Economic Principles

The author uses the example of “the potter's wheel” to

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
As to machinery, Marx and his followers, maintain that it represents nothing but the average labor of the past; and so long as it exists only in its smaller and simpler forms, the devising and constructing of which are not referable to any faculties which we are able to distinguish from those of the average laborer, we have further seen that the theory of Marx holds good. Labor produces alike both the finished goods and its implements. But in proportion as machines or other contrivances, such as vessels, grow in size or complexity, and embody, as they do in their more modern developments, ingenuity of the highest and knowledge of the most abstruse kinds, the situation changes; and we are able to identify certain faculties as essential to the ultimate result, which affect the work of the laborers, but which do not emanate from themselves. Any three men of average strength and intelligence might make a potter's wheel together, or build a small boat together, as they frequently do now, their several tasks being interchangeable, or assigned to each of them by easy mutual agreement. The business of directing labor has not separated itself from the actual business of laboring. Each man knows the object of what he does, and can co-ordinate that object with the object of what is done by his fellows. But when the ultimate result is something so vast and complicated that a thousand men instead of three have to co-operate in the production of it, when a million pieces of metal, some large and some minute, have to be cast, filed, turned, rolled, or bent, so that finally they may all coalesce into a single mechanical organism, no one laborer sees further than the task which he performs himself. He cannot adjust his work to that of another man, who is probably working a quarter of a mile away from him, and he has in most cases no idea whatever of how the two pieces of work are related to each other. Each laborer has simply to perform his work in accordance with directions which emanate from some mind other than his own, and the whole practical value of what the laborers do depends on the quality of the directions which are thus given to each.
In other words, in proportion as the industrial process is enhanced in productivity by the concentration on it of the higher faculties of mankind, there is an increasing fission of this process as a whole into two kinds of activity represented by two different groups. We have no longer merely although we have this still an increasing division of labor; but we have the laborers of all kinds and grades separating themselves into one group on the one hand, and the men who direct their labor, as a separate group, on the other hand.

What is the tone of the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
As to machinery, Marx and his followers, maintain that it represents nothing but the average labor of the past; and so long as it exists only in its smaller and simpler forms, the devising and constructing of which are not referable to any faculties which we are able to distinguish from those of the average laborer, we have further seen that the theory of Marx holds good. Labor produces alike both the finished goods and its implements. But in proportion as machines or other contrivances, such as vessels, grow in size or complexity, and embody, as they do in their more modern developments, ingenuity of the highest and knowledge of the most abstruse kinds, the situation changes; and we are able to identify certain faculties as essential to the ultimate result, which affect the work of the laborers, but which do not emanate from themselves. Any three men of average strength and intelligence might make a potter's wheel together, or build a small boat together, as they frequently do now, their several tasks being interchangeable, or assigned to each of them by easy mutual agreement. The business of directing labor has not separated itself from the actual business of laboring. Each man knows the object of what he does, and can co-ordinate that object with the object of what is done by his fellows. But when the ultimate result is something so vast and complicated that a thousand men instead of three have to co-operate in the production of it, when a million pieces of metal, some large and some minute, have to be cast, filed, turned, rolled, or bent, so that finally they may all coalesce into a single mechanical organism, no one laborer sees further than the task which he performs himself. He cannot adjust his work to that of another man, who is probably working a quarter of a mile away from him, and he has in most cases no idea whatever of how the two pieces of work are related to each other. Each laborer has simply to perform his work in accordance with directions which emanate from some mind other than his own, and the whole practical value of what the laborers do depends on the quality of the directions which are thus given to each.
In other words, in proportion as the industrial process is enhanced in productivity by the concentration on it of the higher faculties of mankind, there is an increasing fission of this process as a whole into two kinds of activity represented by two different groups. We have no longer merely although we have this still an increasing division of labor; but we have the laborers of all kinds and grades separating themselves into one group on the one hand, and the men who direct their labor, as a separate group, on the other hand.