Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/159

 152 THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

We do not need to recall the fact that the great development of the division of labor began in England after the invention of machinery. Thus the spinners and weavers were, for the most part, peasants, such as we meet them to-day in the more backward countries. The invention of machines has completely separated the manufacturing from the agricultural industry. The spin- ner and the weaver, hitherto united in one family, were separated by the machine. Thanks to the machine the spinner can live in England while the weaver dwells in India. Before the invention of machinery the industry of a country was exercised principally on the raw material which was the product of its soil; thus in England wool, in Germany flax, in France silk and flax, in India and the Levant cotton, &c. Thanks to the application of machinery and of steam the division of labor has been able to assume such dimensions that the great industry, detached from the national soil, depends only upon the markets of the world, on international exchanges, and on an international division of labor. In fine, the machine exercises such an influence on the division of labor that when in the manufacture of any given product, means have been found to partially introduce mechanical ap- pliances, the manufacture has been immediately divided into two exploitations entirely independent of each other.

Is it necessary to speak of the providential and philan- thropic end which M. Proudhon discovers in the original invention and application of machinery ?

When in England the market had become so fully developed that manual labor no longer sufficed to supply it, the need for machinery made itself felt. It was then that the application of mechanical science, which had been

fully prepared during the eighteenth century, was thought of,