Work and Trade
With the growth of capitalism and international trade, the tradition means of work has evolved to take on a new form. Many sociologists have taken on different perspectives on the subject, and most notably, the “Efficiency of division of labour” view adopted by Adam Smith and the “Anti-Captalism” stance held by Karl Marx. Today, I will discuss work and trade with references to both schools of thoughts.
Division of labour results in specialization of skills
Instead of producing a full product, workers in the new capitalized industries produce parts of the end-product, and are seldom, or almost never, required to perform the other steps necessary to complete the product. This limitation or reduction in skills performance is arugued by Karl Marx to “deskill” workers, and thus rendering them vulnerable. However, this narrowing of skill performance could also likely lead to the worker becoming a specialist in his task, rather than to “deskill” workers, as proposed by Karl Marx. Instead of having to perform a full spectrum of tasks in order to produce something, the new worker now needs only to concentrate on carrying out one specific task amongst many others, and can thus focus on doing it better and faster.
Specialization leads to knowledge acquisition
Having repeatedly performed the same task, workers now know best how the task can be done more efficiently and effectively, which is supported by Adam Smith’s proposition of the efficiency of division of labour. This knowledge is not gained first-hand by the capitalists who “exploit” the workers, but rather by the workers themselves, through having gone through the same (inefficient/ineffective) work procedures many times over. Hence, workers are the true owners of knowledge in the modern world. It is not true that workers are “losing their skills” and “losing the ownership of their end products”, and on the contrary, workers in today’s world are acquiring something more valuable – knowledge.
Knowledge as the new product
Knowledge is worth more than goods are in the new market, and trade will increasingly be carried out in exchange of knowledge than goods. This is evident in the modern world, where the employment of consultantation services is becoming a commonplace. And since knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable, the new way to building wealth and power for nations will be to focus on acquiring knowledge. As the race for knowledge progresses, the only way to develop stronger capabilities is through finding a niche to focus and specialize in, so that you become an expert in the field. And so, it is foreseeable that the next wave of evolution involves the specialization of knowledge (creation of worth) and the free trading of specialized knowledge (accumulation of value).
From industrializing to industrialized
In the new international division of labour model, we can see that nations have moved from capital accumulation to knowledge accumulation. Services and investments are now more valuable than manufactured goods, and are traded as higher-end products compared to the manufactured goods, as manufactured goods were, when compared to natural resources in the past. Something more significantly different in the new model, however, are the positions in which the trading nations are in. In the old model, nations producing finished-goods acquire raw materials from the nations with abundance of raw materials precisely because they do not possess them. In the new model, we see that the post-industrial nations, as their name suggests, have once undergone industrialization; and this is seemingly the key to progress. Whilst finished-goods producing nations might have attained their higher status (i.e. wealth and power) despite not having owned raw materials, the new model proposes that to attain the high status in the modern world, nations require some sort of progress through industrialization. This would highlight to us that rather than a one-way exploitation, the new international division of labour actually leads to the progress of nations by allowing a promotion in status.
An example of this progress from an industrializing to industrialized nation would be India. We have seen how many MNCs relocate their call centre functions to this country in the past decades due to their lower cost of labour (i.e. “cheap labour”), and then in recent years, this country has progressed to become the land of IT experts and is quickly rising to be one of the powerhouses in Asia.
The brighter side
Whilst free trade have brought about many issues such as labour exploitation, dominance of a few big players and the inequitable power distribution among nations, all is not gloom and doom. There are always benefits brought about by globalization and international trade, and the transfer of knowledge, skills and capabilities, the promotion of local cultures and better appreciation of differences are just a few to name. It is also worthy to note that in recent years, there is a popular rising trend of trade responsibility and phrases such as “corporate social responsibility”, “eco-something” and “fair trade” will remain the buzzwords in the years to come.
