Division of Labor and Manufacture — Das Kapital

Manufacture, dominant from the mid-sixteenth to late eighteenth century, is cooperation organized through division of labour. It arises two ways: assembling different crafts under one roof to make one commodity, or splitting one craft into sequential detail operations. Either path produces the same result, a collective labourer made of partial workers each confined to a fragment of the process.

The detail labourer repeats one motion until body and tool specialize around it. Manufacture perfects skill in one groove while shrinking the worker's overall capacity. Tools multiply and adapt to each narrow function, preparing the ground for machinery.

In serial manufacture, stages that were once successive become simultaneous across many hands, shortening production time. Marx distinguishes division of labour inside the workshop from division of labour in society: inside, the capitalist commands; outside, independent producers meet only through commodity exchange. Manufacture cripples the individual while enriching capital with social productive power. It creates skilled and unskilled tiers, lowers the value of labour-power, and brands the worker as capital's appendage. Politically, the same thinkers praise workshop discipline while denouncing any social planning of production as tyranny.

Manufacture's detail labourers lose the whole craft while the capitalist gains control over process design, a pattern visible today whenever platforms split tasks and capture coordination rents.