JUSTIFYING THE DIVISION OF LABOR

Socrates’s economic analysis so far is rudimentary. Upon reflection, he is not satisfied with it himself. What bothers him about the city of four or five men is that its foundational principles are unexplained and now appear to him uncertain. He and Adeimantus have assumed (i) the neediness of individuals, (ii) the need for the division of labor, and (iii) that one person will specialize in a single job. They therefore next question whether these assumptions are justified (369e-370a): Is it actually worth the trouble to partner with others? Is it necessary? Why not simply spend the “time” (chronos) and “effort” (literally “toil,” ponos)—Socrates recognizes both of these as limited resources—that one would have to spend on a single activity (e.g., farming) if one were to produce enough for several people so as to trade with them, on a variety of productive activities for oneself (e.g., making a house, cloak, and shoes, as well as farming)? Adeimantus supposes that it would be easier to exchange one’s products with others than to go it alone (370a). Socrates finds nothing strange about this hunch, and, more importantly, he offers three reasons why.

First, no one is “extremely similar” to anyone else, “but one [of us] excels with respect to his nature at making one product, and another [naturally excels] at making another” (370b1-3). Second, “as an individual [lit. being one], someone would act more finely [kallion] in working [in] one [art]” than in working in many arts (370b5-6). Third, in all working it is necessary to have adequate “free time” (schole) to follow the emerging product closely through the process of production, watching at each stage for the “crucial moments” (kairoi) to act upon it, if the product is to come out as desired (370b-c). In other words, specialization is justified because of (i) variation in individuals’ natural aptitudes (by “aptitude,” I include both ability and inclination),²¹ (ii) the conduciveness of focused experience to individuals’ acquired aptitudes, and (iii) the need for attentiveness to the right moment for acting according to one’s aptitudes. Within a limited group of potential trade partners, individuals will specialize to the extent that variation in any of these three conditions exists. Where no variation exists, there is no reason to specialize and exchange, and individuals will produce a variety of things for themselves. The division of labor thus described yields certain results: “the amount of each of the products increases, and they come into being more finely and more easily” (370c4-5).²² In the words of Robbins (1932,

14), “There are the sum of the principles, more or less correctly stated, of the division of labour.”

The analytical comprehensiveness of Socrates’s theory of the division of labor can be brought to light by a comparison to that of Adam Smith. Smith famously proposes that the division of labor arises due to three beneficial outcomes: “first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour” (Smith 1904, 9). Smith’s first reason for the division of labor corresponds to Socrates’s second. Smith’s second reason Socrates does not identify, but it would properly fall under the general category of Socrates’s second stated reason, that one works more finely when practicing one art than several. Smith’s third reason, too, may be classed as part of Socrates’s second reason, if we consider the development of tools to be (an unstated) part of the mastery of an art. As regards Socrates’s first reason for specialization, Smith’s theory is lacking. As Robbins observes, “there is a great difference between the principles of the division of labour” in Plato and Smith, since the latter, in his famous explanation of what makes one person a philosopher and another a street porter, “dwells all, or nearly all, on education” instead of also on differences in nature (Robbins 2000, 14; see Smith 1904, 17-18). Moreover, Smith’s theory omits Socrates’s third reason altogether, the crucial variable of availability to be attentive to particular events.

Nevertheless, many scholars have criticized Plato for his theory of the division of labor.²³ Schumpeter (1959, 56) claims that he “puts the emphasis not upon the increase of efficiency that results from division of labor per se but upon the increase of efficiency that results from allowing everyone to specialize in what he is by nature best fitted for,” and that his “caste system” rests upon this basis. Lowry (1987, 16) takes a similar view. Yet Schumpeter and Lowry inaccurately read the “caste system” introduced later in the Republic back in the early city. In fact, as Joshua I. Weinstein notes (2009, 442-43) and as we have just seen, in the early city Socrates offers natural differences as only one of three reasons for the division of labor. Similar to Schumpeter and Lowry, Paul J. McNulty places “natural differences” at the center of Plato’s theory of the division of labor, which he says Plato uses as a “justification for occupational stratification and labor immobility” (McNulty 1975, 373, 372, and see 372-74; see also Devereux 1979, 36, 38). In doing so, however, he quotes only from the first of Socrates’s reasons for the division of labor, ignoring the others. He also relies heavily on a later passage, where Socrates seems to recall with Glaucon that we were thoroughly preventing the shoemaker from attempting at the same time to be a farmer, weaver, or house builder, but [he was only allowed to be] a shoemaker, . . . and in the same way we were assigning one [work] to each one of the others, [the work] for which each [person] was naturally suited and in which, by remaining at leisure from other things and working at it throughout his life and not passing up the crucial moments, he was going to produce in a fine way. (374b6-c3)

I must highlight, however, that this passage comes two pages after the early city in a context whose significance McNulty overlooks. The early, “healthy” city Socrates is building with Adeimantus is cut off at 372c-e when Glaucon interrupts and demands that the city have luxuries—by definition, unnecessary products—instead of the simple, necessary food and possessions so far described. As the inhabitants subsequently begin to pursue unlimited pleasure, Socrates notes ways in which they, and the city as a whole, become unhealthy. Of relevance to us is that Glaucon, in making his demand, insists metaphorically that, “if you were furnishing a city of sows”—an animal proverbially contrasted in intelligence with human beings²⁴—it would be necessary to “fatten” such inhabitants with all manner of contemporary Greek pleasures (fine food, furniture, etc.). Glaucon assumes for himself and Socrates a managerial project akin to that of managing unthinking livestock. His characteristic, sanguine inclination to manage others²⁵ contrasts sharply with Socrates’s previous treatment of the inhabitants as individuals who choose to specialize in their work so as to exchange with one another and so best fulfill their needs. Socrates and Adeimantus “made” (369c9, 371b6-7) and “founded” (371b7) the early city merely as observers, as it were, of the ways in which “our [human] need” (369c10) truly structures the cooperative interactions of individuals, which they described. Following Glaucon’s interruption, by contrast, Glaucon and Socrates become members of the city who directly intervene in the citizens’ lives by leading them to wage war on neighboring cities (373d-e).

Keeping this in mind, we must also account for the fact that the block quote above (374b6-c3) is preceded by a statement in which Socrates tests Glaucon’s memory; he proposes that the city will need specialized soldiers “‘if you, at least, and all of us, agreed in a fine way when we were forming the city,’ I said, ‘and presumably we agreed, if you remember, that it is impossible for one [person] to work at many arts in a fine way.’ ‘That’s true,’ he said” (374a4-7). Throughout Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Socrates uses the word “presumably” (pou) to introduce a premise that he thinks his interlocutor might take for granted, whether or not he believes it himself.²⁶ In fact, Socrates and Adeimantus never agreed that one person could never do many arts well; rather, they said that focusing on a single art would allow one to practice that art better than one would if one also had to practice others, and they implied that one person could not do many arts well to the extent that his nature was ill-suited for them or he could not devote adequate time to them, which hardly applies to all sets of multiple arts.

Yet even this is not the most important difference between what Glaucon “remembers” and what actually happened. The primary and explicit concern for Socrates and Adeimantus in the early city was whether an individual has a productive advantage over others—whether specializing and exchanging would lead to more and better products, with less effort, for each actor. This is what determines whether someone chooses to specialize in a certain task. What Glaucon has “agreed” to is something simpler and more rigid, though, and it is on this new basis, and on the basis of Glaucon’s crude managerial involvement in the city, that Socrates proceeds in the block quote above to remember, “presumably,” that “we were assigning” one job to each inhabitant and “were thoroughly preventing” him from ever deviating from his task throughout his whole life—even though this is not what he and Adeimantus actually did. When we pay attention in this way to the speaker and the context of what is said, we cannot assume as Schumpeter and McNulty do that later descriptions of the city in the Republic represent Socrates’s (or Plato’s) own convictions in a straightforward way. I do not intend to present a full theory here about why or how Plato makes the speakers of the Republic develop the city in speech in different directions at different stages. I wish only to represent and explain the analysis of the early city in its own terms, and on this basis to point out certain ways in which it is distinct from and incompatible with later passages commonly cited to explain it.

Another criticism of Plato’s explanation of the division of labor focuses on Socrates’s wish to promote the mastery of “arts.” Drawing from both the early city and later passages in the Republic (including the block quote we have just discussed),²⁷ Anna Greco argues at length that for Plato the division of labor is driven not by a pursuit of economic efficiency but by a conventional Greek concern to promote “excellence” (arete) through the mastery of “arts” (or “crafts,” technai)—for example, the arts of farming, of house building, or of weaving (Greco 2009, 53, 56-57, 59, 61-66). As a consequence, “[u]nlike what happens in Adam Smith’s model, for Plato it is not the case that division of labour requires specialization . . . [but] the other way around,” as specialization in specific arts for the sake of improving quality drives the division of labor (Greco 2009, 61; see Finley 1970, 4). Plato is not concerned, on this reading, with efficiency either from an individual or from a systemic point of view; whereas art aims at quality, efficiency of production is also concerned with quantity. Moreover, Greco proposes, efficiency is achieved not only by making the most of workers’ “natural abilities, talents, skills or knowledge”—resources to which Plato does pay attention—but also by reducing costs in “materials and time,” which in her view are not Plato’s concern (Greco 2009, 58; see also 62-64).

Let us first address the question of time: Socrates is explicitly aware that time constraints constitute an independent reason for the division of labor. We have already seen that at 369e-370a Socrates identified time along with effort as a limited resource requiring the most beneficial allocation. Of more analytical significance, his third reason for the division of labor specifies that one must be free enough from other activities to be able to carry out a needed productive task. In other words, regardless of one’s natural aptitudes or the benefits of focused work, there may be situations in which one person will specialize in a certain job simply because no one else is as available to do that job at the time it is needed.²⁸

As regards productive efficiency, Greco fails to give Socrates’s concluding statement about the results of the division of labor its deserved weight (Greco 2009, 52); Socrates says that the amount of the products will increase, and that the process of their coming into being will occur “more finely and more easily” (kallion kai rhaion), as Weinstein (2009, 443) also insists. Moreover, Socrates does not bother to repeat here either that mastery of the arts will increase or that products will be of higher quality; instead, we hear only of (i) the increase in their quantity, (ii) the “fineness” of the productive process—in the context, perhaps this vague term even refers to the efficiency of resource use—and (iii) the reduced effort required for production. In other words, as Schofield (1999, 74-76) similarly concludes, Socrates thinks that the division of labor is justified at least in part because it increases efficiency.

Greco also offers evidence that the ancient Greek economy did not feature significant competition that could have spurred the pursuit of efficiency— and this helps to explain, she suggests, why Plato did not come up with such a theory (Greco 2009, 62-63). I find her historical conclusions somewhat doubtful,²⁹ but even if they were not, they are irrelevant in the face of Socrates’s clear statements demonstrating that Plato indeed did have a theory of the division of labor driven by concerns for efficiency. Moreover, Socrates’s original, foundational theory that individuals will exchange with one another for mutual benefits—a theory in which the goals of developing an art or improving product quality play no part—makes clear that he seeks efficiency from both the individual and the systemic points of view, and that it is in fact the division of labor that drives specialization, not the other way around.

Greco insightfully notes “a tension in Plato between (i) the recognition of the fundamental economic forces originating and sustaining political associations [in the early city] and (ii) the construction of an ideal city which ends up obliterating such economic forces” (Greco 2009, 67). I agree that there is a real tension between the principles of the early city and those of the city that emerges by the end of Book 3, where rulers use an extreme, propagan- distic “noble lie” to increase patriotism and ensure obedience, classifying citizens crudely into three classes (414b-415d)—and between the early city and the city of Book 5, where rulers and soldiers own virtually no private property and may not touch money (see 416c-417b), are forbidden private families, and are assigned their sexual partners every night in a lottery rigged for eugenic purposes, with any children they bear quickly taken away to be raised in a communal pen (457c-464c). I insist that none of this takes away from the insights present in the early city. As Robbins (1932, 12) observes, “Plato is the first man, or first famous writer, . . . to enunciate the principle of the division of labour.”