Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
A Liberal BYU History Professor?!! No way!
So, I've been working on an independent study class to officially finish up my degree. It is a history class and I recently had an assignment that riled me up. It had to do with the concept of the division of labor and the questions were based on a primary source provided in the text book that described the production of pins as an example of the effect of the division of labor. Here are the questions that the professor asked me to answer after reading the assignment:
The following is my response that I was required to provide as part of the assignment.
"Smith here fails to point out that a single, highly skilled craftsman could produce nearly as many pins per man as the 20 who divided the labor.
- If that's true, to what extent is industrialization just the dumbing-down of work? It does not save much labor by division; what it saves is years of training and skill acquisition.
- Are the blessings of instant mass production worth the curse of turning humans into automatons, unable to make anything entirely by themselves or to enjoy the satisfaction of working for oneself instead of for oppressive entrepreneurs whose main innovation was to make workers stupid in the first place?
- What are the human costs of the division of labor, based on Smith's own description of factory work?"
The following is my response that I was required to provide as part of the assignment.
It is obvious from your questions related to this lesson that you are of the opinion that industrialization has been a bad thing for the world. I believe that Smith failed to mention that “a single, highly skilled craftsman could produce nearly as many pins per man as the 20 who divided the labor” because it is misleading and irrelevant. It is much more efficient to produce anything using an assembly line type concept. The twenty men creating the pins individually would require twenty workshops with the same tools and materials. Twenty times the amount of space and equipment used individually would produce fewer pins than one workshop utilizing twenty laborers that have specialized in a particular operation.
It is true that the adoption of industrialization resulted in a loss of skilled craftsmen that were capable of producing physical goods on their own, but industrialization has had a net positive effect on our society and our economy. People gained time through industrialization. This time lead to more thinking and a faster rate of innovation. Intellectual goods and services have become more and more central to the world’s economy. We have progressed from the industrial age to the information age. The information age would not have been possible without the division of labor and the advances seen during the industrial age. The transition may have been painful and it is easy to look back and feel sympathy for the unskilled laborer and the conditions that they worked in, but look at what it has made possible in our day.
Initially, skilled craftsmen were replaced by groups of people working together to create the same product. I don’t believe this was just a dumbing down of work. It was an intelligent and natural progression to discover that specialization saves time and money and it increases production. I believe that it is extremely cynical to believe that the main purpose of industrialization was to hold the working class captive in their ignorance and lack of skills. If anything, the division of labor and industrialization spurred innovation and lead to a society that has the largest middle-class in the history of the world.
Slowly, these laborers have been replaced, in part, by machines that can produce many times the amount of goods that were produced before the industrial age. People have been forced to adapt. They must continue learning and gaining new skills throughout their entire lives. Many jobs in the world are impossible for machines to do. Many of these jobs didn’t exist before the division of labor and I doubt they would have been created as soon in our history, or if they ever would have appeared at all, if this advancement of technology had not taken place.
The factory worker should not be considered a non-thinking automaton. The free-time created by the division of labor has lead to a populace with a very broad knowledge base. The skilled craftsman would have to ply his trade long hours to be profitable. It is reasonable to assume that the tasks related to his or her trade were nearly all consuming. The laborer of today has time to pursue other interests and learn skills in addition to those related to his or her occupation. Not every person takes advantage of the extra time that technology has given them and I’m sure that there were craftsmen that had interests and skills outside of their profession, but as a general rule, the person of today’s world, brought to you in part by the division of labor, has a broader and deeper knowledge of more subjects.
Our society provides each person an equal opportunity to succeed. That is not a guarantee of equal results, but a guarantee that you can try and succeed or fail dependent upon the particular circumstances surrounding your endeavor. The only description of working conditions I saw in the primary source describes the laborers as being poor. I don’t think that the owners of the factories are to blame completely. Owners of businesses have not always provided the best conditions for people to work in. For some reason, our society wants to blame corporations and businessmen for their own struggles. These conditions are regulated today and it is not as much of a problem anymore. Workers are not forced to work at a job for a particular employer. If they are unhappy with their compensation, conditions, or any other aspect of their job, they are free to leave and find better work. If they have a great idea and are charismatic enough to gather the necessary capital to make their dream a reality, no one is stopping them. It is not right to demonize men and women that have worked hard to earn money and a prestigious position at a company based solely on our envy of their success. We should judge their actions.
We'll have to wait and see what sort of grade I get on this assignment from the professor. I don't know why everyone blames big business for everything and since when has advancement in technology been considered a bad thing? I think it is rather progressive...
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