–67).

⁹For Marx, the term ‘subjective’ refers to human beings and the term ‘objective’ to things.

¹⁰The literature on labour market segmentation is huge and cannot be examined here; for an overview see Fine (1998).