I think I found the missing link that explains a lot, thanks to Ludwig Von Mises.
Was interested in getting the Canadian intellectuals’ takes on it.
I think I found the missing link that explains a lot, thanks to Ludwig Von Mises.
Was interested in getting the Canadian intellectuals’ takes on it.
My antidote for the lefty claim of everybody being equal…..
….just get in the ring with Mike Tyson…
I got about 100 words in before my eyes crossed at the stupidity.
First of all, the % of parents who raise their kids without gender is what? .00001% of the population? Verses, say, the percentage of the population who buys their daughter a truck if she wants one, or their son a doll, which might be higher, and is perfectly normal despite what you panty-poopers might think.
And no. The vast, vast majority of the left does not want your money. They simply want a mild form of socialism (infrastructure such as highways, emergency services, education, universal healthcare, a social safety net, and support for those things which further our country’s cultural values), BUT they are themselves primarily capitalists.
Again, everything appears radically left to you guys, because you are so far to the right. Even rightwing centrists appear to be leftwing loons to you. This is your problem, not society’s.
Captain,
Marx, although psychologically undereducated, made a careful and correct observation about division of labor, that worker then becomes “depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine”.
Did you ever try to perform one simple manufacturing operation for 8 hours straight? The Chinese sewing machine operators can set or bartack jean pockets at amazing speed and accuracy, but they can’t do anything else. I employed a dozen. As soon as they made a few bucks, they sent their children to Canada and put them into IT major at college. Apparently they don’t want their children to inherit the trade.
Marx was right, menial labor is demeaning. At least the theorists of marxism attempted to develop mechanisms to alleviate demeaning menial labor by involving proletariat in other means of expression. Of course, socialist society never had enough resources nor attention span to follow through as it struggled to maintain minimal productivity. Capitalist society self-regulates natural pursuit of expression by rewarding higher performing individuals with cash, even though it does not have infrastructure devised for that purpose.
Marx’s error was taking current situation for a model instead of waiting patiently, allowing society to mold itself. He was basically an impatient maximalist, who pumped out Das Kapital on a minute’s urge. But he was right in his particular observation regarding division of labor.
Even though John would consider me uber-ultra-right, I mostly agree with his assessment, unfortunately for you, Captain. Stick with economics, where you excel, and leave philosophical and psychological research for the more professional.
Wow, sure are a lot of parrots here.
Good thing Sweden is .000001% of the population. Sheesh.
Good theory. From my personal observations I don’t think the left hate the individual per se. I think people have to realize that first and foremost the left are dogmatic statists. They want the omnipotent state to intercede in our lives to make us (the individual) do what they want.
In that regard the left HATE anything or anyone who stands between the state and the individual – things, people and institutions that guard the individual from the power/thuggery of the state – individual rights (not collective or group rights) the church. the family, conservative-libertarian ideals, demand economics, obedience to a god or religion, the means of self defense, self reliance and self interest etc.
We see daily the seething hatred the left has of these bulwarks that shelter the individual from the despotic reflexes of the leftist state.
It boils down to the fact that most on the “left” value equality over liberty and are willing to trade one for the other. Most on the “right” value liberty over all.
Hell I’d go as far as to say that many of the “left” are not only willing to trade away their own liberty for some egalitarian pipe-dream but are just as happy with trading away other people’s liberty as a means to the same end. The left’s economic game plan is also virtually indistinguishable from their social agenda. One fail fits all.
There are, actually, quite sensible and rational reasons for eschewing the division of labour. However, not a one has anything to do with economics, where Smith’s pin factory is both the beginning and end of the argument. The economic benefits are irrefutable.
But one might study, for example, Mr. C. Chaplin’s “Modern Times” or read some of Macluhan to understand that there are also costs to division of labour. They are both psychic and societal, and they still exist today.
Yeoman farmer, c. 1825 (i.e. almost all of us, since about 90% of the world’s population worked in agriculture at the time) was farmer and animal husbander, smith and carpenter. His wife was baker and cook, mender of clothes, tender of the sick. They saw each day, each harvest, each cycle, their place in the world; they were, for lack of a better word, “whole”. Their day began with the rising of the sun, and it ended with the setting. The only summons they answered to was the church bell on Sunday.
Come the mills and machine shops and coal mines of the Industrial Revolution, and much changes for yeoman farmer’s son. He now answers to a bell or a whistle, which tells him when to start work, when to stop, when to eat, when to go home. He no longer sees the fullness of a job; he sees only his task. He is no longer connected to the seasons, for the timing and pacing of his work doesn’t depend on the weather. As the Captain noted above, I can’t claim originality of these thoughts; some group of poets (Wordsworth? Byron? who were those guys) beat me to it. But “Industrial Man”, as Macluhan tagged him, was different from the agricultural man who came before.
The paradox of division of labour is that it requires so LITTLE of a man, in terms of thought or effort, yet it produces so MUCH MORE than the whole man could on his own. (Smith, again) Any one who has worked for two minutes on a farm knows how much physical effort is involved; there is mental effort as well. Yet, particularly in the early days of the IR, the jobs were designed to be as simple and mind-numbingly repetitive as possible. Little was required of the worker other than eyes, ears, and hands, and not much of those. And that had effects.
As an example, one was the increase in drinking. Farmers couldn’t afford to get drunk every night, regardless of how much ale they had on hand. The physical stress of the work wouldn’t let them. Our new factory worker, however, had both the money to buy drink and freedom from harsh physical labour; he could show up hungover day after day, and so long as he didn’t get his fingers caught in the press, keep his job. Note that there were no Temperance Unions in the 1700’s. (BTW, I’m not at all against drinking; I’m using this as an example of a societal change.)
Macluhan noted that this disaffected Industrial Man was forever searching for some integrating and unifying “role”. The reason so many TV shows feature cops, doctors, lawyers, etc. is that those people have roles in our society, which most of us are denied. I’ve yet to see a top ten show about accountants or plant supervisors.
So, while I am grateful for the immense wealth the division of labour has created for all of us, I’m also cognizant of its costs. Western society was great for a few years after WWII because all had found a role – defeat fascism – to live for, and that spirit carried on to the post-war period. But, as the boomers who had never known rationing or privation grew up, that unifying spirit vanished. Combined with the immense splintering of media offered through the generations of telecom advances, we have become more and more a nation (a Western world, actually) of smaller and smaller tribes.
It is of course interesting that the great threat to the West is Islam, because Islam offers a role (the demeaning, to me, one of supplicant and pawn – “It is allah’s will!” – to something else) to the disaffected. Whether we in the West will rediscover a role that allows us counter Islam’s shallow appeal remains to be seen.
Hurt feelings, Rush has touched on this topic in his mini rants… I think you’re onto it as well Capt.
Leftism is a mental disorder, period.
John reading what you wrote, I think your dead wrong and the left needs to start owning up for whats went missing in our cultural values (that actually built this country)…. if your from Ontario and wrote that tripe you should be darned well ashamed of yourself.
If not your only mildly full of it.
John’s comment is interesting.
The Captain elucidates a central tenet of Marxism, that being the “Tabula Rasa”, the idea that human beings are born a blank slate upon which anything may be written. According to Marx, all that is needful for society to thrive is that the proper things be written upon the individuals composing society.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Obviously the best way to make things nice for everyone is to ensure abilities are all the same and needs are all the same.
The Captain merely reports the fact of this tenet of Marxism. John seems to be unable to tolerate the mere mention.
John said: “The vast, vast majority of the left does not want your money. They simply want a mild form of socialism (infrastructure such as highways, emergency services, education, universal healthcare, a social safety net, and support for those things which further our country’s cultural values).”
What cultural values would those be, John? The ones where people are entitled to get something for nothing just by virtue of drawing breath? Or the ones that hold success must be punished with taxation?
Or is it the one that says 50% of the average income is not enough to give to support our glorious nation? 75% sounds better, eh John?
By the way John, there is one thing I’d like to draw to your attention. Universal Healthcare is not a cultural value of Canadians. Universal Healthcare is actually indentured servitude.
Health care is not magic fairy dust John. It is a SERVICE. Provided by -people-. It is knowledge and ability which I have that you don’t. It is skills I have worked extremely hard to develop, by which I earned my living.
Notice the past tense, John.
If I cannot chose who I shall sell my services to, and what price I shall charge, I am not a free man. I am an indentured servant of the state.
I choose to be free rather than indentured, John. There is no price at which you may buy my services as a physical therapist, should you need them. I will cheerfully stand by, hands in pockets. It just isn’t worth it to me. Too bad, so sad. Maybe the 98 pound girl who scraped by with a C+ can fix your limp,I’m not available.
So you might want to rethink your position before a whole lot of other health care workers decide as I have. The numbers grow every day.
You see John, there really are some things that one man can do which another man cannot. Heart surgeons are rare because not many people have the mix of natural ability, intelligence and drive that makes a successful heart surgeon. There are easier jobs those guys could be doing that pay a lot more. Lately they are quitting the doctor biz and seeking the greener pastures.
Don’t get sick, John.
And no. The vast, vast majority of the left does not want your money. They simply want a mild form of socialism (infrastructure such as highways, emergency services, education, universal healthcare, a social safety net, and support for those things which further our country’s cultural values), BUT they are themselves primarily capitalists.
John, I have some serious problems with this statement. First, you’re confusing basic needs of a society with socialism. Second, I would wholeheartedly disagree with your statement that the vast majority of the left doesn’t want other people’s money. They DO want universal health care and a social safety net, as you say, but they don’t want to pay for it themselves. They want people who are wealthier than themselves to pay for it. And they want big corporations to pay for it. But they never want to pay for something themselves. One only needs to look at the positions unions take at every round of negotiations. If there’s a money shortage, raise corporate taxes. Or tax the rich. But no way in hell can you claw back pay rates, benefits, or pensions.
454moby said: “Marx was right, menial labor is demeaning.”
No, menial labor is the doing of a job that needs to be done. Somebody has to sweep up, somebody has to clean the toilet.
Work harder so you don’t have to be that guy. Moby.
Hey John and 454guy, is it still “a mild form of socialism” when tax freedom day is mid-June? I’m asking a serious question. What level of taxation would be considered non-mild?
Everyone the same … except, of course, for the elite the ones who get the nifty dachas. It’s just feudalism all over again.
Marx was right, menial labor is demeaning.
Getting paid to do nothing; now that’s demeaning. (Many look-busy-do-nothing bureaucrats will secretly agree.)
> No, menial labor is the doing of a job that needs to be done
I need some boxes sealed at $1.5/hour. There are 16000 boxes to seal with tape. Get on with it now.
Phantom and Peter – excellent comments and response to John’s post.
John, the left aren’t capitalist; and the social services you outline are not socialist agendas but civic or communal. The left are primarily government workers or unionized and have withdrawn from the preservation of competition and a free market. That means they are NOT capitalist.
KevinB, well, I’m not a fan of McLuhan (can’t stand him actually) and division of labour is a natural aspect of increased production.
The natural divisions of labour are first, by age and gender. In some areas, there will be a division by family or clan and these rights are jealously guarded.
Then, we get a division by skill, as technology advanced where one had to remove oneself from economic production for some years to learn that skill. These skills would include literacy, medical, and technological skills such as engineering, shipbuilding, navigation, chemistry, botany etc.
An economy that operates by specialized skills can produce more than a low-skilled unspecialized economy and, as the world populations grew, this higher production was required.
Therefore, the division of labour requires a great deal, rather than ‘so little’ of man. It requires learning and performing a specialized skill. This includes accounting!
Your outline of factory production is not a description of the division of labour but of factory production, where the work required is not a skill but a mechanical action. I think it’s simplistic to say that this led to problems with alcohol.
I’d also disagree with your (McLuhan’s)assessment that the industrial division of labour hinders finding a ‘unifying role’. This suggestion that the individual skilled man needs to be part of a larger community is readily met by family, by company, by society, by religion and so on.
As for Islam’s spread, it works side by side with the socialist utopian focus on the rejection of individual responsibility and a reliance on social engineering, ie, a central all powerful government to provide; ie, it’s enslavement.
454 guy…
Did you want 1 box sealed per hour?
Did you want 10 boxes sealed per hour?
Did you want 3 boxes sealed per minute?
cause I think all the folks ready to seal boxes at the slower rates and corresponding pay scale you’re offering, are already employed.
That’s how capitalism works, the other side of capitalism, when it isn’t being knee-capped by the government.
🙂
pretendgunmoby said: “I need some boxes sealed at $1.5/hour.”
Nice straw man. Pick that up at Home Depot there, Moby?
I’ve done that job, incidentally. Sealing boxes. Also cleaning bathrooms, doing security guard, painting, and even shoveling dirt from one place to another. Doesn’t seem to have demeaned me in any way I can see, and the money I made in those days means than now I don’t have to do those jobs any more.
Excellent observation Captain! Marx was a philosopher, John; Lenin (the person mentioned in The Captain’s article) was a murdering, insecure, mini man common thug who lived off his Dad’s (and foreign fool’s) money in exile (mostly Switzerland) for years, reading hate and inflaming class/racial hatred in others. Lenin was not a peasant, Lenin had no respect for poor people but he knew how to use poor people to punish rich or successful people that Lenin resented and envied. Lenin was a terrorist, Marx was a fool; both denied individuality because neither saw themselves as a member of humanity. If they and others of their ilk acknowledged their own mortality and failures they would worship God instead of the RED guy in hell by honoring the spirit of the individual, the soul of a person and they would stop looting the assets of human beings: be those assets big or small, intellectual or economic.
ET said, “As for Islam’s spread, it works side by side with the socialist utopian focus on the rejection of individual responsibility and a reliance on social engineering, ie, a central all powerful government to provide; ie, it’s enslavement.”
This is the crux of the matter and I might add “freedom of the individual” to what both Islam and socialists reject.
Furthermore, these reasons are also why they are in coalition to destroy liberal democracy and capitalism.
ET said – “John, the left aren’t capitalist; and the social services you outline are not socialist agendas but civic or communal.”
This is their new favorite strawman – the existence of roads proves that communism is the way forward. I think they got it off Elizabeth Warren (Indian name: Disappears In Snow).
454guy said – “Chinese sewing machine operators(send) their children to Canada and put them into IT major at college.”
Presumably so that they can become IT technologists. That would be the form of labour in which they specialize.
Captain said – “How can you take this man seriously, let alone when he purports to be an economist BUT IS AGAINST THE DIVISION OF LABOR????”
Reminds me of this: ‘MIT economist Paul Samuelson: “Marx was wrong about many things…but that does not diminish his stature as an important economist.”‘
‘PJ O’Rourke: “Well, what would? If Marx was wrong about many things and screwed the baby-sitter?”‘
Furthermore, these reasons are also why they are in coalition to destroy liberal democracy and capitalism…….
Komrade, what would a professional, lifetime, socialist sponger like yourself know about liberal democracy, other than the quickest way to get your snout in the swill?
454guy,What kind of an employer would you be to offer $1.50 per hour for anything in this day and age? Sounds like you are an offspring of the robber barons of yester year and still living off of their money.
Karl Marx was nothing but the most successful false prophet since Muhammad, promising the gullible the dominion of all the nations of the world if they would bow down and worship him.
Don’t laugh too loud at O’Rourke’s joke, Black Mamba—Karl Marx most certainly did rape the help. The maid Marx’s wife brought with her from her father’s household gave Marx a bastard son. Marx refused to acknowledge the child and the maid was forced to give the child away to an English family—though in doing so she might have done the child a service. None of Marx’s legitimate sons survived childhood.
I hope to learn from the good Lord, if it please him to let me enter His kingdom, why he suffered Marx himself to survive childhood, and didn’t put it into the heart of a wet-nurse to wring the little monster’s neck.
An economy that operates by specialized skills can produce more than a low-skilled unspecialized economy and, as the world populations grew, this higher production was required.
Really? I wonder why people with agricultural backgrounds are so much more in demand as employees? Well, other than as paper pushers.
I would suggest it’s because they can more readily see the big picture of what their work contributes to, combined with a learned ability to transfer skills from one area to another.
A non-rural person is unlikely to ever completely understand that ability for it comes from living close to nature.
KevinB seems to have a pretty good handle on it.
Marx’s understanding of human nature was as keen as John’s is, which is to say, not at all.
Let’s say, for example, that a man is very good at carpentry, so good, in fact, that he does it for a living. He hones his craft, supports his family and himself and can proudly identify himself as a carpenter. He has an ability, drive and the monetary means the left despises. He can own his work. He can do something they cannot and get paid X sums for it, which they would like themselves. Make no mistake that socialists and communists were never greedy. He also stands out as being very good at his profession. It’s hard to be one of a herd if one stands out. If he is just satisfactory, he never stands out. He is crippled professionally, economically and even spiritually. Why does one think that professionals, intellectuals and even farmers were killed by communists? Their abilities and opinions certainly don’t gel with totalitarians.
stradivarious at 10:15:
“… A non-rural person is unlikely to ever completely understand that ability for it comes from living close to nature…”
Nature has nothing to do with!
The modern farmer is probably one of the best examples of how specialized labour supports the modern world.
You see, a modern farmer does not milk each cow by hand, does not plant each kernel by hand, does not pull each weed by hand, etc,etc. Only hippies farm like that anymore.
A modern farmer relies on the skills of the people/companies that have developed specialised products and equipment that allow him to act across all the relevant domains to operate his farm. The modern farmer understands a good deal about the chemicals he sprays, the variant of crop he grows, the market he is dealing with, the mechanics and electronics of the specialised equipment he deals with, etc, etc.
He understands their usage and to varying levels how they work, but he does not invent the chemicals, develop the crop variants, build the machinery or electronics. (Yes, I know farmers like to tinker in the winter.) Rather, he relies on the expertise of others who do.
The modern farmer himself is a very specialised type of labour that requires combined physical work and technical/commercial management. He makes it all come together and be competitive with a strong work ethic (self motivation); the best in the world.
Again, I’ll repeat – the modern farmer is a specialised role. Don’t try to tell me that he is the lesser man because of it – that is just pure BS!!
This skill is definitely not found in government!
Nor is it found or developed on a factory floor (those poor, poor victims – snark)!
It is a skill, however, badly needed in our modern economy. This is why people coming from an agricultural background are in high demand. Engineering system architects come to mind immediately.
As for …living close to nature…my a&&, all that gets you is more mosquitoes.
Again, I’ll repeat – the modern farmer is a specialised role.
Heh, farmers and ranchers ‘tinker’ a lot more than you may know. Most of the inventions came out of necessity. Same with many crop varieties.
And ranchers pretty much do things the same way it’s always been done. A horse and a good dog haven’t been improved upon to work cattle. Ride a horse fifty miles and then tell me all you got was mosquitoes. heh
In the end, it’s all done to make nature work for us.
Oh, one more thing, the principle behind dragging a piece of wood through the ground to make a furrow, and dragging many pieces of steel through the ground isn’t all that much different.
How it’s done has changed, but not what is done. The object is to get more seeds back than were planted. Nature does most of that work.
….the principle behind dragging a piece of wood through the ground to make a furrow, and dragging many pieces of steel through the ground isn’t all that much different. How it’s done has changed, but not what is done…
It is the ‘how’ that matters!!! That is the key to specialised labour – I can’t believe you don’t (or won’t) understand that.
I see, so a two bottom plow is more ‘specialized’ than a one bottom plow?
Herding cows with two horses is more ‘specialized’ than herding cows with one horse? Or is it the other way around? heh
The new “progressive” left is misguided in seeking equality while celebrating diversity. The two terms are mutually exclusive.
Being a generalist, I’ve never thought much about division of labor except my individual role in a project. One thing I decided very early in life is that there was no way that I would be pigeonholed into a particular occupation and thus had multiple interests. Medicine is the closest I’ve come to being pigeonholed, but I’m still a generalist and find knowing a little about a lot of areas lets one see the big picture that the hyperspecialists miss. I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve seen patients where I’ve seen cardiologists and respirologists arguing over a patients diagnosis without considering that perhaps both cardiac and respiratory systems were at fault. Paradoxically, one often gets better medical care in a “rural” hospital where boundaries between specialties are blurred out of necessity and one doesn’t get the dangers of management by multiple sub-sub specialists.
Hyperspecialization does have benefits, but I’d get bored very easily in that role. Also, the world is changing and a surgeon who concentrated solely on gastric ulcer surgery 25 years ago would be out of work now that PPI’s are the primary treatment for gastric ulcers.
From my point of view, there appear to be two types of people working; those who are quite happy to be performing some tiny specialized role with no interest in trying something else and those people who have the ability to quickly learn a job, work at it for a while and then go on to the next project. It’s the latter type of individual who’s going to be in most demand in the coming decades as technologic progress renders many occupations obsolete while it creates new ones. The idea that one will work at a particular occupation for the rest of ones life is obsolete and the sooner that this is realized, the better things will be economically for a lot of people.
I’m opposed to division of labour because math is hard…