If there is no distinction between toil and work, we are led to ask: How would human beings spend their time if their lives were exempt from toil? Doing no work of any kind, what would they do with the time of their lives?
In this issue:
Some Thoughts On Toil and Other Kinds of Work
If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating
the will of others if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the
plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would
not want servants, nor masters slaves.
In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present --
I am rising to the work of a human being. Why, then, am I dissatisfied if I
am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought
into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and
keep myself warm? But this is more pleasant. Dost thou exist, then, to take
thy pleasure, and not at all for action and exertion?
There is one sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed: there is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labour. Thus the labour of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master's profit. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing. The labour of the latter, however, has its value, and deserves its reward as well as that of the former. But the labour of the manufacturer fixes and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after that labour is past. It is, as it were, a certain quantity of labour stocked and stored up to be employed, if necessary, upon some other occasion. The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject; or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence of the common wealth, the effect of their labour this year will not purchase its protection, security, and defence for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production.
Both productive and unproductive labourers, and those who do not
labour at all, are all equally maintained by the annual produce of the land
and labour of the country. This produce, how great soever, can never be
infinite, but must have certain limits. According, therefore, as a smaller
or greater proportion of it is in any one year employed in maintaining
unproductive hands, the more in the one case and the less in the other will
remain for the productive, and the next year's produce will be greater or
smaller accordingly; the whole annual produce, if we except the spontaneous
productions of the earth, being the effect of productive labour.
When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but, at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him that, in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? And to what can that mighty human intelligence, which has so often stirred the world, be applied in him, except it be to investigate the best method of making pins' heads? When a workman has spent a considerable portion of his existence in this manner, his thoughts are forever set upon the object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed habits, which it can never shake off: in a word, he no longer belongs to himself but to the calling which he has chosen. It is in vain that laws and manners have been at pains to level all the barriers round such a man and to open to him on every side a thousand different paths to fortune; a theory of manufactures more powerful than manners and laws binds him to a craft, and frequently to a spot, which he cannot leave. It assigns to him a certain place in society, beyond which he cannot go; in the midst of universal movement, it has rendered him stationary. In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more narrow minded, and more dependent. The art advances; the artisan re cedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger, and the amount of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated men come forward to embark in manufactures, which were heretofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The magnitude of the efforts required, and the importance of the results to be obtained, attract them. Thus, at the very time at which the science of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the class of masters... The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and their differences increase every day. They are only connected as the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills the station which is made for him and which he does not leave; the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to command...
Not only are the rich not compactly united amongst themselves but
there is no real bond between them and the poor. Their relative position is
not a permanent one; they are constantly drawn together or separated by
their interests. The workman is generally dependent on the master, but not
on any particular master. These two men meet in the factory but know not
each other elsewhere; and, whilst they come into contact on one point, they
stand very wide apart on all others. The manufacturer asks nothing of the
workman but his labor; the workman expects nothing from him but his wages.
The one contracts no obligation to protect, nor the other to defend; and
they are not permanently connected either by habit or duty.
Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater
population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an
increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have
increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun
to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature
and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just
institutions, the in crease of mankind shall be under the deliberate
guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of
nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the
common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating
the universal lot.
We provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business.
We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of
our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to
banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the
world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other
countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.
Happiness, therefore, does not lie in amusement; it would, in deed, be
strange if the end were amusement, and one were to take trouble and suffer
hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself. For, in a word,
everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else --
except happiness, which is an end. Now to exert oneself and work for the
sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in
order that one may exert oneselfseems right; for amusement is a sort of
relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously.
Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity.
Those who are in a position which places them above toil have stewards who
attend to their households while they occupy themselves with philosophy or
with politics.
We should be able, not only to work well, but to use leisure well; for, as
I must repeat once again, the first principle of all action is leisure.
Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation and is its end;
and therefore the question must be asked, what ought we to do when at
leisure? Clearly we ought not to be amusing ourselves, for then amusement
would be the end of life. But if this is inconceivable, and amusement is
needed more amid serious occupations than at other times (for he who is
hard at work has need of relaxation, and amusement gives relaxation,
whereas occupation is always accompanied with exertion and effort), we
should introduce amusements only at suitable times, and they should be our
medicines, for the emotion which they create in the soul is a relaxation,
and from the pleasure we obtain rest. But leisure of itself gives pleasure
and happiness and enjoyment of life, which are experienced, not by the busy
man, but by those who have leisure.
Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together,
is in most men naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which,
if not restrained by force or by some strong necessity, is almost
irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by
some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but some times, too, of
dissipation and diversion.
Leisure, though the propertied classes give its name to their own idleness,
is not idleness. It is not even a luxury: it is a necessity, and a
necessity of the first importance. Some of the most valuable work done in
the world has been done at leisure, and never paid for in cash or kind.
Leisure may be described as free activity, labor as compulsory activity.
Leisure does what it likes: labor does what it must, the compulsion being
that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor
and starvation.
Max: I ordered How to Think about The Great Ideas from Barnes and Noble through the Center's website www.TheGreatIdeas.org and got it today. You did a beautiful job and have done us all a great service collecting this material and putting in book form. I thought my birthday came in April today. Thanks again. Steve Lloyd
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