Are you ready to work? (Hat tip: Tigerhawk) This video of Bangladeshi bricklayers illustrates work at a level so basic it has almost been forgotten in modern Western economies.
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Is work a necessary evil or something many of us will be glad to have before long?
For a long time we have been exhorted to rise “on the steps our dead selves to higher things”. In 1932 Bertrand Russell argued against work in his “In Praise of Idleness.” Before anyone laughs, remember that Russell was one regarded as of the smartest people on earth in his day, just as certain individuals are so regarded in ours. Russell argued that work was compelled by necessity; and that one day we would be free of it. Then we would recognize work for it really was: a drag. But he wasn’t worried, a sufficiently enlightened social organization (of which Soviet Russia was an example) would soon free humanity from the need to struggle against nature. Freed of the need to work, man would be become naturally pacific and communist.
In Russia, owing to more economic justice and central control over production, the problem will have to be differently solved. the rational solution would be, as soon as the necessaries and elementary comforts can be provided for all, to reduce the hours of labor gradually, allowing a popular vote to decide, at each stage, whether more leisure or more goods were to be preferred. …
The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce on the earth’s surface. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to the actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say: ‘I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. …
In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. …
Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. … Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others.
What Russell forgot was that man, having conquered nature, might still have to contend against man. In a world where no one was compelled to work more than four hours a day, what provision was there against the impulse to tell other people what to do? Why couldn’t activism occupy the time formerly wated on putting food on the table? Perhaps when have stopped having to keep wolves from the cave door our next task will be to keep other people’s hands out of our pockets. It will be interesting to see whether environmental causes and activism will also suffer a downturn when the cupboard goes bare. Maybe John Gardner was right when he observed that the difference between capitalism and communism was simple. “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and communism is the reverse.”
Necessity is an elastic term. Work in the political context, for example, has only a tenuous connection to putting food on the table. Consider this gem of a reported conversation between Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
CHICAGO (AP) — Shortly after his 2002 election, Gov. Rod Blagojevich told Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. he didn’t appoint the congressman’s wife as lottery director because he had refused him a $25,000 campaign donation, a person familiar with the conversation told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Blagojevich went out of his way to say, ‘You know I was considering your wife for the lottery job and the $25,000 you didn’t give me? That’s why she’s not getting the job,’” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing federal investigation.
But then again Bertrand Russell may have never worked in Chicago politics.
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22 Comments
1. whiskey:What strikes me the most about the Bangladeshi’s is how they are using cheap labor in the place of expensive capital.
And thus guaranteeing social problems forever.
The wealth of the West has been one of human evolution, more and better tools, and tools to make tools to make tools, that are far more efficient than a strong back or a thousand strong backs.
Western Bricklayers could produce better work, faster, and cheaper, using motorized equipment, lifts, and so on. With far better wages though far fewer of them.
Third World life is one of nearly no specialization. It’s all just brute labor where no one really counts and no one is important. Just another cog ready to be ground into hamburger. Western Life has been one of constant, ever increasing specialization.
Dec 16, 2008 - 9:51 pm 2. Insufficiently Sensitive:Ezra Pound called Bertie Russell a ‘flat-chested highbrow’. Crack shot I say. Said Russell:
In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity.
What happened in the US and Europe was, that due to the enormous wealth produced by the postwar generation, a large fraction of the youth were able to indulge in exactly that sort of life. And what did they do with all that time? For some: sex, drugs and rock’n'roll, and homelessness a couple of decades later. For others: phone phreaking, leading to their own vast fortunes at Apple Computer. For others: a vicious rejection of the society which gave them such advantages, and the ‘activism’ which got the survivors (NOT Bill Ayers’s girlfriend, alas, who suffered an own-goal while making bombs) much media glory and considerable political power to impose over their fellow humans.
Beware those smart guys in the knowitall business. We might begin with some skepicism of the new administration, which is based on the votes of an enormous number of urban ‘intellectuals’ who possess an unquestioning naive faith that said administration will be composed top to bottom of just such knowitalls.
That is, with the exception of the those already working at National Public Radio.
Dec 16, 2008 - 10:25 pm 3. Lifeofthemind:Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life.
Dec 16, 2008 - 11:52 pm 4. Damon:The great disconnect in modern times came when for intellectuals actions became separated from consequences. If Stalin’s victims had the ability to sue Mr Russell for damages caused by his advocacy of their slavery then he would have had an incentive to pause and investigate and maybe even to know what the hell he was pontificating about. The same applies to his two bit imitators at NPR today.
Iain M Banks wrote a series of science fiction novels set in just such a “post-scarcity” society (”The Culture”).
Physical goods, services and information are free, or practically free, allowing the Citizens to pursue whatever they wish in order to fill their days.
See
One interesting feature is that in order for such a society to function effectively, supervision by immensly powerful (and benign) “Minds” i.e. AI’s is required.
It seems odd that a committed socialist like Banks thinks that people will still need supervision even in a utopian system like this.
Myself? I think that people need work. (Well, some work anyway.)
Dec 17, 2008 - 5:17 am 5. RWE:And it needs to be in some way productive.
“Make work” jobs are nearly as dispiriting as no job. I believe (most) people need to know that they have produced “something” of worth, from day-to-day.
“Why couldn’t activism occupy the time formerly wated on putting food on the table?”
Indeed. Over the past two years I have become involved with a local organization, the last year as its President. The former President, a retiree now for many years, is/was always off on some tear or another. After having seen these activities close up I have concluded that 90% plus of them are pointless, pursuit of phantoms at best and much sound and fury signifying nothing at worst. It is mostly about providing recreation for that lone energetic retiree.
Dec 17, 2008 - 6:53 am 6. Sgt. Mom:“I think that people need work. (Well, some work anyway.)
And it needs to be in some way productive.”
An excellent point – to look back on something, and think “I did all that!” It doesn’t have to be physical work, like building or renovating something like a house or a garden, although that does very well for many. It can be creative work, building a website, painting a complex picture. I took to writing historical novels, the most recent being a trilogy called “Adelsverein” – about the German settlements in 19th century Texas. It was an enormous amount of work, that last one, taking over two years, what with the research and all.
Not quite up there with building a brick wall, but writing it, getting it published and having it out there on Amazon and in local bookstores satisfied me, enormously.
Celia Hayes
Dec 17, 2008 - 7:48 am 7. zzyzx:“The Adelsverein Trilogy”
Richard, thank you for posting about what I think is a central problem of postindustrial society. For me, it is an unintended consequence of something Norbert Wiener wrote about 60 years ago in _Cybernetics_, when he talked about how robotically controlled factories would free the worker for higher pursuits, such as art and literature. He did not suspect that it would free them to mind other people’s business, like a mob of Mrs Jumble’s from ‘Bleak House’.
As for Russell, he is not only a primal moonbat but an epic instance of scientic failure, since his great project “Pricipia Mathematica” segined to put arithmetic (and hence all of mathematics) on a rigorous logical basis was shown to be a phontom built on sand by Kurt Goedel.
Dec 17, 2008 - 9:39 am 8. Behind Blue Lines » Hard Work: More Reflection:[...] his recent posting, ‘Hard Work’, Wretchard has provided me with even more blog fodder.
Dec 17, 2008 - 10:00 am 9. Giant Jelly Fish Killer:I remember a philosophy professor I once had (an older Italian gentleman – well grounded in Logic, Ethics, and in no way a mediocrity). He was enamored of the relationship between “technology, knowledge, and power”, and how certain systems of power value different types of knowledge (which in turn support the system); he would expound on the difference between theorea, techne, and praxis with great enthusiasm. I was quite impressed at the time.
As I got older, I recognized there was value in the Power/Knowledge approach. It can provide a useful tool for analysis, but it does make all systems of power equal, all use of power illegitimate, nor does it make some things objectively more or less true.
Ok, there is a point. One day, the professor asked a student in the my class why mankind invented technology.
The answer: “Because Mankind is lazy”.
Heh. Man, that did not go over well with the professor, but it stuck with me. It explains why, with the advent of technology liberating us from unrelenting labor, there has not been the flowering of culture that Russell hoped for; instead, we are merely reverting to the mean, or mankind’s default position.
It was the need for labor to survive (and the attendant discipline, values, and social organizations that harnessed and focused that labor – and gave meaning to those that labored) that, in part, created western civilization. Take that labor away with technology and so passes the glory of the world
Dec 17, 2008 - 10:07 am 10. Vivictius:Whiskey, I have talked to one of my mining engineering professors (originally from India) about the lack of mechanization over there. He said the main reason was they have a billion people, about 990 million of which are uneducated and unskilled. You have to keep them working or they riot. They are actually making (slow) progress with regards to increasing the general education and skill level over there. I dont expect and big improvements and our lifetime but they in general know where they want to go and are heading there.
Dec 17, 2008 - 11:25 am 11. Staring In Disbelief:I can’t believe the guy had NO REACTION when the brick FELL ON HIS FOOT. He belongs in Cirque du Soleil with an act like that!
Oh, and can we dispense with this “Technology comes from being lazy” garbage? Who among us can name something useful invented by a truly lazy person? Technology is invented by driven, creative people, often working extraordinarily hard to refine and market their inspiration. We invent to better our lives, not because we are sloths looking to save a few precious calories of energy. Evolution used to KILL the truly lazy. It is only by acting as parasites off the enormous productivity of modern society that the truly lazy can survive in comfort today.
Dec 17, 2008 - 2:05 pm 12. NahnCee:Then you have the Middle East, where they revel in their backwardness and refuse to change it. In Saudi Arabia, they have 50% unemployment, but can’t get their Saudi youth to work. Young Saud’s won’t do manual labor, are too snarky to work in sales, and are too dumb and uneducated to be white collar. So the whole country is run by their imported Paki’s, Indians, and ex-pat pedophile Brits.
Like the rest of the Middle East, Iraq is undoubtedly very proud indeed of their capacity for dysfunction. I was reading something in GulfNews a week or two ago which came right out and said that no American President could ever hope to effect change with an Arab population because they are so good at being screwed up. They are – all of them – PROUD of being backwards, uncivilized barbarians who can’t be dealt with honorably or intelligently, and who refuse to put in a day’s work for a day’s wage. It’s what they’re really really good at, and damned if they’re gonna change just for the promise of better roads and 24/7 air conditioning, let alone peace between the Palestinians and the Jews.
Makes it really hard when your mandate is to go into a country like Iraq and rebuild it so it was better than it was before you shocked & awed it, because it’s a badge of honor for that country to STAY dusty and unfunctioning. Means they haven’t sold out and become “too American”.
Or some dumb damned thing.
Dec 17, 2008 - 3:14 pm 13. RWE:Staring: Yeah, I was thinking that if I could get that guy on the Sullivan show I could retire as a millionaire.
Dec 17, 2008 - 3:54 pm 14. E. Nigma:Well, the people that invent technological advances (Edison-”Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”) are obsessive workaholics, and happy to be so.
Dec 17, 2008 - 4:17 pm 15. WPZ:But the people that PROMOTE and make it popular are the ones who are lazy. The last century-plus has seen an incredible amount of labor reduction and time-saving technological advances in American society; from the change to diesel from steam powered trains, commercial air travel, washers and dryers (ever used a wringer washer?), and on and on.
But have any of these technological wonders improved our ethical or moral outlook? No, probably not. Some aspects of these advances have made us wealthier (no doubt) and given us more time for charity and benevolence, but it has not cured us of the collectivist urge, or enabled people to have a more moral life ( I give you instant pron to be downloaded via the Internet. Voila!).
It reminds me of the melancholy phrase by Tolkien in describing the Numenoreans of the 2nd age: “though their wealth increased, their joy departed”, based on their estrangement from the Elder race (elves).
We are indeed well and truly estranged from the philosophical roots of our Republic, and there is for sure no going back. What lies ahead, who can guess, for we are surely traveling blind into the Undiscovered Country.
I shall ask for a moment of indulgence to poke around in the span of my working experience.
Dec 17, 2008 - 5:25 pm 16. wretchard:Starting out life as someone who wanted to view himself as intellectual, and even artistic, I thought that my life work would be as a photographer. To pay the bills in that not-so-remunerative line of work, I took a summer job as a carpenter’s helper.
Nearly 37 years later, I still lug around a tool belt and think about wood, nearly all the time. I of course don’t do some of the more basic or physical stuff I once did, and do more supervising and teaching now in my later years than plain old nail-slugging, but I had a bit of time a couple of weeks ago, dug out some leftover framing material buried in one of the vans, and constructed a rather nice entrance canopy on the front of our house.
I still marvel at how much I threw myself into it, and how much time I’ve spent (blush) admiring it, even though I have plans to gussy it up and make it prettier.
Here’s the point, though: Nothing I’ve done in the last few months comes close to the sheer pleasure building that porch roof gave, nor brought on such feelings of satisfaction.
That I perhaps was born with a predilection for building things certainly is a factor, nor would I ever suggest that anyone not given the opportunity to build structures is somehow lacking- my wife is a gerontologist and couldn’t run a Skilsaw to save her life, but she works harder than anyone else and gets the same results from working hard at what she does as her tradesman husband.
In my early twenties, as a rabid motorcyclist I grabbed Robert Pirsig’s bizarre “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” thinking I was getting a book about my favorite mode of transportation.
It wasn’t- it’s about the search for “quality”. But at no point does Pirsig’s search travel far from work as the basis of human existence.
This exposition came to me early in my trade career, perhaps four years in, but shook me all the way to the foundation: here was why I was so engaged with, and enthused by, my workaday work.
I’ve never stopped telling folks that I want to be a writer when I grow up (that may be obvious), but as long as I can still get up a ladder and pick up a Skilsaw, I hope that I’ll still find opportunities to do work.
It’s the only time I feel right.
Imagine being able to ask animals and plants if they worked. It’s possible they would not be able to distinguish survival activities — Russell’s work — from living. But for some men at least, a shadow has fallen between work and life. Life becomes what happens between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. To explain this, some Marxists have proposed that man’s work has been stolen or ‘alienated’ from him. By giving it back to him he will be restored to wholeness.
Ironically, the way Marxists think work can be given back to man is making him an employee in some vast, soulless state apparatus which will be perpetually enlarged at the cost of the entrepreneur, self-employed professional and tradesman. Yet common experience will suggest that they are achieving quite the opposite: that the Marxist world where all the means of production are owned by the state is in fact the ultimate in slavery while the world that they in fact destroy — where men are freer agents seeking out opportunity according to preference and conditions — is ironically the world of comparative freedom.
The other irony is that when modern man seeks freedom, he doesn’t seek Russell’s world of cultured leisure. Who doesn’t know the lyrics to Woodstock?
Back to the land. Back to the garden. A return to nature. A journey back, in a word, to our animal roots, where all of the time is spent in survival activities. How strange it is that the Aqe of Aquarius should look to the Age of Stone for its vision of freedom. What beckons them to it? Work in the precise form that Russell denounced it. Maybe they won’t want it any more, once they know what it is.
Dec 17, 2008 - 6:06 pm 17. Storm-Rider:Work comes in two varieties, creative and slavish. Creative work, along with human love and human liberty, leads to human happiness; whereas slavery stands in the way of happiness.
Our founding fathers declared that all men have a God-given human right to the pursuit of happiness; this could be re-stated as a God-given or sacred right to human creativity and the property that accrues from creative work. Excessive taxation of human labor, by degree, leads to slavery; and this was declared unjust and tyrannical by our founders.
“The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.” James Madison
“The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.” James Madison
“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” James Madison
“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.” John Adams
“Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.” John Adams
“Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?” Samuel Adams
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
“In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.” Chief Justice John Marshall
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have … The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” Thomas Jefferson
“The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.” Thomas Jefferson
“Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Thomas Jefferson
“The Constitution of most of our states, and of the United States, assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press.” Thomas Jefferson
“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” Abraham Lincoln
Dec 17, 2008 - 6:16 pm 18. Storm-Rider:Contrast the wisdom of our founding fathers with the tyrannical European philosophy of Karl Marx, who along with the French revolutionaries, were the originators of government enforced economic equality through redistribution – this they call “social justice” and is only enforceable through totalitarian government power. Karl Marx in effect declared that you do not have a right (and certainly not a God-given right) to personal property creatively obtained, and the happiness that follows.
“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Karl Marx
“You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” Karl Marx
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property” Karl Marx
Dec 17, 2008 - 6:31 pm 19. E. Nigma:Isn’t it funny how the most elaborate intellectual rationalizations are created to capture people in the most vile forms of tyranny (Arbeit Macht Frei! at the gates of the death camps in the 3rd Reich)? It’s almost as if the intellectuals know about the man behind the curtain who holds the real levers of power, yet cannot quite bring themselves to acknowledge the reality of it. That they too have made themselves into puppets on a string.
Dec 17, 2008 - 6:47 pm 20. Storm-Rider:Almost.
Those were the competing ideologies of the 20th century after the collapse of the ‘Old World Order’ at the end of the Great War, the War to end all Wars. Another misnomer, as it has created the basis for the unenending class and culture war, that will undoubtedly continue after all of us are dead and buried. It could more accurately be named ‘The Beginning of the Endless War’.
Where we are now, in the twilight, between the shadows and the light.
There is a relationship between intellectuals and statist tyranny – both Marxist and Fascist. Tyrants rely on the support of intellectuals to supply a rhetorical veneer of state legitimacy, where the intellectuals rely on the financial support of a powerful state – one capable of redistribution of income in their favor.
“The question is what kind of ideas is favoured by the intellectuals. The question is whether the intellectuals are neutral in their choice of ideas with which they are ready to deal with. Hayek argued that they are not. They do not hold or try to spread all kinds of ideas. They have very clear and, in some respect, very understandable preferences for some of them. They prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige. They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist…” President of the Czeck Republic, Václav Klaus
http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=wFYl3mgsTzI6
Dec 17, 2008 - 7:24 pm 21. Shakespeare's Debtor:“It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.”
W. H. Auden
Dec 18, 2008 - 8:55 pm 22. Derek:A few years ago, my nephew was doing the trade schooling for carpentry. Our family are tradesmen, and he was following the honorable path of his forbears by starting in a trade after finishing high school.
He was the youngest in the class. Almost everyone else had university degrees or high level training in technology. They either were in a mind-numbingly boring field, or couldn’t get a job in a field where the top 5% are employable, the rest statistics. They were hoping for opportunity working with their hands.
The funniest thing I saw was when I was 2nd year apprentice in my trade. We were doing a job in a place where everyone had university degrees, very specialized work. One fellow had left his pay stub on his desk. I was making more. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to ruin his day.
There is an old joke. A lawyer had a plugged drain, calls a plumber. He shows up, fixes it, and presents the bill. The lawyer says, whew, I’m a lawyer and I can hardly afford this! The plumber says, oh yes, I understand. I felt the same way when I was a lawyer.
Derek
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