Editing Division of labour (section)

=== Adam Smith ===
[[File:Adam Smith The Muir portrait.jpg|thumb|Adam Smith portrait]]

In the first sentence of ''[[The Wealth of Nations|An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations]]'' (1776), [[Adam Smith]] foresaw the essence of industrialism by determining that division of labour represents a substantial increase in productivity. Like du Monceau, his example was the making of pins.

Unlike [[Plato]], Smith famously argued that the difference between a street porter and a philosopher was as much a consequence of the division of labour as its cause. Therefore, while for Plato the level of specialisation determined by the division of labour was externally determined, for Smith it was the dynamic engine of economic progress. However, in a further chapter of the same book, Smith criticised the division of labour, saying that it makes man "as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become" and that it can lead to "the almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people.…unless government takes some pains to prevent it."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Adam |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HTy_yAEACAAJ |title=An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations |date=1976 |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |isbn=978-0-226-76374-3 |editor-last=Cannan |editor-first=Edwin |edition= |volume= |publication-place=Chicago |pages=ii.302–303 |language=en |quote=In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. |orig-date=1904}}{{Comment|Curiously, this edition's Index carries no reference to this instance of usage of the phrase 'division of labour.'}}</ref> The contradiction has led to some debate over Smith's opinion of the division of labour.<ref>{{cite web|last=Rothbard|first=Murray|title=The Celebrated Adam Smith|url=https://mises.org/page/1430|website=An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought|publisher=Mises Institute|access-date=2012-05-05|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120612015921/http://mises.org/page/1430|archive-date=12 June 2012}}</ref> [[Alexis de Tocqueville]] agreed with Smith: "Nothing tends to materialize man, and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind, more than extreme division of labor."<ref>{{cite book |last= Tocqueville |first= Alexis de |year= 1841 |title= Democracy in America: Volume I |location= New York, NY |publisher= J.&nbsp;& H.&nbsp;G. Langley |page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=s0MWjdGhJyoC&pg=PA460&dq=%22nothing+tends+to%22 460] }}</ref> [[Adam Ferguson]] shared similar views to Smith, though was generally more negative.<ref>{{Cite journal |last= Hill |first= Lisa |year= 2004 |title= Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labor |url= http://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/Others/Hill.pdf |access-date= 1 July 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130728014052/http://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/Others/Hill.pdf |archive-date= 28 July 2013 |url-status= dead}}</ref>

The specialisation and concentration of the workers on their single [[subtasks]] often leads to greater skill and greater productivity on their particular subtasks than would be achieved by the same number of workers each carrying out the original broad task, in part due to increased quality of production, but more importantly because of increased efficiency of production, leading to a higher nominal output of units produced per time unit.<ref>{{cite book |last1=O'Rourke |first1=P.J. |title=On the Wealth of Nations |date=2008 |publisher=Atlantic Books |location=London |isbn=9781843543893 |url=https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/on-the-wealth-of-nations-3/}}</ref> Smith uses the example of a production capability of an individual pin maker compared to a manufacturing business that employed 10 men:<ref>{{Cite web|title=An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#chap36|access-date=2020-04-22|website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref><blockquote>One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day.</blockquote>Smith saw the importance of matching skills with equipment—usually in the context of an [[organization|organisation]]. For example, pin makers were organised with one making the head, another the body, each using different equipment. Similarly, he emphasised a large number of skills, used in cooperation and with suitable equipment, were required to build a ship.

In modern economic discussion, the term ''[[human capital]]'' would be used. Smith's insight suggests that the huge increases in productivity obtainable from [[technology]] or technological progress are possible because human and physical capital are matched, usually in an organisation. See also a short discussion of Adam Smith's theory in the context of [[Pin Factory|business processes]]. [[Charles Babbage|Babbage]] wrote a seminal work "On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures" analysing perhaps for the first time the division of labour in factories.<ref>{{cite web|last=Rosenberg|first=Nathan|title=Babbage: pioneer economist by Nathan Rosenberg|url=http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/babbage/rosenb.html|access-date=28 March 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304053748/http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/babbage/rosenb.html|archive-date=4 March 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>