Labor Avoidance by Huer Jon;

Author:Huer, Jon;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Hamilton Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

I. The differences between Smith’s idea of “Division of Labor” and the modern method of “specialization”:

Division of Labor is a method of dividing up a work process—famously used in illustrating a pin-manufacturing factory—which divides up the processes into specific parts so that the person who does one part repeatedly increases his skill and efficiency. The end-result is that the skilled person, by repetition of the same process over and over, becomes extremely proficient and productive. This process is assumed to be based on equality, cooperation, productivity of each individual, where higher stock created by this divided work processes would benefit all members and their nation. Division of labor is central to all rational methods of efficiency and productivity practiced among all animals, including the earlier members of humanity while still living in nature; there men became hunters and women gatherers, to take advantage of their division of labor for greater efficiency and productivity. This repeated-work process was justified in the sense that it was voluntarily and freely conducted among fully-empowered human beings of equal power and cooperation, not as slaves or as employees, working entirely for someone else’s profit, which is “specialization” in our own time.

Specialization, on the other hand, is today’s assembly-line concept that completely disregards the human being: He is a hired hand, bought and sold as commodity, his dignity or respect associated with his labor wholly taken away from him. The increased efficiency and higher productivity merely add greater wealth and power to the owner, but not the laborer. As the man sits in his designated spot and repeats the motion, he is no different from machines turned on or off or animals that pull the grindstone. This dehumanized labor is the cause of one of our modern times’ greatest diseases—alienation—a human being separated from his essence as a human being, now turned into a non-human labor-unit, machine or animal. All this specialized labor is for the sole purpose of increasing profit for the owner. Indeed, a horrifying concept to Adam Smith, or anyone of his generation.

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