Ah work. It is usually a word that brings about dread for many employed people. Long caffeinated hours that can, usually, be quite strenuous and taxing on the body and mind. Even workers that are very passionate about their careers can get exhausted and fed up by them. But what if we lived in a workless society? Would things be better, or worst for the individual’s health and psyche? Is work only necessary for financial stability and to accomplish the necessities for life or is there something more?
Philosopher Aristotle described “the complete happiness of man”, as being “self-sufficiency, leisureliness and unworriedness”. But after discussing this he added that man was too lowly for such accomplishments and that they were only suitable for the gods. Conversely, in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible God is seen as doing three things; creating, working, and resting. If man is to be like Him, he must do the same. But philosophical and religious notions aside, can man lead a meaningful life without labor?
A 2013 Gallup poll found that 68 percent of people would keep working after winning the lottery. Obviously this majority of people polled would not be working simply to pay the bills, so why else would anyone work? Another Gallup poll from the same year found that three out of four employed people surveyed said they planned to keep working part-time after retirement.
When wages and labor is separated, work can become more meaningful. Wage-labor can be viewed as a form of enslavement and forceful. But when labor is separated from wages what an individual accomplishes by the sweat of their brow or creative abilities, can bring about a more in-depth sense of self-worth and accomplishment. Rather than pursuing meaningless work to earn a check, a person can labor to better themselves, others, the greater society and the planet.
The late French social activist Peter Maurin co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement in part to reject and go against wage labor. Although he believed in labor as a beneficial and necessary part of each person’s life, he also believed that labor should only be pursued for four hours a day, followed by four hours of discussion. The following is an excerpt from one of Maurin’s Easy Essays on labor guides:
“But the worker would not be exploited at the point of production
if the worker did not sell his labor to the exploiter of his labor.
When the worker sells his labor to a capitalist or accumulator of labor
he allows the capitalist or accumulator of labor to accumulate his labor.
And when the capitalist or accumulator of the worker’s labor has
accumulated so much of the worker’s labor that he no longer finds it
profitab1e to buy the worker’s labor then the worker can no longer sell
his labor to the capitalist or accumulator of labor.
And when the worker can no longer sell his labor to the capitalist or
accumulator of labor he can no longer buy the products of his labor.
And that is what the worker gets for selling his labor to the capitalist or
accumu1ator of labor.
He just gets left and he gets what is coming to him. Labor is not a
commodity to be bought and sold–. Labor is a means of self-expression,
the worker’s gift to the common good.”
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