tifying them in the interest of the dominant class.
Therefore, it pronounces itself in favour of the division of labour in
industry. Having found it profitable to capitalists, it has set it up as
a _principle_.

Look at the village smith, said Adam Smith, the father of modern
Political Economy. If he has never been accustomed to making nails he
will only succeed by hard toil in forging two or three hundred a day,
and even then they will be bad. But if this same smith has never made
anything but nails, he will easily supply as many as two thousand three
hundred in the course of a day. And Smith hastened to the
conclusion--"Divide labour, specialize, go on specializing; let us have
smiths who only know how to make heads or points of nails, and by this
means we shall produce more. We shall grow rich."

That a smith condemned for life to make the heads of nails would lose
all interest in his work, that he would be entirely at the mercy of his
employer with his limited handicraft, that he would be out of work four
months out of twelve, and that his wages would fall very low down, when
it would be easy to replace him by an apprentice, Smith did not think of
all this when he exclaimed--"Long live the division oL labour. This is
the real gold-mine that will enrich the nation!" And all joined him in
this cry.

And later on, when a Sismondi or a J. B. Say began to understand that
the division of labour, instead of enriching the whole nation, only
enriches the rich, and that the worker, who is doomed for life to making
the eighteenth part of a pin, grows stupid and sinks into poverty--what
did official economists propose? Nothing! They did not say to themselves
that by a lifelong grind at one and the same mechanical toil the worker
would lose his intelligence and his spirit of invention, and that, on
the contrary, a variety of occupations would result in considerably
augmenting the productivity of a nation. But this is the very issue we
have now to consider.

If, however, learned economists were the only ones to preach the
permanent and often hereditary division of labour, we might allow them
to preach it as much as they pleased. But the ideas taught by doctors of
science filter into men's minds and pervert them; and from repeatedly
hearing the division of labour, profits, interest, credit, etc., spoken
of as problems long since solved, all middle-class people, and workers
too, end by arguing like economists; they venerate the