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The meaning of division of labour by Rudolf Steiner
The divison of labour is a given in economics, but its meaning is often merely linked to
efficiency. Its deeper purpose, as these extracts outline (1), is to unite humanity through
working for one another.
Division of labour = production for others
In former epochs the division of labour had no peculiar significance. It too was embraced in
religious impulses. Everyone had his proper place assigned to him. But it was very different when
the democratic tendency united with the tendency to division of labour – a process which only
began in the last few centuries and reached its climax in the nineteenth century. Then the division
of labour gained very great significance, for it entails a specific economic consequence: No one
uses for himself what he produces.
Through the very fact that there is division of labour, and that we do not make all our things for
ourselves but always work for others, the various products have certain values and consequently
prices. Now the division of labour extends, of course, into the actual circulation of the products.
The economic impossibility of egoism
To begin with, let us regard this as a line of thought that will
lead us to the true form of economic science. The facts themselves
will, of course – all of them – have to be considered again later.
Meanwhile it is absolutely true – and indeed self-evident – that
the more the division of labour advances, the more it will come
about that the individual always works for the rest of the
community in general and never for himself. In other words, with
the rise of the modern division of labour, the economic life as such
depends on egoism being extirpated, root and branch.
I beg you to take this remark not in an ethical but in a purely
economic sense! Economically speaking, egoism is impossible. I
can no longer do anything for myself; the more the division of
labour advances, the more must I do everything for others. The
summons to altruism has, in fact, come far more quickly through
purely outward circumstances in the economic sphere than it has
been answered on the ethical and religious side. This is illustrated
by an easily accessible historical fact.
The word ‘egoism’, you will find, is a pretty old one, though
not perhaps in the severe meaning we attach to it today. But its
opposite, ‘altruism’ ( to think for another ), is scarcely a hundred
years old. As a word, it was coined very late. We need not dwell
overmuch on this external feature, though a closer historical study
would confirm the indication. But we may truly say: Human thought
on ethics was far from having arrived at a full appreciation of
altruism at a time when the division of labour had already brought
about its appreciation in the economic life. Taking it, therefore, in
its purely economic aspect, we see at once the further
consequences of this demand for altruism. We must find our way
into the true process of modern economic life, wherein no-one
has to provide for himself, but only for his fellow human beings.
We must realise how by this means each individual will, in fact, be
provided for in the best possible way.
This might easily be taken for a piece of idealism, but I beg
you to observe once more: I am speaking neither idealistically nor
ethically, but from an economic point of view. What I have just
said is intended in a purely economic sense. It is neither a God,
nor a moral law, nor an instinct that calls for altruism in modern
economic life – altruism in work, altruism in the production of
goods. It is the modern division of labour – a purely economic
category – that requires it.
This is the other aspect of the form of economic science. In
recent times our economic life has begun to require more of us
than we are ethically, religiously, capable of achieving. This is the
underlying fact of many a conflict. Study the sociology of the
present day and you will find: The social conflicts are largely due
to the fact that, as economic systems expanded into world economy,
it became more and more needful to be altruistic, to organise the
various social institutions altruistically. At the same time, in their
way of thinking, human beings did not get beyond egoism and
therefore kept on interfering with the course of things in a clumsy,
selfish way.
Don’t do it yourself
To a large extent, nowadays, people are providing for
themselves. That is to say, by virtue of the division of labour, our
economic life is actually in contradiction to its own fundamental
demand… Even today, every wage–earner in the ordinary sense
is someone who provides for himself. He gives only so much as
he wants to earn, for which reason he simply cannot be giving as
much to the social organism as he might.
In effect, to provide for oneself is to work for one’s earnings,
to work ‘for a living’. On the other hand, to work for others is to
work out of social needs. To the extent that the demand which the
division of labour involves has been fulfilled in our time, altruism
is actually present, namely, work for others. But to the extent that
the demand is unfulfilled, the old egoism persists. It has its roots
in this – that people are still obliged to provide for themselves.
But that is economic egoism! In the case of the ordinary wage–
earner we generally fail to notice the fact. For we do not ask
ourselves: what is it that values are really being exchanged for in
this case? The thing which the ordinary wage–earner produces
has after all nothing to do with the payment for his work –
absolutely nothing to do with it. The payment – the value that is
assigned to his work – proceeds from altogether different factors.
He, therefore, works for his earnings, works ‘for a living’. He works
to provide for himself. It is hidden, it is masked, but it is so.
Thus one of the first and most essential economic questions
comes before us: How are we to eliminate working for a living from
the economic process? Those who to this day are still mere wage–
earners, how are they to be placed in the whole economic process,
so that they work because of social needs?
Must this really be done? Assuredly it must. For if this is not
done, we shall never obtain true prices but always false ones. We
must seek to obtain prices and values that depend not on human
beings but on the economic process itself – prices that arise out
of the fluctuation of values.
Ideas as Capital by Alasdair Clayre
‘How differently would people see the world, and how differently would they want to organise
it, if they took literally rather than figuratively the saying that “the real capital of a business is its
ideas”?
The continual inventiveness of human beings is the source — and the only source — of
capital. Thus capital is an intellectual, cultural, even ‘spiritual’ force originating in continual
innovation, creating both the possibility of, and the desire for, a liberation of man from physical
labour, to find his ‘true’ place in a world of mental and cultural activity — the ‘Geistesleben’;
the kind of activity that is not merely engaged in for the satisfaction of needs, but is valued for
its own sake alone.
Capital in this sense arises not out of any single person’s intellectual effort alone but out of
the accumulated inventive and creative capacities of previous generations and to some
extent of other men at any one time. Furthermore the whole benefit of the innovation is
eventually dispersed to society as a whole. Capital is neither by origin, nor by destination, the
property of any individual. The question of who should appropriate the — temporary — benefits
of new inventions is thus a wide open one in this analysis. It ought to be solved by society. But
who or what exactly is society, in this context, and how is society to solve this problem?
In practice, in ‘capitalism’, it is overwhelmingly the provider of finance for the exploitation of
new ideas who both takes the subsequent commercial risks and, when successful, tends to
appropriate most of the resultant returns today. Yet the origin of the invention is not in the
financial world at all. So this, it can be argued, is unjust; and tends to heap up power
unreasonably in the hands of those who already have it, and who have nothing else to offer
except it.
A second solution is that the benefits should immediately belong to all men through a complete
absence, for example, of patents; or through local co–operatively provided finance open
equally to any inventor who donates the fruits of his ideas to ‘society’ in some form. Yet if all
such benefits were immediately diffused generally — that is to say dispersed in lower prices
— capital to finance the next research or develop the next invention might have been dissipated
and absorbed in consumption, and as technology became more complex, development
would be too expensive for any individual or small group to finance.
The intellectual, cultural and spiritual life of society has a special claim on the benefits of
invention, since it is here that invention originates. Capital is a mental or spiritual phenomenon,
and its returns belong, if anywhere, where it originated.
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