The Division of Labour, Revisited

[kenneth.mackendrick]

The division of labour is a thief.
It robs us of our freedom and plunders our happiness.

The division of labour finds its roots in our everyday concerns - but concentrates 
lethally in the conceptual sphere.  By exacting the price of specialization - thereby 
granting solance that one has control over a tiny piece of the universe - it supports 
a positivist outlook which sunders glances at the big picture and reinforces a 
totalitarian perspective - one driven by the pleasure principle and the desire for 
survival - but maintained most adamantly through the economy.  In a complex 
world where things are assumed to be magical or rationally incoherent - the 
division of labour serves as a refuge.  Even in a world which is discernable - the 
division of labour assists the illusion that truth can be found without the 
appropriate mediation of accuracy.  Self-identification within this fragmentation 
permits one to view themself as an expert - which, again, is reinforced socially 
because promotes a certain kind of participation, however limited, in the public 
sphere (the democratic ethos) - you are allowed to act on what you are considered 
to know (Adorno was attacked for his philosophical writings and Habermas was 
attacked for his intervention in the historians debate - solely on the basis that 
these things remained outside of their field of interest).

Freedom is taken because the individual is streamlined into a preordained set of 
tasks which she or he can manage appropriately.  In the place of happiness a kind 
of complacency is granted within the predetermined parameters of the shelf upon 
which one sits.  What happiness proper might be is forever postponed in light of 
the sacrifices necessary to be productive - and ultimately happiness is understood 
by the individual to exist within such specialization - prepretuating a kind of 
pseudo-happiness which never gets around to addressing honest human wants 
and needs.  The entire process is carried out instrumentally - sincethe method 
itself becomes the goal and the goal becomes the method of reproduction since the 
actualization of freedom within the division of labour never actually materializes it 
continues in vain.

The entire structure is reinforced within itself.  It touches the individual psyche, 
generates institutions, justifies itself, and hides the remainder.

ken

ps.  i figured that this is why ralph is so deadset against the ivory tower - since the 
ivory tower itself is a product of the division of labour which promotes a belief in 
specialization which entails a kind of authority of enlightenment which, rightfully 
so, is a relapse into myth.  it also seems to me that ralph recognizes that this 
insight can only be found within the division of labour itself - which changes 
nothing since the trick is not to recognize the illusion but to abolish the conditions 
which make following the illusion necessary.