Abstract: It is in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, composed after Marx's first serious encounter with classical political economy, that the concept of division of labour makes its appearance in his writings. The use to which Marx puts this concept in the Manuscripts and later in The German Ideology has a distinctiveness that should not be overlooked: while it is the case that preceding discursive formations had constantly obscured the conceptual dividing line between ownership, 'class' and 'division of labour', Marx managed to produce a degree of conflation between them which was unparalleled. Although this conceptual outcome is obviously partly attributable to underlying forms of taxonomic assimilation already crystallised in the past usage of the concept, it is also necessary to look elsewhere in order to explain the peculiarity of Marx's own theorisation: we have to examine, that is, certain features of the intellectual and political position that Marx had already adopted before he composed the 1844 Manuscripts. Two interrelated standpoints are of key importance in this context: Marx's belief in total, 'universalistic' emancipation, and the theory of class which made the proletariat the supreme instrument of this liberation. Both these strands in his formation crucially mediated his reading of classical political economy and must be regarded as vitally important elements in the development of the distinctive Marxian conflation of class and the division of labour in the early writings.
Publication Year: 1982
Publication Date: 1982-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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