> I don't know. Seems sort of overdoing "universality" for everybody
> to be butcher, baker , candelstickmaker, sailor, computer maker.
> Are you saying everybody would do everything, so to speak ? There
> are , I think, tens of thousands of work specialties. Perhaps that
> number would be reduced. I don't know. As that what you are saying ?
> There would be only a few labor categories ? Elegance of labor
> division.
I'm making an interpretive claim about Marx's idea of communism, namely, the claim that it excludes the "division of labour" understood as the specialization of individuals to particular kinds of work.
In the passages I quoted, the division of labour in this sense (which is not specific to the form it takes in capitalism) is made inconsistent with the "universality" that, according to Marx, would characterize individuals and their activities in both "the realm of natural necessity" and "the true realm of freedom" of an ideal society, i.e. of a "communist" society in his sense.
Thus the passage from the German Ideology claims that
"with a communist organisation of society. there disappears the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness, which arises entirely from division of labour, and also the subordination of the individual to some definite art, making him exclusively a painter, sculptor, etc.; the very name amply expresses the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on division of labour."
Here it's claimed that inconsistency with "universality," i.e. "local and national narrowness," "narrowness of his professional development," "arises entirely from division of labour" and that this "narrowness" disappears "with a communist organisation of society." Since it "arises entirely from division of labour," division of labour must also disappear.
The passage from the Poverty of Philosophy claims that
"What characterizes the division of labor inside modern society is that it engenders specialized functions, specialists, and with them craft-idiocy."
This claims implicitly that any organization of activity (not just "the division of labor inside modern society") that "engenders specialized functions, specialists" also engenders "craft-idiocy."
Ted