Can a society exist without division of labor?

Question

I always wonder why a person needs to be at a certain position. A pizza guy delivers pizza for a living. A student studies chemistry. And then there are CEOs living in their ivory tower. I mean, can't a person just take care of himself or herself? Can't we grow our own food and live a life without being in a certain profession? I understand that we need to rely on others to have a better chance of survival or to live a more fulfilled life. But why a doctor needs to be a doctor? Why do we need a title to identify someone? And why do we create different kinds of jobs for our citizens? Can't a person just be a human being in nature?

Answer 1

As was discussed in the Republic of Plato (if I remember correctly) a human society can function with all members doing the work they need for themselves by themselves, but it would leave little time for anything else, and one person might be better at singing, another at gathering food, and another at sowing.  All are important, singing for happiness, food for life, and sowing for clothes (clothes not really important in some cases).

Besides, people in this day and age, generally too lazy to do all this by themselves.

Answer 2

Seems unlikely.

No division of labor means all members of a community perform exactly the same jobs.  This only works on a very small scale where life is reduced to the most basic survival tasks.  Even primitive hunter gatherer societies are more sophisticated.

There is always division of labor between the sexes, because of women's unique capacity to bear and nurse the young.

Answer 3

Of course a society CAN exist  without division of labor. You will ,however, call or label such society as primitive and archetypal.

Look around you, hunter gatherers will appear as the most basic life form, but in the course of time will also fall into a habit of some division of labor. The lowest will clean and cook and look after the offspring, while the highest will be the hunter and leader of the tribe.

Civilizations "happen" upon the discovery of division of labor. The support, protector-soldier-police, tax collector, merchant, designated farmer, food collector - well those positions arose when the need for them came to be.

The question that we need to ask is:

"Other than division of labor, in what other formats and backgrounds will civilization take root opon?"