ABSTRACT
This book provides, for the first time, a systematic and comprehensive narrative of the history of one central idea in economics, namely the division of labour, over the past two and a half millennia, with special focus on that having occurred in the most recent two and a half centuries. Quite contrary to the widely held belief, the idea has a fascinating biography, much richer than that exemplified by the pin-making story that was popularized by Adam Smith’s classical work published in 1776.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |8 pages
Introduction
part |48 pages
Pre-Smith analyses
chapter |28 pages
Early analyses
part |45 pages
The Smithian economics of the division of labor
chapter |43 pages
The Smithian economics of the division of labor and the market process
part |46 pages
Marx on the division of labor in capitalist manufacturing and the Hayekian problem of knowledge
chapter |21 pages
Machinery and the factory system
part |54 pages
Economic development framed in the economics of the division of labor