‘The Division of Labour and Manufacture'

Nicholas Beech, a PhD student from University College London, will introduce a discussion on:

‘The Division of Labour and Manufacture'

Tuesday April 13th (NOTE New date! - Giving everyone extra time to read this section)
6pm
F-WB 2.80
Waterloo Campus KCL

"That co-operation which is based on division of labour, assumes its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic form of the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing period properly so called. That period, roughly speaking, extends from the middle of the 16th to the last third of the 18th century."

"The organisation of manufacture has two fundamental forms which, in spite of occasional blending, are essentially different in kind, and, moreover, play very distinct parts in the subsequent transformation of manufacture into modern industry carried on by machinery. This double character arises from the nature of the article produced. This article either results from the mere mechanical fitting together of partial products made independently, or owes its completed shape to a series of connected processes and manipulations."

"An increased number of labourers under the control of one capitalist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division of labour in manufacture makes this increase in the number of workmen a technical necessity."

"The knowledge, the judgement, and the will, which, though in ever so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman, in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the exercise of his personal cunning these faculties are now required only for the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them."

N.B. We will be reading chapters 14 for this session.

Facebook event at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49539959005&ref=ts#!/event.php?eid=375361080676&ref=mf