Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/735

 THE PRESENT STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN GERMANY 719

in the separation of society into classes the strongest factor to produce ultimately complete collectivism. Class antagonisms must and will find their termination when there are no more antagonisms, that is, when society is no longer split into classes. Private property alone is it that separates society into recipro- cally hostile classes. With the abolition of private property this antagonism will disappear. So it is also with the division of labor. The more occupations are specialized, the more frag- mentary each one's work becomes, the more dependent is each individual upon another. This dependence tends obviously towards ultimate socialization in the first place, of production. So at least reasons socialism.

Gustav Schmoller reached an opposite result in his mono- graphs upon this subject. 1 By division of labor Schmoller understands "the permanent, individual, lifelong adjustment to a specialized vocation" (Jahrb. XIV, p. 47). He traces division of labor back to differences in men. It can consequently not be regarded as an historical category. Variation of social rank and possession, of honor and emolument, is really only a second- ary phenomenon, a consequence of social differentiation, and it is developed according to natural laws. He recognizes in all only two grounds for division of labor: "the difference in per- sonal qualities and the community of interest of the men in a given combination" (p. 53). Even a contrast as radical as that in our time between wage-earners and entrepreneurs has its roots, according to Schmoller, not in property but in hereditary typical qualities, the modification of 'which is of much greater impor- tance for social reform than changes in the distribution of prop- erty " (p. 89). According to this view division of labor depends originally upon adaptation and then upon transmission of the qualities concerned. In the social order of today it is " neither absolutely harmonious nor absolutely anarchic, but rather a

1 The following are notable in this connection : (i) "Das Wesen der Arbeitsthei lung und der socialen Klassenbildung" (Jahrbuch fur Gtstttgfbung, u. s. ., xiv. Jahr- gang); (2) "Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Unternehmung M (ibiJ.)\ (3) "Ueber die Entwicklung des Grossbetriebes und die sociale Klassenbildung " (Prntssitcke Jakr- biichtr, April 1 802).