Adam Smith's Views On Division Of Labour
HSS 103: A History of Ideas
Assignment 1
Akshay Jindal
(IMT2012002)
Why does the concept of the division of labour put forth by Adam Smith continue to be analytically significant?
“The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.”[1] - Adam Smith.
Division of labour is not a recent thing but a natural phenomenon. It has evolved from a single-celled organism through different cell types, tissues and organs to present day castes in human social system.[2] Division of labour has existed for a long time but in the 'modern ' world it has been thoroughly established and no longer can a man depend on his own produce to satisfy all his needs. To rectify this he
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Smith used labour as the benchmark to measure economic growth which continues to be significant in the current era of industrialization and assembly line production. Labour hierarchies are easily observable in a modern workplace structure as division of labour to some extent is inevitable. The current difference in wages of labour in a developed and developing nation as well as the large-scale outsourcing phenomenon can be easily explained by Smith 's argument. In a developed nation, contractors generally cannot get the number of workmen they want and hence have to bid against each other thereby increasing the wages of labour. On the other hand, contractors in a developing nation may lack funds and cannot employ all people leading to labourers bidding against one another for employment and hence lowering their wages. This also reduces the profit of production in a developed nation and increases it in a developing nation. To remedy this countries have taken to outsourcing the labour and are specializing in the work they can do at the lowest …show more content…
Smith only focused on “production of tangible objects” and “creation of surplus” and did not consider workforce satisfaction. Today man is given equal importance as money, services are as important as goods, goods are no longer necessarily tangible (eg. Information technology) and human welfare is also given emphasis instead of just wealth.
To conclude, the division of labour was and will continue to be significant because it is what defines the human society. Every part of the society performs a specific action so that the society can perform as a whole. Division of labour has integrated so tightly with our current economy that a single group of workers from China saying no to the assembly line can significantly harm the world economy. Also, with the advancement of technology and education, assembly lines are becoming more and more mechanized and workers are getting more skilled thereby increasing the overall efficiency of the
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