Inequality and the Division of Labor
Turgot’s observations on inequality and the division of labor in his Letter to Mme. de Graffigny commenced with his defense of the unequal “distribution of ranks so characteristic of contemporary society” Contrary to what Zilia, Mme.
de Graffigny’s heroine in the Lettres peruviennes, appears to think, Turgot argued succinctly that the unequal distribution of ranks in society is a most important matter, a proposition he claimed rather easy to justify Turgot did this in three paragraphs. These directly link inequality with the division of professions (the social division of labor) because such a division in turn implies differences in skills and aptitudes for specific tasks, which create differences in remuneration and, ultimately, in class structure.As done more fully in his later Reflexions (see section 3, below), Turgot linked the division of labor with capital, and the division of contemporary commercial society into owners of capital on the one hand, and propertyless “hands” (or laborers), on the other.
Turgot’s subtle argument in his Letter sees inequality as rooted in human existence, caused by the different endowments of skills and abilities that nature has bestowed on individuals. Of particular interest in these paragraphs is his interpretation of what were to become the first two of the three basic objectives of the 1789 French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. Turgot, however, did not deal with fraternity in this context, and perceived liberty and equality as mutually inconsistent and virtually unattainable in combination. Complete freedom of property, the manner in which Turgot generally interpreted freedom or liberty, entailing as it did specialization and the division of labor, is inimical to equality for reasons previously stated. However, Turgot’s manner of putting the argument is so interesting that it can be extensively quoted:
[Inequality] is necessary, because men are not at all born equal; because their strength, their mind, their passions, invariably break the temporary balance between them, which laws may be able to place there; because all men are born in a state of weakness which makes them dependent on their parents and creates undissolvable ties amongst them.
Families unequal in skill or strength double the causes of inequality; war between savages assumes a chieftain. What would become of society without this inequality of ranks? Everyone would be reduced to bare necessities, or rather, there would be a multitude of people who are not assured of them. It is impossible to work without having some tools, and the means of subsistence prior to the harvest. Those who do not have the knowledge or the opportunity to acquire them, do not have the right to deprive those who have deserved, earned or acquired them through their work. If the lazy or the ignorant deprive the industrious and the skilled [of these resources], every type of work would be discouraged. Poverty would become universal. It is most just and useful for all, that those who lack either mind or the good fortune, lend their arms to those who know how to use them, who are able to give them a wage in advance and to guarantee them some share in the future product. Their subsistence is then assured, but so is their dependence. It is not unjust that those who have invented a productive employment and who have provided their fellow workmen with the food and the necessary implements for existence, who only have free contracts with this, keep the best part [of the produce] as the price of their advances, they need to work less, and enjoy more leisure. This leisure puts them in the position to reflect longer, further increasing their knowledge, what they are able to save from their share, justly the best share which they need to obtain from the product, increases their capital and ability to launch other enterprises.Inequality was born in this way, and grows even more among the most virtuous and moral people. It may have, and frequently has had, many more additional causes, and every stratagem through which it is desired to depart from the State, amounts to a relapse into inequality. But it is not an evil, it is fortunate for mankind, a benefit for those who have weighed up with as much kindness as wisdom, all the elements which enter into the human mind. Where would society be if things were not like this and if everyone would only till his own small field? It would [then] be necessary that everyone also build his own house, and makes all his clothes by himself.
Every man would rely on himself alone, and on the products of the small plot which form his environment. Of what would the inhabitants of the soil live if they produced no wheat at all? With what would they transport the produce from one country to another? The least among peasants enjoys a multitude of commodities, often gathered from very different climes. I presume the least was provided: a thousand hands, perhaps a hundred thousand, have worked for him. The division of professions necessarily leads to the inequality of ranks. Without this division, what perfects the useful arts? What succors the weak? What extends the knowledge of the mind? What gives to mankind and to nations that education as much specialised as general which forms habits? Who peacefully will arbitrate quarrels? Who will place a brake on the ferocity of some and protection for the weakness of others? Liberty!—I speak of it while longing for it. Mankind is perhaps unworthy of thee. Equality—they long for it, but they cannot attain it.Oh, that Zilia once more weigh up the converse benefits of savages and civilized man. Preference for savages is a ridiculous declamation! Until she refutes it, until she demonstrates that the vice we look upon as induced by good breeding are the lot of the human mind, that those who have no gold at all are as miserly as those who have it, because men everywhere have a liking for property [and] for the right to preserve it, a covetousness which brings about an ability to accumulate products from it. (1751a, 785-86; my translation)1
It may be noted that an earlier work by Turgot (1750, 43) differs slightly from the argument just presented. It explicitly stated that “barbarism makes all men equal.” However, it also developed the argument that progress, especially once a surplus has arisen in agriculture, permits a division of classes—that is, property owners and workmen—and a division of the professions, which in turn creates “towns, trade, the useful arts” and so on.
Subsequently, Turgot’s Plan for a Discourse on Universal History, which probably dates from early 1751, modified the statement about barbarism just quoted. Turgot there altered his opinion as follows: “among barbarous peoples, this inequality could not be very great” (1751b, 89).
However, when labour is divided according to man’s aptitudes, which is in itself very advantageous, since everything is done better and quicker. The unequal distribution of goods and social responsibilities means that the majority of men who are employed in rough and lowly work, are unable to make the same progress as other men, to whom this distribution gave leisure and the means of advancing themselves. (Ibid.)
The link between inequality and the division of ranks, and progress, capital accumulation and the division of labor, was therefore one that Turgot had already put forward while in his early twenties. The view of stadial progress, that is, the so-called four stages theory he also developed at this time, was totally inconsistent with the elevation of savage society to which some of his noted contemporaries were rather prone. The notion of the noble savage and the happiness of the savage state were not propositions to which Turgot could easily subscribe given his views that progress in the growth of wealth, requiring a division of labor and an accumulation of capital, necessarily implied inequality. After all, the class structure of modern commercial society was that of property owners (of land and capital) and propertyless wage laborers, an explicitly unequal distribution of wealth. When Turgot again pondered this subject 15 years later in his famous Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, this is satisfactorily elaborated for both the agricultural stage and the subsequent (in time) more superior commercial stage. This links the argument immediately to that presented in the next section of this chapter.
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