Summary
The division of labor, as Marx and Engels understand it, doesn’t refer narrowly to the allocation of different “jobs” to different people within the economy. It is, in history thus far, a basic structuring feature of human social life, which though it has existed in some form in every society, also exists in a particular, historically specific form in each of these societies. The antagonism between “town and country,” which in modern terms we might think of as the urban-rural divide, is a form of the division of labor, and specifically of the division of mental and material labor. The emergence of towns, then cities, as centers of cultural, intellectual, economic, and political life is the earliest form in which the basic division of society into two opposing classes, which eventually develops into the opposition of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, appears. And the history of the increasing dominance of town over country is also the history of the development of modern private property, i.e., capital. Tracing the trajectory of these developments and their social and political consequences is the task Marx and Engels set out for themselves in this section.
On the most fundamental level, the increasing separation of town and country—a result of the concentration of population, production, and capital in the towns—expresses the emergence of a conflict between two forms of private property: (feudal) landed property and capital. The abolition of this antagonism, and the conflict it creates between two different groups of workers and the “subjection which makes one man into a restricted town-animal, the other into a restricted country-animal,” is a crucial precondition of establishing “communal life,” i.e., communism. Yet despite this antagonism, and despite the presence of a propertyless underclass, largely made up of serfs fleeing the country, it’s a historical fact that the kind of class struggle central to their theory of class conflict did not, in the past, emerge in a sustained way in either the town or the country.
Thus Marx and Engels must account for this fact, which they explain by elaborating the material conditions of both serfs in the country and the laboring underclass of the towns throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern era. In entering the towns, the serfs fleeing the countryside—generally isolated individuals or families with no prior relation to one another— found themselves confronted by an organized community united against them. The casual nature of their labor prevented any real consolidation of these workers into a cohesive group, and thus they remained unorganized and unable to advocate for themselves collectively. The existence of guilds, in which journeymen trained in a particular form of skilled labor worked for a “master,” also meant that the interests of this group of workers remained opposed to that of the underclass of day-laborers.
While in its particulars the capital possessed by the guild masters—their ownership of the instruments of production such as the workshop, tools of the craft, and accumulated knowledge by means of which they commanded the labor of the journeymen—was distinct from landed estate capital, originally their fundamental forms are identical. Like estate capital, and unlike modern capital, this capital was, so to speak, not “realizable” in the form of money. The next extension of the division of labor, that is, the next development towards what Marx and Engels call modern capital, is the separation of production and commerce, which creates a special class of merchants. As a class, these merchants have a direct material interest in extending trade through improving the available means of communication and circulation, which ultimately results in the various towns entering into real relations with one another and, consequently, the formation of a particular division of labor between towns.
Only once they entered into relations of trade and mutual dependence was it possible for the burghers (wealthy merchants or other members of the upper classes) of the various towns to form an actual class, united in their antagonism to the feudal system of landed property dominant in the country. Per Marx and Engels, it is only insofar as they carry out a struggle against another class that a group of separate individuals are constituted as a class, since generally their relation to one another is primarily that of economic competition (for jobs, access to markets, dominance in production, etc.). Both of these factors—the pressure of competing against other members of their class, as well as the necessity of struggling for dominance against classes with interests contrary to their own—is another way in which the division of labor creates abstract categories which “achieve an independent existence over against the individuals,” determining their conditions of existence, their activity, and their position in society.
The development of productive forces, that is, increases in productive capacity, is dependent on the extension of commerce in two primary ways. Firstly, without extensive commerce that universalizes advances in production beyond a particular locality, these advances can be lost at any time, due to war, famine, or any other form of social devastation. Only with the development of the world system of commerce is the preservation of advances in production assured. Secondly, the relative availability of a market for goods, and the possibility of procuring a wide range of goods needs from other towns, regions, or nations, both allow and provide an impetus for the development and specialization of particular kinds of production.
The emergence of manufacture, a form of small-scale production not carried out within the guild system but distinct from big industry, was a direct consequence of the extension of trade and division of labor between towns. As commerce continued to expand, particular manufacturers found an increasingly large market for their goods. In England, the first manufacture to begin to develop towards the modern form of big industry was weaving, and the expansion of this manufacture created, for the first time, a class of weavers who produced clothing not for themselves or their community but for the whole world market.
Perhaps the single largest expansion of this world market was the colonization by various European countries of much of the world. This colonization process also created a large influx of gold and silver into the European market, metals that came to serve as an early form of money, which facilitated the expansion of “moveable capital,” i.e., a form of private property not bound to a specific place or activity, but able to be exchanged for goods or instruments of production of any kind. Due to the centrality of trade and travel by sea to this new world market, England, as the preeminent maritime power, was able to secure dominance for itself and its own goods. As a result, the demand for English goods, in particular textiles, outgrew the productive capacity of manufacture as it was then organized. This was a rapid period of technological advancement, the first time in which heavy machinery and natural forces were harnessed for the ends of human production. The division of labor increased such that labor was divided up among different workers within the production process itself. This was the beginning of what we now call the Industrial Revolution: the emergence of large-scale industry proper, and thus of truly modern private property, that is, capital in its fully developed, purest form.
Analysis
In terms of theory, this section attempts to lay out the historical conditions that determined the forms of intercourse, production, property, and labor leading up to modern capitalism. Marx and Engels begin this portion of their analysis with a discussion of the antagonism between town and country both because of its special importance to the division of mental and material labor and also because it was central to important contemporary political developments.
In a parenthetical worth contextualizing more fully, Marx and Engels mention the English Anti-Corn Law League, a group that successfully advocated for the repeal of the various forms of protective tariffs and import restrictions on grains known as the Corn Laws, which were in effect from 1815-1846 (the year in which The German Ideology was written). This example illustrates the continuing political significance of the antagonism between town and country in Marx’s time, as the Anti-Corn Law League had its origins in London and was largely composed of the urban middle class and bourgeoisie, particularly manufacturers. In effect, this conflict was a struggle between the emerging class of manufacturers on the one hand, and merchants and feudal landowners on the other.
The fact that the manufacturers were, ultimately, victorious in this struggle is significant because it signals the increasingly central importance of manufacture, and the bourgeoisie, in the political and economic life of England. The political preeminence of the merchants, who succeeded the feudal landowners as the dominant class in society, was characteristic of the period of capitalist development Marx calls “mercantilism.” Their replacement by the manufacturing bourgeoisie is an indication that modern, industrial capitalism is beginning to emerge. All of these developments are, additionally, an example of Marx and Engels’s theory of the role of the mode of production in determining political, social, and legal developments in society.
Marx and Engels lay out several necessary conditions for the emergence of big industry, which marks the birth of modern capital. Firstly, there must exist, through the growth of towns and cities, places where there is a high degree of concentration of population, capital, and intellectual activity, along with a relatively modern and stable political system. Additionally, the preservation of productive advancements must be ensured by the extension of commerce and, ultimately, the creation of a truly global market. This new world market both enables and promotes two other critical developments: the transformation of all forms of capital into “moveable capital,” and the creation of a more complex, and geographically dispersed, form of the division of labor. Accelerating demand fosters the growth of a manufacturing industry that, crucially, functions outside of the guild system, which is based on time-intensive, skilled labor that requires years of training, and ultimately eliminates that system entirely. Thus (also a necessary development) workers cease to have any personal or natural relationship with the person who commands their labor; their relationship is based purely on the exchange of labor for compensation.
As the authors emphasize, the mere existence of any or even most of these conditions isn’t sufficient for the emergence of modern industrial capitalism. Among other criteria, they must be the dominant, determining, nearly universal conditions that regulate how the society and economy function. World trade makes this possible by bringing people across the globe not just into relation with one another, but into competition, specifically. In order to compete with, for example, weaving manufacturers in England, weavers in France, or India, or anywhere, must adopt as quickly as possible any new technologies or more efficient forms of organizing production.
This is what Marx and Engels mean when they say that universal competition “produced world history for the first time” by “destroying the former natural exclusiveness of separate nations” (185). “Traditional” ways of organizing economic activity, e.g., farming, weaving, etc., as well as the political structures that correspond to these modes, disappear, so to speak, overnight if they’re not as efficient in production. Thus, once big industry emerges in England, its emergence throughout the world becomes inevitable, and any aspect of the previously existing mode of production—e.g., the privileges of feudal landowners, the guild system, and so on—that holds back the development of these new productive forces is swept away. However, Marx and Engels claim that the advent of modern industrial production creates a mass of productive forces for which private property itself is a “fetter” (185). That is, capitalism as a mode of production ultimately comes to be a restriction on the full development of the productive forces it has unleashed. Just as it creates a global working class with the universal interest in overthrowing the current system and abolishing the division of labor, it also produces this internal contradiction that Marx and Engels predict will only intensify as capitalism develops.
