James Heartfield wrote:
> Ted: 'If you mean that the "division of labour" in the sense of the specialization of individuals to specific activities'
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> Plainly, that is not the meaning of 'division of labour'.
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> The necessity for a 'division of labour' arises in the first instance, from the plurality of human needs, and the plurality of natural resources. At any one point in time, it is not possible for all people to do the same thing, or indeed for them as a totality to do things that do not correspond to the realisation of human need. But there is no need for each of them individually to do the same thing in perpetuity.
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> As the quotation that you cite suggests, even the capitalist system fragments that narrow specialisation typical of craft production, by constantly revolutionising (albeit in a haphazard and destructive way) the means of production (hence, for example, Kent miners retrain as nightclub bouncers, or sociologists, as their first skill is no longer needed).
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> There is no contradiction between the German Ideology piece and the later one, except that Marx is clearer in the later, using the phrase 'division of labour' with greater precision, distinguishing between its transhistorical meaning, and its epoch-specific meaning (most explicitly in the letter to Kugleman, just quoted).
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> It seems to me that your difficulty with Marx is your difficulty, and no-one else's (well, maybe Horkheimer's or Marcuse's, but that is not company you should want to keep, at least not in this respect). The *technical* division of labour carries no horrors, it is just what it is - like the rain. The particular social form of the division of labour, that is, as attained through the exchange of commodities, has become a barrier to human self-realisation.
I take it it's not your meaning.
Even if the reference to "the old division of labour" is interpreted as consistent with this meaning and, hence, with the fact that in this sense "division of labour" must always be a feature of the organization of activity, this leaves intact the fact that in the context where its found Marx claims the "division of labour" in the sense of the specialization of individuals to specific activities "vanishes" in communism.
It does this because "communism" in Marx's sense is created by and required for "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." As Marx claimed in 1877, in his sense it's "the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man."
Activity in the communist realms of both "natural necessity" and "freedom" requires of each individual "the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes."
These claims reiterate the claim identified with "communists" in the German Ideology that
"the vocation, designation, task of every person is to achieve all-round development of all his abilities, including, for example, the ability to think" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03g.htm#c.1.2.3
That full "development of individuality" in this sense is necessary for activity in "the true realm of freedom" as well as in "the realm of natural necessity" of "communism" and this means that "division of labour" in the sense of the specialization of individuals to specific activities has "vanished" there as well. Thus, in the case of artistic activity, it means 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."
Marcuse, by the way, doesn't understand "communism" as the actualization of "self-conscious reason" in the above sense. He treats "reason" as inconsistent with true "freedom." "Communism" as he elaborates it, restricts "reason" to "the realm of natural necessity" where it underpins "necessary labor" as "a system of essentially inhuman, mechanical, and routine activities."
"Possession and procurement of the necessities of life are the prerequisite, rather than the content, of a free society. The realm of necessity, of labor, is one of unfreedom because the human existence in this realm is determined by objectives and functions that are not its own and that do not allow the free play of human faculties and desires. The optimum in this realm is therefore to be defined by standards of rationality rather than freedom - namely, to organize production and distribution in such a manner that the least time is spent for making all necessities available to all members of society. Necessary labor is a system of essentially inhuman, mechanical, and routine activities; in such a system, individuality cannot be a value and end in itself. Reasonably, the system of societal labor would be organized rather with a view to saving time and space for the development of individuality outside the inevitably repressive work world. Play and display, as principles of civilization, imply not the transformation of labor but its complete subordination to the freely evolving potentialities of man and nature. The ideas of play and display now reveal their full distance from the values of productiveness and performance: play is unproductive and useless precisely because it cancels the repressive and exploitive traits of labor and leisure; it 'just plays' with the reality. But it also cancels their sublime traits - the 'higher values.' The desublimation of reason is just as essential a process in the emergence of a free culture as in the self-sublimation of sensuousness." Eros and Civilization, pp. 195-6
Ted