ABSTRACT
Until recently, most accounts of the division of labour in capitalist economies have assumed that its development led both to the reduction of levels of skill possessed by employees and to an increase in the effective control of production by their employers. More careful historical research over the last decade has thrown a great deal of doubt on the former assumption, as it has been repeatedly discovered not only that technical innovation does not always completely dispense with old skills and usually requires new ones, but also that large sectors of even the most advanced economies remain committed to a variety of customer-specific products and hence to an experienced and adaptable work-force.1 This revision of assumptions about skill levels automatically implies a need to reassess the effectiveness of employers’ control of production, for workers’ retention of skill and discretion, even in the context of machine production, undermines all the processes by which it has normally been assumed that the development of capitalism increases the power of the capitalist. For example, theories based on the progressive subdivision of tasks, on the imposition of clearly defined rules and on the separation of conception from execution all appear more doubtful in the light of recent historical studies of actual divisions of labour.
