Division of Labor and Manufacture

Marx divided the development of capitalism into three stages: simple co-operation, division of labor and manufacture, and modern mechanical industry, whereas division of labor and manufacture were the second stage of the development of capitalist productive forces and the product of the gradual implementation of specialized division of labor in workshops with a larger number of laborers. From the mid-16th century to the end of the 18th century, this form of capitalist industrial production, based on handicraft skill as well as division of labor and co-operation of wage-laborers, has been predominant among the forms of organization of industrial production in Europe.

The capitalist manufacture which assembled craftsmen in one single workshop to work together, at the same time, in one place (if you like, in the same field of labor), in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the command of one capitalist, shows that the relation of dependence of labor from capital is more intensified than the simple co-operation. This is a law that arose from the technical nature of manufacture. On the one hand, such division of labor made the form of labor independent, made workers become detail laborers, became increasingly one-sided in their skills, increased their dependence on the workshop, made them increasingly lose their autonomy and independence, thus alienated them into a monstrous shape; while increasing the productivity of labor, it has also increased the intensity of labor and strengthened the exploitation of labor by capital. On the other hand, the specialized division of labor and repetitive labor has undoubtedly increased the level of skills of workers’ labor, promoted the simplification and specialization of the instruments of production, and greatly reduced the unproductive consumption of labor by lessening the space by which the various phases of production are separated from each other, which led to a significant increase in productivity and provided the basis and the necessary conditions for the transition to modern mechanical industry.

Manufacture has two basic forms. The first is the heterogenous manufacture, i.e., craftsmen from different industries or with different skills are organized together, and each of them completes different parts of the production of the same article; the second is the organic manufacture or its perfected form, i.e., craftsmen from the same industry or with same skills concentrated together, and they complete a certain process in the production process of an article.

Manufacture was of great importance in the development of the capitalist form of industry. It was an indispensable intermediate link between arts and the petty commodity production with its primitive form of capital and the mechanical industry with its factory form. As a transitional stage from capitalist handicraft to modern capitalist mechanical industry, it created the conditions for the development of the latter.