It is said that today's migrant workers have a lingering "class smell", which is a kind of "tired temperament that can only be found after work". If you've ever embraced the belief that labor is a virtue and forced yourself to work hard every day, listen to how the Nobel laureate Russell defended laziness.
Russell warns us that "working hard is the morality of slaves." We must not work hard for the sake of toil, as we do now, but through toil, we must achieve a state of life in which we no longer need toil.
Outside of work, can migrant workers have leisure and find themselves in life? Russell said that if you work four hours a day, everything will be fine.
Russell: A defense of laziness
Like most people of my generation, I grew up listening to the proverb "Satan is an idle man who wants to do bad things." As a good boy of good character, I believed deeply in these kinds of teachings, and I have disciplined myself from them, and I have worked hard to this day. But while this moral standard has always shaped my actions, my views have changed dramatically. It seems to me that in today's world, people have worked too hard, and the belief that labor is a virtue has caused great harm to society. Modern industrialized countries need to embrace new ideas that are radically different from those that have existed before.
Everyone has heard the story of the Neapolitan traveler, who saw twelve beggars lying on the ground basking in the sun (the story takes place before the time of Mussolini) and said that he would reward the laziest lira. The eleven beggars jumped up and said they owed it to themselves, so the traveler gave the money to the twelfth. Clearly, the traveler made the right choice.
However, for countries that do not enjoy the Mediterranean sun, it is much more difficult to be truly idle, and it needs to be guided by large-scale public propaganda. I hope that the YMCA leaders will read the following and start a movement to encourage good young people to learn to be idle, so that I will not live in vain.
Before I can defend laziness, I must first refute a point of view that is difficult to disagree with. If a person who has no food or clothing still wants to do a certain daily job, such as teaching or typing, people will say that he is stealing someone else's bread and that it is unjust. If this is true, wouldn't it be better for each of us to be idle so that everyone can have bread to eat.
Those who hold this view forget that making money usually means spending money, and spending money is providing employment for others. As long as the person spends his earnings, he is giving bread to others in the same amount as he grabbed from other people's mouths when he made money. In this way, it is the one who saves money and does not spend it is the real unrighteousness. If, as the legendary French peasant did, he hid his savings in his socks, it would certainly not promote any employment. However, if he invests the money, things become more complicated and need to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
One of the most common investments is to lend money to the government. However, most civilized governments spend most of their public spending on paying for past wars and preparing for future wars. Given this fact, the person who lends money to the government is no different from the villain who buys murder in Shakespeare's plays. The end result of this frugal habit was to help the borrowing government expand its armament. Obviously, he might as well spend it, even if it is spent on drinking and gambling, it is better than lending it to Zhengqiang.
At this time, it was said that investing savings in industrial enterprises was different. Once the invested business is successful, producing something useful, there is nothing wrong with this investment. Unfortunately, with the current situation, no one dares to deny that the vast majority of enterprises will eventually go bankrupt. This means that a large amount of labor resources, which could have been used to produce things for human enjoyment, are instead used to make machines, and when the machines are produced, they become useless idle goods. It can be seen that investing savings in enterprises that are bound to go bankrupt is simply harming others and oneself.
If he spends his money on, for example, partying and entertaining friends, then not only his friends (we hope) will be happy, but those who make money from him, such as those who sell meat, toast, and moonshine, will also be happy. But if he invests (for example) in building tram tracks, but the local population doesn't want to have a tram at all, a lot of labor is wasted in places that don't bring happiness to anyone. Still, those who are destitute by failed investments are seen as victims of bad luck, but those who spend their money and give freely are despised as fools who don't do their jobs.
Working hard is a slave's morality
These are just foreshadowing. I would like to state for the record that the belief in work as a virtue has caused a non-negligible havoc on modern society. If you want to get on the road to prosperity and happiness, you must systematically scale back your work.
First of all, what is work? There are two kinds of work: either changing the relative position of two objects on the ground or near it, or telling someone else to do it.
The first type of work is hard and poorly paid, and the second type of work is comfortable and well-paid. The scope of the second type of work can be extended indefinitely: both those who give orders and those who advise on what to order. Often, two organized groups will present opposing opinions at the same time, which is called politics. This type of work requires not a deep knowledge of the proposal itself, but how to convince others through speeches and words, which is the art of marketing.
There is a third group of people in Europe (but not in the United States) who are more respected than those who do both jobs. Such people receive rents on the basis of land ownership, so that others are qualified to live and work.
These landowners, who have nothing to do, seem to deserve praise. Unfortunately, their idleness is built on the toil of others. In fact, from a historical point of view, it is their desire to be lazy and lazy that has contributed to the belief in human hard work. The last thing they want is for others to look up to them.
From the dawn of civilization to the pre-industrial revolution, a man's hard work was usually barely enough to support himself and his family, even if his wife worked as hard as he did, and even if his children were a little older. The small surplus beyond the basic needs was not given to the producers, but was appropriated by the samurai and the clergy. In the face of famine, there was no surplus, but the samurai and clergy continued to demand as usual, so that countless laborers died of poverty.
This system continued in Russia until 1917111 and is still used in many Eastern countries today. Although the Industrial Revolution had already broken out in Britain, it was still in vogue during the Napoleonic Wars until a new class of factory owners came to power a hundred years ago. In the United States, this system ended after the Revolutionary War, with the exception of the South, where it continued until the Civil War.
A system that has been so protracted and just terminated will naturally have a huge impact on people's minds, and most of the desire to work for granted stems from this system, but the pre-industrial system is no longer suitable for modern society. Modern technology has made it possible to spend time within certain limits. It no longer belongs only to a privileged few, but a right that can be distributed equally throughout society. Working hard is the morality of a slave, and slavery is not needed in modern society.
It is clear that in a society with a backward level of development, if the peasants had a choice, they could not hand over their meager material surplus to the samurai and clergy, but would only produce less or consume more.
At first, they were simply forced to work and hand over surpluses, but gradually it was discovered that most of them could be induced to accept a moral view that would lead them to believe that hard work was an obligation, even if part of the income from production was to keep others idle. In this way, the coercive element of previous labor can be reduced, and the management cost will be reduced.
To this day, if it were suggested that the king should not earn more than ordinary laborers, it would be hard to believe that 90 percent of British wage earners would still find it unbelievable. From a historical point of view, the concept of "obligation" has always been a means by which the power class induces others to benefit their own masters rather than themselves. Of course, the authorities themselves do not want to admit this, preferring to believe that their interests are in line with the interests of humanity as a whole.
In some cases, this is justified, such as the fact that the Athenian slave owners used part of their leisure time to make an indelible contribution to human civilization, which would not have been possible under an absolutely just economic system.
Leisure is a necessary condition for civilization. In the past, leisure was only available to the minority through the toil of the many, but the toil of the majority was valuable not because labor was good, but because leisure was good. With the development of modern science and technology, it has become possible to distribute leisure fairly without compromising the progress of civilization.
With the help of modern technology, it is possible to reduce the amount of labor that meets the basic needs of all people, and the Great War is a good proof of this. At that time, men in the army, people involved in munitions production, and men and women engaged in espionage, war propaganda, and war-related government departments were all transferred from their original production positions. Despite this, the overall material standard of living of the unskilled labor force in the Entente countries was higher than before and after the war.
However, the importance of this fact was obscured by the financial situation at the time: borrowing gave the population the false impression that they were feeding the present with the future, but this was obviously impossible, and painting bread did not satisfy hunger. The Great War fully proved that through the scientific management of production, modern society can enable the entire population to live a relatively comfortable life with only a small part of the labor force.
If, at the end of the war, the scientific methods of management that had been created to mobilize people for war or munitions production had been continued, and the working hours had been reduced to four hours, everything would have been fine. But the truth is that the old system has returned, and employed laborers are forced to work longer hours, while others are reduced to starving unemployed.
Why is this so? For work is an obligation, and the amount of wages a person receives is not based on what he produces, but on the virtue of industriousness.
This is the morality advocated by the slave state, but the external environment of the world today is very different from that of the slavery period, and it is no wonder that this morality can lead to disastrous consequences.
Let's take an example. Suppose a certain number of people are engaged in pin production for a certain period. They work (say) eight hours a day, producing just enough pins to meet the needs of society. At this time, someone invented a new technology that doubled the number of pins produced in a human life, but the world could not consume so many pins: pins were already cheap, and no matter how low the price was, it was impossible to sell more.
In a world dominated by reason, all those involved in the production of pins would reduce their working hours from eight hours to four hours, so that everything could continue to function normally. In the real world, however, people saw this as a sign of depression, and continued to implement the eight-hour workday, which led to overproduction of pins, bankruptcies of some employers, and unemployment of half of those involved in pin production.
In the end, what could be more crazy than the fact that the free time of society as a whole is the same as the four-hour workday, except that now half of the population has nothing to do, the other half is overworked, and the inevitable leisure is reduced to general misery rather than a source of universal happiness?