s: "the division of labour may play a much more important role than is normally attached to it. It would serve not only to endow societies with luxury, perhaps enviable but nevertheless superfluous. It would be a condition for their existence. It is through the division of labour, or at least mainly through it, that the cohesion of societies would be ensured. It would determine the essential characteristics that constitute them" (Durkheim, 1984, p. 23).
Marx would disagree with Durkheim's conception of the origin of the division of labor. For Marx, the history of the division begins with individual families, where the work was distributed to meet the family's needs. Surplus produced by the work eventually led to the acquisition of private property and the formation of a separate class, the bourgeoisie (the middle-class). The bourgeoisie then acquired the means of production, whereby the
...