ABSTRACT
The earliest innovative principle of the capitalist mode of production was the manufacturing division of labor, and in one form or another the division of labor has remained the fundamental principle of industrial organization. The division of labor in production begins with the analysis of the labor process-that is to say, the separation of the work of production into its constituent elements. The methods of analysis of the labor process and its division into constituent elements is common in all trades and crafts, and represent the first form of the subdivision of labor in detail. Babbage's principle gives expression not to a technical aspect of the division of labor, but to its social aspect according to which labor process may be separated into elements some of which are simpler than others and each of which is simpler than the whole.
