clear urgency of a specialised worker toward his special work, and his
pleasure in it; an urgency and a pleasure not related to honour or
payment, but to the work itself. The reason we see less of the natural
impulse to work in the main fields of labour is partly because we have
piled our ignorant contempt most particularly on the kind of work we
most needed, and partly because we have added to our contempt the
heaviest practical difficulties by careful cutting off the general
worker from his full share of social nutrition. The rank and file of
humanity, as a result of our misconceptions about work, are so drained
of nervous energy from generation to generation by being overtaxed in
labour, and so defrauded of social nourishment by our system of
“payment” based on those misconceptions, that it is marvellous indeed to
see the work they do under these conditions, and not marvellous at all
to see their steady tendency toward pauperism, criminalism, and all
disease.
Of London it is stated that when the labourer from the country comes
into the city to work, the second generation of his line is inferior in
health, strength, and ability, the third generation much crippled and
diseased, and _there is no fourth_.
Under social conditions like these it is not to be expected that we
shall find much evidence of man’s natural desire to work, either general
or special. As well look for willing industry in a hospital. On the
contrary, it is to be expected that this body of people shall be
unwilling and largely unable to work, that they shall seek continually
to avoid work and as continually seek to enlarge their supply of social
nourishment so cruelly cut off. It will take several generations of
right living to reimburse this part of our social stock and bring them
up to the level of social energy required to enjoy work. But when the
swift recuperative forces of physiology have rebuilt the individual
animal, and the far swifter forces of Sociology have refilled them with
their share of our vast resources of strength and inspiration, and their
share of the social interest, pride, and love which mark the fully human
creature, then we shall find our assumption, “no man will exert himself
unless to gratify desire,” to lack even its present justification.
There is no pain, no waste, no loss to normal work; it is a free
discharge of abundant social energy, either unconscious or accompanied
by sensations of keenest pleasure.
Let us consider this Want theory a little further.
A solitary animal cannot get his dinner without exerting himself. If he
could, he would not exert himself. This we observe, and then,
considering man as an animal like the others, we assume similarly: A man
cannot get his dinner without exerting himself; if he could, he would
not exert himself. Why we are so anxious to see to it that every man
shall exert himself, a thing which evidently cannot concern the public
if he is merely getting his own dinner, is a bit puzzling. But on
perceiving that unless he exerts himself _we_ do not get _our_ dinner,
our interest is excused.
Let us restate the proposition. Mankind cannot get its dinner without
exerting itself. If it could, it would not exert itself.
Granted at once. If agriculture, manufacture, and commerce were not
essential to social life, they would not have been evolved. But there is
an immediate difference introduced in the “exertion” involved and its
causes. Our social nutritive processes being complex and collective,
require the elaborate activities of many individuals in lines which bear
no relation whatever to their own dinners.
Social evolution, wiser and more practical than we, has met the
necessities of the case by developing those organic tendencies in man
which urge him to his social activities, and that always-increasing fund
of social nutrition and social energy which enables him to do his work.
The difference between an architect dreaming great buildings and eager
to build them and an animal struggling for his food, is as the
difference between the action of the heart and the action of a hungry
fox. The fox exerts himself to supply his wants, the heart exerts itself
as a functional activity it cannot help and without any reference to its
wants.
Its wants are supplied, to be sure, but not in measured dole related to
its activities. The exertions of the heart bear relation to the need of
the organism to which it belongs, not to its own appetite. If you have
to run, your heart works harder; it had no need of extra work, but _you_
had, and, being an organ, it performed the work.
Man’s work is called for by the social demands. Society needs Commerce,
and Commerce is developed. Society needs Art, and Art is developed. But
man, being a self-conscious individual, had to be convinced from without
as well as urged from within, else he stoutly refused to perform his
social service. “Why should I,” he asks, “if it does not benefit me? A
man works only to get something.” Before he had got even this far in
formulating his objection to work, he was forced to it, as we have seen,
by the slave system and effectually coerced. To meet this later attitude
of refusal he was forced to it by the wage system, and effectually
coerced as before. In the first case the anti-social results of that
form of labour have led to its being discarded, and in the second case
we are rapidly approaching the same conclusion. Social service performed
under the persuasion of self-interest is accompanied by so many
deleterious and anti-social phenomena that it is high time we adopted a
wiser system.
When exertion is recognised as a racial necessity and a high individual
pleasure, there is no longer any weight to the first clause of the Want
theory. When it is shown that our desires are gratified by the exertion
of others exclusively, there is no longer any weight to the second. And
when it is shown that the required “exertion” is not an exertion at all,
but a relief, a mere letting off of the social steam pressure, the Want
theory begins to need a historian to explain it. The only really
confusing element lies in the system of exchange now in use, the wage
system, and will be taken up in the chapter on Distribution.
X: THE NATURE OF WORK (II)
_Summary_
_Life a verb. Vegetable life processes, animal and social. Work is human
life. A sick society. Transmission of energy, pleasure in collective
sensation. Pleasure in specific function. Pain of malposition and
mal-nutrition. Recapitulation. Work is making, not taking. Squaw and
hunter. Maternal energy. Bee. The motherised male. Short circuit of
individual action. Production of food. Common defence. The social base
and ensuing variation. Attendant evils. Personal consequences and
social. Social treason. Sin of common carriers. Contrast between effect
of industry and war. Agriculture and peace. Commerce and honesty and
justice. Work is altruistic. Steps of development. Female origin of
Work. True Human Work has no sex connotation. Male belligerence in
industry. The world and the home. Thief and pauper. Production
collective. The Social traitor. Work is giving out, not taking in.
Slavery an essential transition system, also wagery. Master, Employer,
Co-operator. Shame of work based on slavery and self-interest. Social
productivity has allowed disease. American attitude toward work.
Conservation of energy. Work must not waste force, organic action does
not. Accumulated energy must be discharged. Social energy enormous.
Normal work an easy discharge. Abnormal work injurious. Social evolution
in ease and happiness. Effect of false concepts. Child’s delight in
work. Organic action agreeable or unconscious. Conditions of normal
work._
X
THE NATURE OF WORK (II)
Life is a verb, not a noun. Life is living, living is doing, life is
that which is done by the organism.
The living of a tree consists in the action of the roots in obtaining
food; of the leaves in obtaining air; of the sap in circulating,
distributing these goods; and in the processes of reproduction. The life
of an animal is more complex. He has a somewhat similar internal
mechanism; he breathes, circulates, and reproduces; but with him the
fumbling root-tip has become a paw, a mouth, a whole group of related
members wherewith to meet his needs; he has more to do to find his food
than just to poke in the dark. Living, for an animal, involves many
interesting activities, and those activities are his life.
The life of Society is higher and wider yet. Here are the separate
animal constituents whose life processes must be kept going, and here
are the wholly new social life processes to be carried on. Human life
involves the performance of the complex social life processes. The plant
has poking, absorbing, circulating, breathing, and reproducing to do.
That is plant life. The animal similarly circulates, breathes, and
reproduces, but he “pokes” in a much more elaborate manner, developing
also new methods of offence and defence in maintaining these essential
functions. That is animal life. Man, as an animal, breathes, circulates,
and reproduces in humble pursuance of previous methods, but as a social
being not only has his nutritive process become of enormous organic
complexity, but there have appeared also vast and subtle developments of
special functions hitherto unknown: industry, trade, commerce, art,
science, education, government,—all that we call Work.
In this development is human life. I do not mean that it is essential to
human life, it is human life. If the gathering and circulating of
nutrition, the absorption of air, the blossoming and fruition of a tree
are “essential to the tree’s life,” pray, what remains as “the life” of
the tree to which they are essential? You may truly say that breathing,
circulating, and reproducing are “essential” to an animal’s life; that
life, as distinct from other lives, being the more special activities he
has developed. So with the human creature. It is essential to his animal
life that he breathe, circulate, and reproduce; it is essential to his
human life also that he perform enough varied physical activity to keep
him in good form; but it is his human life to be “doctor, lawyer,
merchant, chief,” or whatever is his department in the social economy.
Work is human life.
Thus, as health, happiness, and beauty are found in lower forms in
perfect performance of their simpler life processes, so in Society we
find health, happiness, and beauty in proportion to our performance of
these our life processes; a greater, far greater health, happiness, and
beauty in the magnificent spread and range of these processes; a far
more terrible record of disease, misery, and horrid ugliness as we fail
of fulfilment.
A defective, sick, or dead plant is an unpleasant sight. A defective,
sick, or dead animal is a more unpleasant sight. But the depth and
ramifications of misery and horror in a defective, sick, or dead
society,—this is what has made us call this fair world “a vale of
tears.”
Such a pity, too! When it could be just as healthy as a plant or animal!
It is far more fun to be an animal than a plant, more exertion and so
more pleasure. And it is far more fun to be a human being than a mere
individual animal, far more complicated exertion and so more pleasure.
With our vastly increased capacity for happiness our misery must be
accounted for by “failure to connect” with the universal energy in one
or both ways. We are denied our share of stimulus, we lack social
nourishment, or, worse, we are denied our right discharge, are not
rightly placed in the field of social action, are not doing the work
which belongs to us.
It should be noted here that the happiness of social action as beyond
that of individual action increases in proportion to its collectivity.
There is a larger joy in perfect “team-work” than in the best individual
play. Connected as we are, the sensation that thrills through the whole
audience is stronger far than what is felt by one man alone, like King
Ludwig of Bavaria in the empty auditorium.
If a man is rightly placed in the world’s work, doing what he is best
fitted for to the height of his best powers, and if he clearly sees that
by so doing he fills his place in the universal economy perfectly, then,
granting of course that he is properly nourished physically and
socially, he is happy. But if he is ill-nourished he is unhappy, not
power enough flowing in; if he is ill-placed in social service he is
unhappy, lacking right lines of discharge, his energy banking up and
pushing against right doors that don’t open, and moving very slack
through wrong doors that do. Moreover, though well-nourished and
well-placed, if he is hag-ridden by some ancient lie about work being a
curse, a disgrace, or some such idiocy, then he is unhappy because his
own mind, clogged and twisted, turns on cross-currents of pressure that
spoil the smooth flow of energy.
To recapitulate:
Life is action.
Action is conscious discharge of energy.
Discharge of energy is pleasure in proportion to amount, complexity, and
freedom of delivery.
Social action involves greatest amount and complexity, and so, with free
delivery, greatest pleasure. Our free delivery is checked by wrong
conditions and wrong concepts.
By altering the concepts we can alter conditions and so make social
action normal.
Work is social action.
It is the expression of social energy for social use.
It is essentially collective, and we find work most highly developed
among most collective creatures, as the ant, the bee, the man.
It involves a higher degree of intelligence than the preceding
processes. All the efforts of animals to take food are excito-motory,
and either egoistic or, at most, familistic. They are hungry, they
desire something, and they go to get it, performing whatever actions
have become necessary in the pursuit. But work is the process of making,
not of taking. It is not excito-motory, but the result of cerebral
action.
The humble squaw who drops corn in her stick-ploughed field is actuated
by a concept, a knowledge of how in time there will be fruit for her
children. There is no present stimulus, she pushes herself, urged by the
accumulating nerve force of the larger brain. Her lord, the noble
Red-man, gallantly pursuing the buffalo, is acting merely as an animal,
under direct stimulus of hunger and the visible beast before him. Being
hungry, he hunts. Being fed, he does nothing. He can only act in the
lower circuit of excito-motory nerves. But she, not hungry, makes the
corn grow. She makes the tent. She makes the moccasins and leggings and
beaded belt. She makes the dish and basket. She, first on earth, works,
and she works for others.
First, it was only this mother energy, producing for its young; the same
power which finds its apotheosis in the sublime matriarchate of the bee.
Work was primarily an extension of the maternal function; and, carried
to excess, results in that ultra-perfection of specialised maternity,
the ever-bearing queen-mother, the ever-toiling worker-mother, and the
contemptible, well-nigh useless, barely tolerated, and soon slaughtered
drone-father. But human work was saved this hopeless limitation of
maternity by being forced upon the male, and by him specialised and
distributed. To work and save is feminine, tending to the swollen hive,
the sacrificed male. We still see this tendency among us in that
long-aborted social rudiment, the home. But man, assuming the industrial
function, applied to it his disseminating energy, spread, scattered,
specialised, and so made possible our social life. If the bees had been
led to our great economic manœuvre, the motherising of the male, they
might be more than hymenoptera to-day.
Work, as an ever-elaborating discharge of energy, tends to develop under
laws of inertia, like all natural processes. The “tendency to vary” in
action is checked in the short circuit of individual animal activities
by the immediate consequence of his own variation to the individual.
This wonderful new step of ours, the production of food, gave us a new
base for variation. A low grade of effort, by a few persons, kept us
fed, alive. Our early specialisation in social defence kept us
protected, alive. Being thus assured of life, though not on the basis of
individual exertion, we acquired time to manifest new activities.
Here is one of the great keys to “the mystery of human life,” no more a
mystery than any of nature’s laws, when you know it. A social life is
assured by the basic industry, agriculture, and some degree of trade and
commerce. Then the energy no longer required by each man for each day’s
living can be given to invention, discovery, experiment. So follows all
the immensity of our growth.
The social base being absolutely firm, and requiring less and less
social energy as our agricultural and commercial processes improve, we
grow in arithmetical progression—or in geometrical rather—as our
increase in production and distribution multiplies our ability and our
increase in ability multiplies our production and distribution. This
assured base and wide room for variation is necessary to society in
developing its higher functions. We can afford to feed and guard for
several generations the slow-maturing genius, which, when it reaches the
productive point, will richly benefit us all. We can give more rest and
freedom to our members than any self-fed and self-guarded beast could
dream of.
A thousand delicate and beautiful specialties are allowed to grow by our
broad sure social base of supplies. So far we have seen this in
conscious action only where a government has encouraged certain arts or
sciences, or where an established church or endowed university has bred
its kind of specialty, or again where some individual has contrived to
enlarge his own “social base” enormously, and “varies” as he will, but
we see its converse commonly enough where the individual is not allowed
any hold on the social base, but kept at the self-feeding stage in
development, thus effectually checking his “tendency to vary.”
Every advantage has its possible attendant evils, and Society offers a
wide field for such. In the point we are treating, the evils are
painfully prominent. As soon as we left the self-supplying stage, a
man’s sins were no longer visited immediately on his own head. An animal
gains or loses by his own behaviour. A man gains or loses by his
society’s behaviour. In his assured position as a member of society a
man can be wickeder and more foolish than is possible in any
self-supported life, and he has taken advantage of his opportunities
with great facility and zeal.
The peculiar treason involved in a social being’s offences we have not
yet grown to recognise. It is as if your own teeth turned and gnawed
you. Only a beneficent society could allow the growth of these powerful
beings, and with that social power they sin against society.
As conspicuous an instance as can be given of this kind of sin is in the
action of our misguided common carriers. Here is a function so glaringly
social that one marvels at the power of the human brain in forcibly
regarding it as a private business. On public land granted by the
public, with rights and franchises granted by the public, with money
subscribed by the public, and with elaborately co-ordinated labour
performed by the public, this form of public service is established.
Then one man, or group of men, is allowed to “own” this great piece of
social machinery, and proceeds to administer it, not with regard to the
public advantage, but with regard to the advantage of this managing
group and of that small minority of the public who furnished the money
for the enterprise.
Of course this could not be done if the social body as a whole
recognised the organic character of its own processes, but, owing to the
prevalence of our ancient ego concept and its derivatives, the poor
social body says, “Of course; why should the arteries carry blood except
to feed themselves, it is their business!” Against this evil comes the
growing altruism of work, founded in mother love, in the anti-selfish
instinct of reproduction; work, which, as it develops, carries with it
an ever-developing good will.
Watch this in history. See the two forces as they affect society. See
the primitive labour of the squaw holding the village together, the
village which is the tiny seed of the state, while against it push the
belligerent rivalries of the male. See the instinct to fight and to
take, finding larger expression in organised warfare, constantly
destroying the young societies which industry was building up, both in
warring with one another and in the internal effects of the same
misplaced instincts.
Here is productive industry steadily adding to the wealth of the world
and developing distributive industry as inevitably as an overflowing
spring makes a stream. And here are these destructive tendencies, with
the primitive desire to get for one’s self, to get away from someone
else, not only refusing to assist in industry, not only dishonourably
living on its products, but so scorning and maltreating the real agents
of social growth as to repeatedly destroy the societies that harboured
them.
In the development of industry have grown the altruistic tendencies of
mankind. Working together bred the social consciousness as surely as our
physical organic relation bred our bodily consciousness. Peace, good
will, mutual helpfulness are part and parcel of normal industrial
growth. It is somewhat difficult to disentangle one current of social
phenomena from the many crossing ones, some combining and some
conflicting, but whenever any one trade can be studied in its effect on
a group, certain associative psychic qualities are always found with it,
and the general industrial progress of the world is accompanied by as
general progress in social consciousness and the social virtues.
Agriculture brings us at least peace, an essential condition of its
continuance. Trade brought the concept of justice, the market-place and
its customs and its disputes evoking the early prototypes of our great
courts of law, and extended peace. Commerce widened both still further.
The evils we commonly attribute to business life belong to the continued
survival in it of anti-industrial instincts, not to the industrial ones
at all. Where an individual enters the generous, munificent, kindly
field of human industry with the equipment of a beast or savage, merely
to get for himself all that he can, great evil results; but the same
evil is found unbroken in preindustrial times.
Of its own nature work is altruistic. The more generally industrial a
society is the more we find the higher social feelings developed. But
the instincts of the pre-human beast, the powerful and ingenious
self-feeder, still find expression, and the more so as society becomes
more finely organised. Thief catches thief very promptly where all are
thieves by profession and there is little to steal! But a large,
sensitive, finely organised society offers splendid opportunities to
these mischievous left-overs of ancient times.
The first step is mother labour, the next, slave labour, so up through
serfdom to contract, to our present system of wage labour. The last
step, one we are but just learning, most of us, though some entered upon
it long ago, is man working for mankind; not under any primitive
coercion, but from the action of social forces as natural as breathing.
For whom should he work? What “market” is worth his highly specialised
ability but this? Can he make bricks or compose dramas solely for his
own family?
To associate in the complex discharge of our vast energies, and to be
amply nourished by their countless products, is Social Life. It is true
that work is essentially feminine in its origin, but not permanently. As
it develops it frees itself wholly from sex limitations and becomes a
social function in which men and women take part as members of society.
“Women’s work” in one stage of our life meant every kind of work. “Man’s
work” is now generally supposed to include the harder and rougher, the
higher and more difficult. There is no real foundation for either term.
Either sex can do either kind. Work, modern work, has no sex connotation
whatever. Moreover, modern science has shown that the female, instead of
being inferior, is, if anything, the more important of the sexes.