Página 17 - Coordinación de Servicios de Información

AOAM SMITH ANO THE CONCEPT
OF DIVISION OF LABOUR
• The central focus of Smith's analysis was stated clearly in the
full title of his work: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations. Put in more modern terms, he was concemed
with developing a theory of economic growth.
Smith announced his major explanation for economic growth in
the early pages of his work with a phrase that has since become
the stock-in-trade of economists 'the division of labour'. [How–
ever], this expression has a deceptive simplicity. Smith employed
it in two quite distinct senses. The first referred to the specializa–
tion of the labour force accompanying economic advance that
brought with it the 'greatest improvement in the productive pow–
ers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judge–
ment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied .. .' The full
benefits of the progressive sub-division of tasks were available
however, only to a society in which production for exchange could
take place. The capacity of a subsistence economy to generate these
output-raising innovations and adaptations was severly restricted.
From these considerations it followed that the division of labour
was limited by the 'extent of the market', and that measures wid–
ening the market -whether geographically (e.g. through improve–
ments in transport and communication), or economically (e.g.
throught the removal of restraints on trade)- were in the general
interest.
Smith's interpretation of 'the division of labour' was not confined
to job specialization. It also referred to the division of the labour
force between those 'employed in usefullabour . . . and those not
so employed'. The' division of
labour' in this second sense -which
referred to the allocation of the labour force between various lines
of employment- played an important role in his analysis of capi–
tal accumulation and of the 'progress of improvement' (as Smith
was often to describe economic growth). The distinction he had in
mind is one which modern readers are likely to find perplexíng.
Nowadays economists are reluctant to stand in judgement over
particular types of jobs, declaring sorne to be' prod uctive' and oth–
ers to be 'unproductive'. They prefer to follow the market's guide-
English lor Economists 1S