which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xenophon,[1] who with characteristic bourgeois instinct, approaches more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato's Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealisation of the Egyptian system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country to many of his contemporaries also, amongst others to Isocrates,[2] and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Roman Empire.[3]
During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period
- ↑ Xenophon says, it is not only an honour to receive food from the table of the King of Persia, but such food is much more tasty than other food. "And there is nothing wonderful in this, for as the other arts are brought to special perfection in the great towns, so the royal food is prepared in a special way. For in the small towns the same man makes bedsteads, doors, ploughs and tables: often, too, he builds houses into the bargain, and is quite content if he finds custom sufficient for his sustenance. It is altogether impossible for a man who does so many things to do them all well. But in the great towns, where each man can find many buyers, one trade is sufficient to maintain the man who carries it on. Nay, there is often not even need of one complete trade, but one man makes shoes for men, another for women. Here and there one man gets a living by sewing, another by cutting out shoes; one does nothing but cut out clothes, another nothing but sew the pieces together. It follows necessarily then, that he who does the simplest kind of work, undoubtedly does it better than any one else. So it is with the art of cooking." (Xen. Cyrop. l. viii., c. 2.) Xenophon here lays stress exclusively upon the excellence to be attained in use-value, although he well knows that the gradations of the division of labour depend on the extent of the market.
- ↑ He (Busiris) divided them all into special castes,… commanded that the same individuals should always carry on the same trade, for he knew that they who change their occupations become skilled in none; but that those who constantly stick to one occupation bring it to the highest perfection. In truth, we shall also find that in relation to the arts and handicrafts, they have outstripped their rivals more than a master does a bungler; and the contrivances for maintaining the monarchy and the other institutions, of their State are so admirable that the most celebrated philosophers who treat of this subject praise the constitution of the Egyptian State above all others. (Isocrates, Busiris, c. 8.)
- ↑ Cf. Diodorus Siculus.
γίγνεται καὶ κάλλιον καὶ ῥᾷον, ὅταν εἵς ἓν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ ἐν καιρῶ, σχολὴν τῶν ἄλλων ἄγων, κράττη" (Rep. l. 2. Ed. Baiter, Orelli, &c.). So in Thucydides l. c., 42: "Seafaring is an art like any other, and cannot, as circumstances require, be carried on as a subsidiary occupation; nay, other subsidiary occupations cannot be carried on alongside of this one." If the work, says Plato, has to wait for the labourer, the critical point in the process is missed and the article spoiled, . The same Platonic idea is found recurring in the protest of the English bleachers against the cause in the Factory Act that provides fixed meal times for all operatives. Their business cannot wait the convenience of the workmen, for "in the various operations of singeing, washing, bleaching, mangling, calendering, and dyeing, none of them can be stopped at a given moment without risk of damage … to enforce the same dinner hour for all the work-people might occasionally subject valuable goods to the risk of danger by incomplete operations." Le platonisme où va-t-il se nicher!
