Revision summary
Feudal work: land, serfdom, rent, traditional domination. Capitalist work: free labour, wage, surplus value, impersonal factory command. Durkheim adds organic division of labour and its pathologies. Indian agrarian labour often mixed caste honour with wages.
Model answer
Introduction
The social organisation of work is how labour is commanded, rewarded, and tied to land or wage. Feudal and capitalist types differ in extra-economic coercion versus market dependence, even when both are class societies.
Body
Feudal organisation
- Karl Marx: serfs are tied to land and lord. Surplus is taken as rent, labour service, or produce through extra-economic force and custom.
- Max Weber: patrimonial and traditional domination organise the manor staff. Honour and personal loyalty sit inside the work relation.
- Work is locally embedded. Guilds and household production limit a free labour market.
Capitalist organisation
- Workers are formally free and separated from the means of production. Surplus is extracted as surplus value in the wage relation.
- The factory, clock time, and later bureaucracy, in Weber’s legal-rational key, impersonalise command.
- Emile Durkheim saw organic solidarity and a finer division of labour, with the risk of anomic and forced forms.
Distinction, tightly
- Feudal work binds persons to land and lord. Capitalist work binds them to the market and the firm.
- Caste-typed agrarian labour in India often mixed both: extra-economic honour with cash wages.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD FEU[Feudal work] --> LAND[Land lord custom] CAP[Capitalist work] --> WAGE[Wage market firm] FEU --> EE[Extra-economic coercion] CAP --> SV[Surplus value]
Conclusion
Feudal work is organised by land, custom, and personal domination. Capitalist work is organised by wage, formal freedom, and impersonal command. Marx names the surplus forms; Weber names the staffs; Durkheim names the division of labour.
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