A Study Of The Division Of Labor In Economic Manuscripts Of 1861-1863

Division of labor is an important category of historical materialism.The Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1863,one of the seminal works that produced Das Kapital,contain many insightful arguments about the division of labor,This not only extends the unique horizon of the division of labor thought in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858,but also expands the research content of the division of labor thought in the Economic manuscripts of 1857-1858,and defines the basic theoretical domain of the division of labor thought in Das Kapital.At the same time,it also directly presents Marx’s reflection and criticism of capitalist society and his unique understanding of capitalist division of labor,which is not shown in Das Kapital.Therefore,economic Manuscript 1861-1863 becomes an indispensable text for the study of Marx’s thought of division of labor.In the Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1863,Marx clearly distinguished the division of labor within capitalist society and the division of labor within factories and their antagonistic properties,criticized the previous thinkers’ wrong understanding of the division of labor,and pointed out the unique operation mechanism of the capitalist division of labor.It reveals that the fundamental difference between capitalist division of labor and other stages in history is that capitalist division of labor directly serves the multiplication of capital.Here,Marx reveals that the essence of capital production process is the unity of labor process and value multiplication process from the perspective of division of labor and main line.Capital first purchases and then consumes labor as a special commodity,and then capitalists use all means and tools free of charge such as collaboration,division of labor,machinery,science and technology,and natural forces to improve the intensity and continuity of labor and thus improve the efficiency of labor production.At first,the labor is only in form from belongs to the capital,labor supervision and control by the capitalists,only labor itself is relatively free,but as the capitalists to thoroughly separation and opposition between subject and object of labor conditions,labor materials and data as well as labor itself is separated with the workers,especially in big industrial machine,Machine instead of labor,capital of science and technology as well as the capitalization of the application of natural force,workers in labor completely lost their reality and become their own non-existence.Therefore,under this structure of division of labor,as soon as labor enters the process of production,it is no longer labor itself,but the mode of existence of capital.At this time,labor is actually subordinate to capital,and the process of labor also becomes the process of value multiplication.Thus,Marx initially revealed the development and operation rules of the capitalist society and its inherent and intrinsic fundamental contradictions under the capitalist division of labor system.In addition,Marx also saw that the development and evolution of capitalist division of labor on the one hand caused constraints on the personal development of workers,on the other hand,it also provided realistic material basis and premise for the personal development of workers to some extent.In the Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1863,Marx explained "the production process of capital" from the perspective and main line of division of labor,and revealed the internal structure of capitalist society and the unique logic of capital operation law by using the basic views and methods of historical materialism,which marked the gradual maturity of Marx’s thought of division of labor.Today,the thought of division of labor in The Economic Manuscript of 1861-1863 is of great practical significance for us to examine and grasp the changes in the development of division of labor,especially the socialized possession of the rest of the time,and the modern integration of mental labor and physical labor.