But, in spite of the numerous analogies and links connecting them,
 division of labour in the interior of a society, and that in the interior
 of a workshop, differ not only in degree, but also in kind. The analogy
 appears most indisputable where there is an invisible bond uniting the335
 various branches of trade. For instance the cattle-breeder produces hides,
 the tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoemaker, the leather
 into boots. Here the thing produced by each of them is but a step towards
 the final form, which is the product of all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker with the means of production. Now it is quite
 possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference between the above
 social division of labour, and the division in manufacture, is merely subjective,
 exists merely for the observer, who, in a manufacture, can see with one
 glance, all the numerous operations being performed on one spot, while
 in the instance given above, the spreading out of the work over great areas,
 and the great number of people employed in each branch of labour, obscure
 the connexion. [33] But what is it that forms the bond between the independent labours of the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and
 the shoemaker? It is the fact that their respective products are commodities.
 What, on the other hand, characterises division of labour in manufactures?
 The fact that the detail labourer produces no commodities. [34] It is only the common product of all the detail labourers that becomes a commodity. [35] Division336 of labour in society is brought about by the purchase and sale of the products of different
 branches of industry, while the connexion between the detail operations
 in a workshop, is due to the sale of the labour-power of several workmen
 to one capitalist, who applies it as combined labour-power. The division
 of labour in the workshop implies concentration of the means of production
 in the hands of one capitalist; the division of labour in society implies
 their dispersion among many independent producers of commodities. While
 within the workshop, the iron law of proportionality subjects definite
 numbers of workmen to definite functions, in the society outside the workshop,
 chance and caprice have full play in distributing the producers and their
 means of production among the various branches of industry. The different
 spheres of production, it is true, constantly tend to an equilibrium: for,
 on the one hand, while each producer of a commodity is bound to produce
 a use-value, to satisfy a particular social want, and while the extent
 of these wants differs quantitatively, still there exists an inner relation
 which settles their proportions into a regular system, and that system
 one of spontaneous growth; and, on the other hand, the law of the value
 of commodities ultimately determines how much of its disposable working-time
 society can expend on each particular class of commodities. But this constant
 tendency to equilibrium, of the various spheres of production, is exercised,
 only in the shape of a reaction against the constant upsetting of this
 equilibrium. The a priori system on which the division of labour,
 within the workshop, is regularly carried out, becomes in the division
 of labour within the society, an a posteriori, nature-imposed necessity,
 controlling the lawless caprice of the producers, and perceptible in the
 barometrical fluctuations of the market-prices. Division of labour within
 the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over men,
 that are but parts of a mechanism that belongs to him. The division of
 labour within the society brings into contact independent commodity-producers,
 who acknowledge no other authority but that of competition, of the coercion
 exerted by the pressure of their mutual interests; just as in the animal
 kingdom, the bellum omnium contra omnes 
 [war of all against all – Hobbes] more or less preserves the
 conditions of existence of every species. The same bourgeois mind which
 praises division of labour in the workshop, life-long annexation of the
 labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital,
 as being an organisation of labour that increases its productiveness – that
 same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt
 to socially control and regulate the process of production,337 as an
 inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted
 play for the bent of the individual capitalist. It is very characteristic
 that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more
 damning to urge against a general organisation of the labour of society,
 than that it would turn all society into one immense factory.