Such was the basic economic institution of feudalism. But alongside of the feudal estate with its serf labor, there were the free laborers, no longer regarding labor as shameful and degrading. These free laborers were the handicraftsmen and free peasants, the former soon organizing themselves into guilds. There was a specialization of labor, but, as yet, little division. Each man worked at a particular craft and exchanged his individual products. The free craftsman would exchange his product with the free peasant, and sometimes his trade extended to the feudal manor. The guild was at once his master and protector; rigid in its rules, strict in its surveillance of its members, it was strong and effective as a protector against the impositions and invasions of feudal barons and their retainers. Division of labor first appears in its simplest form, the association of independent individual workers for mutual advantage, sharing their products upon a basis of equality. This simple cooeperation involved no fundamental, revolutionary change in society. That came later with the development of the workshop system, and the division of labor upon a definite, predetermined plan. Men specialized now in the making of _parts_ of things; no man could say of a finished product, "This is _mine_, for I made it." Production had become a social function. VII At first, in its simple beginnings, the cooeperation of many producers in one great workshop did not involve any general or far-reaching changes in the system of exchange. But as the new methods spread, and it became the custom for one or two wealthy individuals to provide the workshop and necessary tools and materials for production, the product of the combined laborers being appropriated in its entirety by the owners of the agencies of production, who paid the workers a money wage representing less than the actual value of their product, and based upon the cost of their subsistence, the whole economic system was once more revolutionized. The custom of working for wages, hitherto rare and exceptional, became general and customary; individual production for use, either directly or through the medium of personal exchange, was superseded by social production for private profit. The wholesale exchange of social products for private gain took the place of the personal exchange of commodities. The difference between the total cost of the production of commodities, including the wages of the producers, and their exchange value--determined at this stage by the cost of producing similar commodities by individual labor--constituted the share of the capitalist, his profit, and the objective of his investment.