from the general secretary
Division of Labor & Artificial Intelligence by John Bloom In the spirit of reconsidering many aspects of economic life, questioning underlying assumptions, and finding ways of reimagining the next economy, the division of labor has received little attention. It is certainly hard-wired into the current capital-driven market economy that seeks to maximize profit. While an awareness of the consequences of this profit-seeking economy is growing, the nature of work and how to organize it lags behind even in the social enterprise world. The division of labor in its many expressions has both a natural origin and a more mechanistic application. So, it is not the concept itself that is here under examination but rather how it has been applied and, more recently, what might be considered an unintentional consequence. Since the beginning of civilization, people have engaged the world of natural resources to meet their and others’ material needs. In other words, they have created an economy. Some people have been ingenious at working with and transforming natural resources, others in organizing that work for efficiency, effectiveness, and broader distribution.1 The division of labor is an inevitable presence in both these streams and is one of those bedrock economic concepts so prevalent that one can hardly question its axiomatic function. All human beings have their own particular capacities of mind, body, and soul and thus their own relationship to other human beings and to nature. The idea of mutuality, of shared responsibility in community and the relevance and application of those capacities, is the essential foundation of economic life. Historically, there have been two primary aspects of thought regarding the division of labor. One subscribes to the inevitable efficiency of production that results from the division and specialization of labor in the service of capital. The second identifies the dehumanizing effect of 1 In his 1922 lecture cycle now titled Rethinking Economics, Rudolf Steiner spoke about two streams of value creation in the economy. Stream one is the direct application of labor to land (natural resources). Stream two is the application of intelligence in organizing labor. The development of value, while important in economic thinking, is not a central consideration in this essay, but the two streams have direct relevance for the division of labor. 14 • being human
such specialization based on the notion that the developing human being wants to learn and be whole and, thus, needs to engage in a range of activities to maintain interest in life and nourish the soul. Plato actually speaks to both streams in Republic; specialization is necessary to leverage individual capacities, but this necessity runs counter to the inherent holistic impulse of learning about the world and self. One can find elements of this argument with Adam Smith (industrialization) and Émile Durkheim (The Division of Labor in Society) as well as Karl Marx (alienation) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance). Economists have to cross paths with the human and social reality of the division of labor in understanding economic life—if they want economic thinking to be practical rather than theoretical and see labor as something other than a commodity. Such division is a natural result of how we organize work by self-governed social processes through which individual and organizational strengths are recognized in producing the material goods we need or want. Contrast this with a more extreme product-centric example of an imposed division of labor, the assembly line. Specialization and more granularity mark the progression toward singularly focused knowledge, limited activity, and the sacrifice of human creativity—all sparked by the relentless drive for efficiency. In some professions such as medicine, deep but narrow specializations have led to a kind of efficiency and effectiveness of practice that can border on the miraculous in what they can accomplish. This statement might seem to contradict an earlier one, but in the US, for example, doctors also operate in a medical-economic system that has favored these kinds of specialization and subspecialization. In a certain sense, this approach, while celebrating research and professionalism, is still organized within a mechanistic imagination. The drive for efficiency also correlates with the needs, desires, or avarice we express in the production of capital. This is the modern condition of capitalism. It has genius and sorrow. Genius is in specificity—in the ability to replace a hip or heart effectively or store vast amounts of data in ever smaller real estate. Sorrow comes in the competitive drive for profits that plays host to all this innovation with little regard for the consequences to the human beings producing it. Capital seeks its own increase even as I experience gratitude for what capital has made possible. And people are used up or replaced in capital-producing work and rarely share in the capital that accrues to the one who has the idea and organizes the labor to produce it. Here there does seem to be what I would call a disconnect that shows
