Bruzzese 1
The Changing Labourer
In a capitalist society it is almost impossible to ignore that there is significant social inequality.
There are the capitalist who own the means of production, profiting greatly from the sale of production
surplus and then there are the labourers who are employed by the capitalists who earn wages that are a
mere fraction of the capitalists’ profits. With the income workers earn in the form of wages, they
purchase goods and services for consumption and live their lives. However within the inequality
between the capitalists and the labourers there is growing inequality amongst the labourers themselves.
What can be identified as the detail division of labour creates the degradation and deskilling of
workers, which is greatly intensified by the principles that are applied to this capitalist form of
production. This causes further inequality, not only amongst capitalists and labourers but between the
labourers themselves. Due to the consequences of the detail division of labour, the labourers are left
dispensable and divided between themselves leaving them in a vulnerable position. Spenner, analyzing
Braverman comments, “the eventual result is a polarized labor force: a growing mass of unskilled and
semiskilled jobs and workers at the bottom and an elite of managers and professionals at the top.
(Spenner, 1988, p.133)
The Different Divisions of Labour
The idea of the division of labour in society is commonly identified with capitalism. Although
this is true for the most part, the idea of dividing work amongst different individuals is a much older
practice then capitalism itself. There is a distinction between the division of labour before capitalism
and after capitalism. The earlier more so being the social division of labour and the later being the
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Bruzzese 2
detail division of labour. The division of labour in capitalist industry is not identical with the idea of
distributing tasks, crafts, or specialities of production throughout society, for all known societies have
succeeded in dividing their work into productive specialities, but no society before capitalism
systematically divided, and further divided work of each productive speciality into separate tasks. This
form of the division of labour is distinct to capitalism and what Braverman calls the detail division of
labour. (Braverman, 1974, p.49) The difference between the detail division of labour and the other is
clarified by Braverman, who quotes Herskovits as he discusses the role of men and women in
per-capitalist societies preforming tasks, “except under the most unusual circumstanced, we do not find
