James Heartfield wrote:
> in fact if you look closely at the passages you quote Marx writes 'abolition of the *old* division of labour' using the qualification 'old' before 'division of labour', meaning that he does not refer to the division of labour as such, but a specific form of the division of labour, namely a capitalistic one achieved spontaneously through the exchange of commodities.
If you mean that the "division of labour" in the sense of the specialization of individuals to specific activities continues, how do you make this interpretation consistent with the preceding passage from the same context?
"Modern Industry, on the other hand, through its catastrophes imposes the necessity of recognising, as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequently the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes. It becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt the mode of production to the normal functioning of this law. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, grappled by life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers."
The German Ideology passage identifies the disappearance of "the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness, which arises entirely from division of labour" with the disappearance of "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. In a communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities."
Ted