Babbage’s principle is fundamental to the evolution of the division of labor in capitalist society. It gives expression not to a technical aspect of the division of labor, but to its social aspect.  Insofar as the labor process may be dissociated, it may be separated into elements some of which are simpler than others and each of which is simpler than the whole.  Translated into market terms, this means that the labor power capable of performing the process may be purchased more cheaply as dissociated elements than as a capacity integrated in a single worker.  Applied first to the handicrafts and then to the mechanical crafts, Babbage’s principle eventually becomes the underlying force governing all forms of work in capitalist society, no matter in what setting or at what hierarchical level (57).