Division Of Labour

Who is Adam Smith(1723-1790)? 

Adam Smith was a Scottish economist, philosopher, pioneer of political economy, and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Also known as ”The Father of Economics” or ”The Father of Capitalism”.

The greatest improvement in the productive power of labour seems to have been the effects of the Division Of Labour.
Let us consider the manner of operation of division:

1. Trifling: Destined to supply small wants of a small number of people. An only a small number of workers is needed, under the same supervisor and same workhouse.
2. Important/Great: Destined to supply to a great body of people – Every branch hire a great number of workers. Impossible to gather the workers under the same workhouse – the work is divided into greater parts

The great increase of the quantity of work which in consequence of the division of labour, is owing to:

1. Skills upgrade
2. Saving of time: The advantage which is gained by saving time which is lost by passing from one sort of work to another – that is carried on in a different place with different tools.
3. The invention of machines: Facilitate and abridge labour. Usually are not invented by the users, but by other classes of people.
   1. Machine Makers or Philosophers = Whose trade is not to do anything, but to observe everything. Often capable to combine powers of most distant and dissimilar objects.
   2. Discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object, when the attention of their mind is directed towards a single object.

The division of labour, is the necessary – though very slow and gradual consequence – of a certain tendency or “propensity” in human nature to exchange, truck and barter one thing for another.

Labour was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased – Adam Smith

Inspired by The wealth of nations