One of the main characteristics of a capitalist economy is the division of labor. The division of labor allows for greater efficiency in production by compartmentalizing tasks and having individual workers specialize in a single domain. Perhaps the best example that illustrates this was Henry Ford and his revolutionary advances for the automobile industry.

Prior to Ford, cars were primarily produced by skilled workmen. These workmen not only had to have strong mechanical skills, but also extensive knowledge in engineering, physics and material science. In many cases, these craftsmen were capable of building an entire car by themselves. Indeed, car making was an intellectual artform and each piece was a luxury reserved for the rich.

Then Ford came along and began building cars via assembly line. Ford hired large numbers of unskilled workers, many of whom had never even seen a car in their life, and gave each individual a few simple instructions. Suddenly, these workers had become “car makers.”

The division of labor allowed these workers to know just enough in order to do their job without ever needing to fully understand the process. Amazingly, not only was this method more efficient than the cars made by the skilled workmen, but it was cheaper and faster too. Thanks to Ford, car prices dropped dramatically and became so commonplace that even the unskilled workers he had hired could afford them.

Ford had actualized the lessons learned from the Enlightenment and Industrial revolution from the 17th and 18th centuries for the transportation industry. The following excerpt from A Treatise of Human Nature highlights this:

“When every individual person labors a-part, and only for himself, his force is too small to execute any considerable work; his labor being employ’d in supplying all his different necessities, he never attains a perfection in any particular art; and as his force and success are not at all times equal, the least failure in either of these particulars must be attended with inevitable ruin and misery. Society provides a remedy for these three inconveniences. By the conjunction of forces, our power is augmented: By the partition of employments, our ability en creases: And by mutual succor we are less expos’d to fortune and accidents. ’Tis by this additional force, ability, and security, that society becomes advantageous.” – David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

150 years before Ford, David Hume recognized the exponential possibilities that human collaboration and the division of labor had for transforming societies. Today, these “conjunction of forces” are represented in the form of large corporations. This rapid advancement in efficiency is one of capitalism’s greatest qualities- creating vast amounts of wealth through expansive production without the need for understanding how.

Nevertheless, despite the enormous benefits that the division of labor can provide to society, it is not without its faults. Karl Marx most notably criticized the division of labor with his theory of alienation and how humans become a “cog in a system of machines.” Adam Smith also criticized the division of labor for its harmful effects to democracy in The Wealth of Nations:

“In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.” – Adam Smith, V.1.178

Smith pointed out that the division of labor breeds ignorance because it encourages citizens to a very narrow focus of awareness. Citizen’s need to know how to do their specialized jobs and that’s it. There’s no need in viewing the bigger picture- the inter-connectivity of society, politics and rational discourse. These compartmental underpinnings explain people like Ben Carson: someone who is a brilliant neurosurgeon, but also a young earth creationist. Or as Bill Maher describes them, “Smart-Stupid people.”

The truth is that democracy only works well with equally informed citizens- and capitalism, by its very nature of making production extremely efficient, undermines democracy by creating an ignorant populace. In this way, America has been able to both excel and fall behind at the same time. We are a nation of wealth and ignorance, but does it have to be this way? Are the fruits of the divisions of labor worth an ignorant populace? Are democracy and capitalism fundamentally incompatible?

This is the paradox we are currently living in. America is a dumb wealthy giant stumbling forward on a land that is getting narrower and narrower, and only time will tell how the story ends.