Skill Exercise III

Due by class-time on the day of the Smith and Marx discussion.

Read through these questions before you start reading the texts. This will help you focus on the
important points before you go into the texts themselves. Answer the following questions in one
or two sentences and provide an example from the text (such as a quote) that supports your
answer. Finally explain how that quote provides support for your answer. Type your answer in
the space below the question and submit the completed exercise through Moodle.
If you have any technical difficulties or concerns, please let me know. If you have any questions
or are thoroughly confused by a certain passage (or by the whole thing) let me know, and I can
help you work through it. Sooner is better than later.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
1) What is the division of labor? What is its advantage over other methods of production?
The division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the
effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which
it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a
certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the
propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. This quote and the
paragraph before explains that the advantage over other methods of production is that
division of labor allows manufactories to divide workers up into their specialty areas.
Having workers in a their specific sector of manufacturing that they are previously
familiar with and educated on yields quicker production time as well as higher numbers
of mass production.
2) Smith uses an analogy of greyhounds hunting a hare. What does he want to show about
human nature with this example? How does it relate to his view of ideal human economic
relations?
Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of
acting in some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavors to
intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. Thus, however, is not the
effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same
object at the particular time. In this analogy he is showing that in human nature it is
more efficient to work together and utilize division of labor. That it takes less time and
yields faster and larger production. This relates because his view of ideal human
economic relations tells us that this is not ideal. It is not ideal because in economic
relations they are working solely toward exchanging one thing for another.
3) According to Smith, should the state be involved in guiding or planning the economy?
Why or why not?

All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken
away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own
accord. Smith explains that state should not be involved in the planning of the economy
as it destroys natural liberty and every mans freedom to pursue his own interest his own
way, and to bring both, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with
those of any other man.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
A brief note on terminology: when Marx and Engels discuss the bourgeoisie, they refer to the
upper middle class, particularly those who control the flow of capital and the means of
production. Marx and Engels also discuss the proletariat. Think of this group as the wage-earning
class, particularly the class of unskilled laborers.
1) According to Marx and Engels, what is the driving force behind history?
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and
slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending
classes. Here they explain that the driving force behind history is class struggles, that
classes in opposition with one another yields conflicts and in turn wars. They explain that
our history is made up of fighting and war that originated with class struggles.
2) What has the effect of industrialization been on the working classes, specifically on
artisans and craftsmen? Think back to the division of labor: what is the effect of the
division of labor on the working class?
The lower strata of the middle class- the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired
tradesmen generally, the handicraftsman and peasants- all these sink gradually into the
proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which
Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large
capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of
production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population. In this
quote he simply explains that all of the working class, specifically artisans and craftsmen,
have skills in a position that is now being taken over by new means of production. They
now have machines taking the places of the working class making their position in the
working field worthless.
3) Marx and Engels argue for the abolition of private property. What is the main reason that
they give for this radical position? That is, why do they think that private property,
particularly in a capitalist understanding, is so problematic? Marx and Engels try to

answer possible objections to their radical proposition. What is one of these objections,
and how do they respond to it?
Capital is therefore, not a personal, it is a social power. When, therefore, capital is
converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal
property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of
the property that is changed. It losses its class-character. Here they explain that private
property is so problematic in a capitalist understanding because capital is a collective
product that can only be set in motion by the many of society from which the capital
comes from, making capitalism more social then personal. So they argue that private
property takes away from that common property which belongs to all members of society.