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In this essay,
Lord Bertrand Russell proposes a cut in the definition of full time to four hours per day.
As this article was written in 1932, he has not the benefit of knowing that, as we added
more wage-earners per family (women entered the work force) and families shrunk (fewer
kids), and the means of production become more efficient (better machines) the number of
hours each wage-earner must work to support the family has stayed constant. These facts
seem to uphold Russell's point. Like most of my generation, I was brought
up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly
virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept
me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my
actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work
done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and
that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what
always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw
twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira
to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the
twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy
Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be
required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of
the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not
have lived in vain.
Before
advancing my own arguments for laziness, I must dispose of one which I cannot accept.
Whenever a person who already has enough to live on proposes to engage in some everyday
kind of job, such as school-teaching or typing, he or she is told that such conduct takes
the bread out of other people's mouths, and is therefore wicked. If this argument were
valid, it would only be necessary for us all to be idle in order that we should all have
our mouths full of bread. What people who say such things forget is that what a man earns
he usually spends, and in spending he gives employment. As long as a man spends his
income, he puts just as much bread into people's mouths in spending as he takes out of
other people's mouths in earning. The real villain, from this point of view, is the man
who saves. If he merely puts his savings in a stocking, like the proverbial French
peasant, it is obvious that they do not give employment. If he invests his savings, the
matter is less obvious, and different cases arise.
One of the
commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the
fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in
payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a
Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The
net result of the man's economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to
which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he
spent it in drink or gambling.
But, I
shall be told, the case is quite different when savings are invested in industrial
enterprises. When such enterprises succeed, and produce something useful, this may be
conceded. In these days, however, no one will deny that most enterprises fail. That means
that a large amount of human labor, which might have been devoted to producing something
that could be enjoyed, was expended on producing machines which, when produced, lay idle
and did no good to anyone. The man who invests his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt
is therefore injuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money, say, in giving
parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those
upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he
spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface card in some place where surface
cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it
gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his
investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay
spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a
frivolous person.
All this is
only preliminary. I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being
done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to
happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.
First of
all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near
the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do
so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The
second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders,
but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of
advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics.
The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which
advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of
advertising.
Throughout
Europe, though not in America, there is a third class of men, more respected than either
of the classes of workers. There are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make
others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are
idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is
only rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable
idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have
ever wished is that others should follow their example.
From the
beginning of civilization until the Industrial Revolution, a man could, as a rule, produce
by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family,
although his wife worked at least as hard as he did, and his children added their labor as
soon as they were old enough to do so. The small surplus above bare necessaries was not
left to those who produced it, but was appropriated by warriors and priests. In times of
famine there was no surplus; the warriors and priests, however, still secured as much as
at other times, with the result that many of the workers died of hunger. This system
persisted in Russia until 1917 [1], and still persists in the East; in England, in spite
of the Industrial Revolution, it remained in full force throughout the Napoleonic wars,
and until a hundred years ago, when the new class of manufacturers acquired power. In
America, the system came to an end with the Revolution, except in the South, where it
persisted until the Civil War. A system which lasted so long and ended so recently has
naturally left a profound impress upon men's thoughts and opinions. Much that we take for
granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system, and, being
pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technique has made it possible
for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a
right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of
slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
It is
obvious that, in primitive communities, peasants, left to themselves, would not have
parted with the slender surplus upon which the warriors and priests subsisted, but would
have either produced less or consumed more. At first, sheer force compelled them to
produce and part with the surplus. Gradually, however, it was found possible to induce
many of them to accept an ethic according to which it was their duty to work hard,
although part of their work went to support others in idleness. By this means the amount
of compulsion required was lessened, and the expenses of government were diminished. To
this day, 99 per cent of British wage-earners would be genuinely shocked if it were
proposed that the King should not have a larger income than a working man. The conception
of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce
others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own. Of course the
holders of power conceal this fact from themselves by managing to believe that their
interests are identical with the larger interests of humanity. Sometimes this is true;
Athenian slave-owners, for instance, employed part of their leisure in making a permanent
contribution to civilization which would have been impossible under a just economic
system. Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was
only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not
because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be
possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.
Modern
technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor required to
secure the necessaries of life for everyone. This was made obvious during the war. At that
time all the men in the armed forces, and all the men and women engaged in the production
of munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or Government
offices connected with the war, were withdrawn from productive occupations. In spite of
this, the general level of well-being among unskilled wage-earners on the side of the
Allies was higher than before or since. The significance of this fact was concealed by
finance: borrowing made it appear as if the future was nourishing the present. But that,
of course, would have been impossible; a man cannot eat a loaf of bread that does not yet
exist. The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it
is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working
capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization,
which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been
preserved, and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all would have been well.
Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to
work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a
duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in
proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.
This is the
morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it
arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose
that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of
pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone
makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are
already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible
world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours
instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this
would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins,
some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are
thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but
half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured
that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal
source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?
The idea
that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In England, in the
early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day's work for a man; children
sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome
busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work
kept adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child, shortly after urban
working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the
great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: 'What do
the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.' People nowadays are less frank, but the
sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion.
Let us, for
a moment, consider the ethics of work frankly, without superstition. Every human being, of
necessity, consumes, in the course of his life, a certain amount of the produce of human
labor. Assuming, as we may, that labor is on the whole disagreeable, it is unjust that a
man should consume more than he produces. Of course he may provide services rather than
commodities, like a medical man, for example; but he should provide something in return
for his board and lodging. to this extent, the duty of work must be admitted, but to this
extent only.
I shall not
dwell upon the fact that, in all modern societies outside the USSR, many people escape
even this minimum amount of work, namely all those who inherit money and all those who
marry money. I do not think the fact that these people are allowed to be idle is nearly so
harmful as the fact that wage-earners are expected to overwork or starve.
If the
ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no
unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This
idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to
use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off;
such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the
grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons. Oddly
enough, while they wish their sons to work so hard as to have no time to be civilized,
they do not mind their wives and daughters having no work at all. the snobbish admiration
of uselessness, which, in an aristocratic society, extends to both sexes, is, under a
plutocracy, confined to women; this, however, does not make it any more in agreement with
common sense.
The wise
use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education. A man who
has worked long hours all his life will become bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But
without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things.
There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the population should suffer this
deprivation; only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on
work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.
In the new
creed which controls the government of Russia, while there is much that is very different
from the traditional teaching of the West, there are some things that are quite unchanged.
The attitude of the governing classes, and especially of those who conduct educational
propaganda, on the subject of the dignity of labor, is almost exactly that which the
governing classes of the world have always preached to what were called the 'honest poor'.
Industry, sobriety, willingness to work long hours for distant advantages, even
submissiveness to authority, all these reappear; moreover authority still represents the
will of the Ruler of the Universe, Who, however, is now called by a new name, Dialectical
Materialism.
The victory
of the proletariat in Russia has some points in common with the victory of the feminists
in some other countries. For ages, men had conceded the superior saintliness of women, and
had consoled women for their inferiority by maintaining that saintliness is more desirable
than power. At last the feminists decided that they would have both, since the pioneers
among them believed all that the men had told them about the desirability of virtue, but
not what they had told them about the worthlessness of political power. A similar thing
has happened in Russia as regards manual work. For ages, the rich and their sycophants
have written in praise of 'honest toil', have praised the simple life, have professed a
religion which teaches that the poor are much more likely to go to heaven than the rich,
and in general have tried to make manual workers believe that there is some special
nobility about altering the position of matter in space, just as men tried to make women
believe that they derived some special nobility from their sexual enslavement. In Russia,
all this teaching about the excellence of manual work has been taken seriously, with the
result that the manual worker is more honored than anyone else. What are, in essence,
revivalist appeals are made, but not for the old purposes: they are made to secure shock
workers for special tasks. Manual work is the ideal which is held before the young, and is
the basis of all ethical teaching.
For the
present, possibly, this is all to the good. A large country, full of natural resources,
awaits development, and has has to be developed with very little use of credit. In these
circumstances, hard work is necessary, and is likely to bring a great reward. But what
will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without
working long hours?
In the
West, we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We have no attempt at economic
justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the
population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control
over production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large
percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense with their labor by
making the others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate, we have a war: we
cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode
them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all
these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great
deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man.
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. But, having taught the supreme virtue of hard work, it is difficult to
see how the authorities can aim at a paradise in which there will be much leisure and
little work. It seems more likely that they will find continually fresh schemes, by which
present leisure is to be sacrificed to future productivity. I read recently of an
ingenious plan put forward by Russian engineers, for making the White Sea and the northern
coasts of Siberia warm, by putting a dam across the Kara Sea. An admirable project, but
liable to postpone proletarian comfort for a generation, while the nobility of toil is
being displayed amid the ice-fields and snowstorms of the Arctic Ocean. This sort of
thing, if it happens, will be the result of regarding the virtue of hard work as an end in
itself, rather than as a means to a state of affairs in which it is no longer needed.
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. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to
fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return
to the toil from which my contentment springs.' I have never heard working men say this
sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a
livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may
enjoy.
It will be
said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days
if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in
the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at
any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has
been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that
everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
Serious-minded persons, for example, are continually condemning the habit of going to the
cinema, and telling us that it leads the young into crime. But all the work that goes to
producing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, and because it brings a money
profit. The notion that the desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made
everything topsy-turvy. The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides
you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the
food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for
your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is
bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well
maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. Whatever merit there may be in the
production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by
consuming them. The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose
of his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce between the
individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to
think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too
much of production, and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach too little
importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that we do not judge production by the
pleasure that it gives to the consumer.
When I
suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all
the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours'
work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and
that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential
part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is
at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use
leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be
considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the
impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The
pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching
football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their
active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again
enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.
In the
past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class
enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made
it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to
justify its privileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of
this drawback it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated
the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and
refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been
inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from
barbarism.
The method
of a leisure class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the
members of the class had to be taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not
exceptionally intelligent. The class might produce one Darwin, but against him had to be
set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought of anything more intelligent
than fox-hunting and punishing poachers. At present, the universities are supposed to
provide, in a more systematic way, what the leisure class provided accidentally and as a
by-product. This is a great improvement, but it has certain drawbacks. University life is
so different from life in the world at large that men who live in academic milieu tend to
be unaware of the preoccupations and problems of ordinary men and women; moreover their
ways of expressing themselves are usually such as to rob their opinions of the influence
that they ought to have upon the general public. Another disadvantage is that in
universities studies are organized, and the man who thinks of some original line of
research is likely to be discouraged. Academic institutions, therefore, useful as they
are, are not adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in a world where everyone
outside their walls is too busy for unutilitarian pursuits.
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. Men who, in their professional work, have
become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their
ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists often
seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the time to learn about the progress of
medicine, teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things
which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be
untrue.
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. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand
only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote
the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since
they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be
unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits.
But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear.
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. Hitherto we
have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have
been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.
[1] Since then, members of the Communist Party have succeeded to
this privilege of the warriors and priests. |
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