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- Since the capitalistic mode of production aims at profit making it uses gigantic machine for large scale production. The joy of creating something by using small handmade tools, of which the worker is forced to be deprived of. The workers lost his identity before the gigantic machine. And moreover, with the division of labour a worker makes a part of some commodity sometimes he does not know what he is making and what for his work is meant for. He never sees the final product of his labour This is also one shorts of ‘dehumanization’ according to Marx.
- The very social structure, which presupposes hierarchy, defies the dignity (specifically the worker class). The workers who produced every thing to meet the requirement of the society are always forced to be at the bottom df hierarchy. Their requirements as an individual is never met.
- So the very structure of hierarchy that one class produces and other class consumes without doing any work is worst from of dehumanization.
- It is not something that is called his spontaneous activity rather it is something forced. ‘Division of Labour’ as well as ‘Private Property’ is two basic causes, which give rise to alienation. Marx has discussed that division of labour is also directly responsible for the moral impoverishment and degradation of the individual man.
- Labour turns into division of labour, which finally separates man from himself. There is a traditional belief that in every society division of labour exist. Whatever may be its form, division of labour has a cramping on the blossoming of individuality. Development of human history shows the division of labour is an important factor.
- The basic consequences of these factors are, Firstly, irrespective of their interests and abilities individuals are forced to enter into different branches of production where work is distributed in various ways. Secondly a sharp social division takes place between physical and mental, between meter and the worker, ruler and the ruled etc. In the division of labour people are circumscribed to do one kind of work. For the requirement of their basic needs they depend on others.
- Thus, division of labour is a social expression, which shows the alienated state of man from its products. In a capitalistic society, the division of labour is much worse because it forces the worker to depend on a particular one-sided machine i.e. labour. Division of labour increases the productive power of the labour but at the sometime it impoverishes the worker and reduces him to a machine.
- Marx has also talked of another kind of division which is knows as manufacturing division of labour where he has talked about modes capitalism. According to this division the capitalist gives a particular job to every labourer which the organization ~f industry demands. Here the labourer is confronted with, the “intellectual potencies of the material process of production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power. As a consequence he is transformed into the ‘property of capital”.
- Intelligence in production develops in one branch of industry and is crippled in another. This separation between different powers of the labourer and the world of production and his self is artificially bridged over in the capitalist system.. They are no more human beings capable of realising their freedom.
- According to Marx, the division of labour in a capitalistic society does not arise from natural and racial differences but it is created by the economic system. Due to this division society is fragmented and a division takes place between capitalists, lawyers, teachers, students, soldiers, and workers etc. Divisions of labour lead to the detailing of women on the one hand and child labour on the other hand by the capitalists. It also leads to a depreciation of worker’s labour power.
- Capitalism thus transforms machinery into a devil which devours and sucks the blood of working millions.” This again leads to physical detoriation of the worker, which in the long run creates intentional starving and poisoning of the children. Marx has quoted an extract from the report of the Barker, the factory inspector: Happy indeed, happy indeed will it be for the manufacturing districts of England, when every married women having a family is prohibited from working in any textile works at all.”
- Marx said division of labour is directly responsible for the moral impoverishment and degradation of the individual man.’ It is a convenient and useful means a skillful deployment of human powers for social wealth.
- Marx speak of the extreme significance of the division of labour since he finds in it ‘the perceptibly alienated expression of human activity and of essential human power’ as a species activity and power.” “It is the expression of social character of labour within the framework of estrangement.”
- Taking into consideration how division of labour leads to alienation Marx writes: “The division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remain in natural society … as long as their activity is not voluntary but naturally divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him …. For as soon as labour is distributed each man has a particular sphere of activity, which is forced’ upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisher man, a shepherd or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to loose his livelihood … “
- Division of labour is the primary force that drives the process of wealth production. It is based on the human propensity to exchange and barter the human talents, conditioned by the use of reason and speech etc .. Marx criticizes this exchange of human faculties as being motivated by self interest & egoistic tendencies. He explains the diversity of talents as a product of division of labour rather than the cause of it. It is carried on without any consideration of the talents of inpividuals and the interests of the whole. It takes place entirely according to the laws of capitalistic economy.
- Marx said division of labour is the basis, which gives rice to the growth of private property increased in production gives rice to private property, creates all shorts of disturbances inside the society. It make the life of the poopers miserable. The growth of private property bridges a gap between to argosies class and proletariat class.
- The more the private property, the more the workers suffer. Marx wrote: “Private property has made us so stupid and one sided that an object only ours when we have it exists for us as capital or when it is directly possessed earen, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., in short, when it is used by us.
