Key Arguments

• Knowledge, judgment, and will required by independent craftsmen are now only required for the workshop as a whole
• The social productive power of the collective worker is enriched by impoverishing the individual
• Science and intellectual potential become distinct from labor and serve capital

Source Quotes

The possibility of an intelligent direction of production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the specialized workers is concentrated in the capital which confronts them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufacture that the worker is brought face to face with the intellectual potentialities [geistige Potenzen] of the material process of production as the property of another and as a power which rules over him.

What is lost by the specialized workers is concentrated in the capital which confronts them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufacture that the worker is brought face to face with the intellectual potentialities [geistige Potenzen] of the material process of production as the property of another and as a power which rules over him. This process of separation starts in simple co-operation, where the capitalist represents to the individual workers the unity and the will of the whole body of social labour.

It is completed in large-scale industry, which makes science a potentiality for production which is distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital. In manufacture, the social productive power of the collective worker, hence of capital, is enriched through the impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power. ‘Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition.

In manufacture, the social productive power of the collective worker, hence of capital, is enriched through the impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power. ‘Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a habit of moving the hand or the foot is independent of either.

Key Concepts

• What is lost by the specialized workers is concentrated in the capital which confronts them
• intellectual potentialities [geistige Potenzen] of the material process of production as the property of another
• enriched through the impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power
• Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition

Context

Describing the separation of manual and mental labor that begins in cooperation and is completed in large-scale industry