VI. The Dependence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism

A. The Dependence of the Division of Labor on Private Ownership of the Means of Production

1. The direct dependence: separate, independent minds and knowledge; need separate, independent action—separate, independent production—and thus separate, independent wealth holdings—i.e., private property and private ownership of the means of production.

2. The incompatibility of collectivism and socialism—viz.,functioning as an indivisible unit—with a division-of-labor society: all or some must know all.

a. the absurdity of “central planning”; b. contradictory partial planning under socialism

c. socialist discoordination and the destruction of the division of labor; Western aid and trade prevented famine and collapse

3. The indirect dependence of the division of labor on private ownership of the means of production: the need for a price system as the foundation of economic planning.

a. the unseen economic planning of capitalism: its existence all around us; its basis in prices; the coordinating function of prices: the harmoniously integrated planning of the capitalist system by tens of millions of separate, independent planners.

b. the dependence of the price system on the profit motive and competition; the dependence of these on the institution of private ownership of the means of production

B. The Dependence of the Division of Labor on Exchange and Money

1. The need for exchange in a division-of-labor society.

2. The need for monetary exchange.

a. the radical increase in the extent of the division of labor

b. the ability to make economic calculations and thus comparisons—between input and output, different methods of production, and different industries

C. The Dependence of the Division of Labor on Saving and Capital Accumulation

1. The initial rise in the productivity of labor in agriculture.

2. The division of payments.

D. The Dependence of the Division of Labor on the Freedom of Competition

1. The organization of the division of labor with respect to persons for jobs, products for markets, and  technological methods of production.

2. The protection against the exercise of  arbitrary  power by the companies or workers of any given vital industry.

E. The Dependence of the Division of Labor on the Freedom of Economic Inequality

1. Forced equality and the destruction of causality in production.

2. The destruction of causality in cost—e.g., socialized medicine.

3. Great achievers and great inequality as the means to great achievement. d

4. The connection between economic inequality and differences in the degree of saving.

5. Economic inequality and the ability of the less able to compete against the more able.