Marx/Durkheim/Simmel

At the time of the Industrial Revolution, philosophy had already dealt substantially with the notion of "division of labour" although the terminology was slightly different. Our modern sense of the division of labour is, of course, largely derived from nineteenth century industrial capitalism, and it was based on this paradigm that sociological thinkers like Marx, Durkheim, and Simmel would analyze the phenomenon. But we might note by way of introduction that they were inheriting an earlier tradition that emerged from earlier pre-industrial forms of capitalism, what began to emerge in England in the Elizabethan period and thereafter. Thus the Elizabethan idea of a "great chain of being" -- which posited an order and hierarchy to social relationships -- would gradually come to be altered by thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville. By the early eighteenth century, Mandeville would lay down the basic principles of an idea of division...
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