The Division of Labor

Essay # 64018

History
Labor Studies
Political Science

An essay on the concept of the division of labor from both a theoretical and practical perspective.

1,392 words () | 4 sources | APA | 2005 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper explains what the concept of the division of labor means in terms of its theoretical and practical applications in an industrialized, capitalist society. The paper further explains that such a division of labor makes it impossible to separate an industry fully along the lines of internal divisions of labor, mechanistic and human, from the society which surrounds it.

From the Paper:

"It is often the case that a generalized term is often known both by its theoretical and its practical applications, but it sometimes happens that such a term is also known to cover different practical effects when dealing with two different sets of circumstances. When talking about labor and capital, especially the industrialized, mechanistic labor inherent to capitalism, differentiations of application are often made along the lines of human beings and machines, or human beings and the mechanistic work that they are taking part in. The division of labor is mainly thought of by scholars and thinkers as being the whole of two distinct sums: that of the actual mechanized process of separating
and dissociating work as individual parts that lead to a complete whole and that of the effect on the human beings taking part in the dissociated work, in which each person plays an integral, if incomplete, role in the manufacture of a product. "...In one form or another the division of labor has remained the fundamental principle of industrial organization" (Braverman 69). It is a very significant concept concerning both a process and the effects of the process on the workers involved."