Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/23

 The division of labour which separates the process of production into a great number of very simple and often purely mechanical operations requiring no exercise of reason, and which causes separate workmen to be employed for each one of these divided operations, would be quite impossible without an extensive production of the articles in question; and is therefore only called into existence and developed by such extensive demand. Conversely this separation of labour into such simple operations and manipulations, leads further (1) to an ever increasing cheapness, (2) consequently to production on a greater and more gigantic scale, ever spreading beyond this and that market till it reaches the whole market of the world, and (3) by this means, and through the new divisions which this extension renders possible in the single operations of labour, to an ever increasing advance in the division of labour itself.

Through this series of reciprocal operations of cause and effect, an entire change took place in the work of the community, and consequently in all the relations of life of the community itself.

A brief view of the nature of this revolution may be obtained by reducing it to the following contrasts.

In the earlier part of the Middle Ages, as only a very small number of costly products could bear the enhanced price which would have been caused by their transport, articles were only produced to supply the needs of the locality in which the producers lived. This implied a very limited market comprising only their immediate neighbourhood, the requirements of which were for this very reason well known, fixed, and uniform. The