1 The Origins of the Work and Growth Fetish
“If a man will not work, neither shall he eat.”
John Calvin quoting St. Paul
“To become a fully functional adult male, one prerequisite is essential: a job.”
US President’s Commission Report, 1964
In contemplating an alternative social system of accumulation and social division of labor, a firm understanding of the history and development of contemporary market economies is imperative. This chapter therefore investigates the historical development of the idolatry of paid work. As an important corollary, it also references the social acceptance of the pursuit of economic gain and the acquisition of private property. It begins with the social and religious origins of private property and the work ethic and concludes by examining the role of the discipline of economics in re-enforcing the work fetish through its ethnocentric promotion of “economic man.”
The religious and social genesis of private property and the work ethic
As children of the Reformation we have been conditioned to celebrate the work ethic. Yet, the moral sanctioning of assiduous work habits is by no means universal or time-honored. It was only after the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that hard work began to reflect good character and strong morals. It was soon imbued with religious virtue by Judeo—Christian teachings that promised or signaled eternal salvation through hard work. By the time the religious virtue of hard work began to wane, the work fetish was well established in societal norms, policies and institutions. It continues to exact a prodigious influence on the social structure of accumulation and distribution.
Past civilizations have taken a much more ambivalent or even condescending view of work and acquisitive behavior than modern market economies. Valuing freedom above material attainments, ancient Grecian society attached no moral value to work, with the Greek philosophers often disparaging it (Tilgher 1931). For the Greeks, work was little more than a curse, with their word for it—ponos—having the same Latin root as sorrow. We find the same burdensome meaning in the English words: toil, fatigue, travail, and labor. This toil was the heavy price exacted by the gods for the goods of life, according to Xenophon. Tilgher (1977: 4) writes that most Greek thinkers “deplore the mechanical arts as brutalizing the mind till it is unfit for thinking of truth, for practicing virtue.” Such sentiment is consistent with the admonition of the Delphic Oracle of “nothing to excess.” The Greeks attempted to fashion a social ethos around the knowledge that happiness could only be achieved by successfully balancing the pursuit of material and spiritual needs.
Aristotle and Plato both viewed work as interfering with the duties of citizens and distracting them from more lofty pursuits like politics, art, and philosophy. Spiegel (1991: 7) writes, “The Greeks were politically minded to an excess, and much of what otherwise might have been their working life was spent in political activities often required by the institution of direct democracy.” Such sentiment is reflected in Plato’s prohibition of private property. In his second and third approximations, Plato contends that the soldiers and philosophers should be freed from the burdens of private property, manual labor and family in order to devote their lives to their natural calling-fighting or ruling. This meant that members of the upper class would possess no private property and live communally. As such they would be freed from the humdrum of daily toil and the pursuit of wealth: “that mortal dross which has been the source of many unholy deeds” (Plato from Speigel 1991: 17).
Placing more emphasis on self-sufficiency, Aristotle argued in favor of private property on efficiency grounds but also because it afforded the expression of temperance and liberality. In addition to the obligation of liberality to one’s fellow citizens, Aristotle argued that acquisitiveness should be limited by encouraging both “natural exchange” and justice in exchange, or reciprocity. The desire for natural exchange (or use-value) emanates from natural wants, as opposed to those desires driven by monetary gain (Chrematistics). When exchange takes place, the notion of reciprocity should be in force to maintain equity. Reciprocity in exchange meant that the goods exchanged must somehow be equal when measured by a common yardstick. The strictures that Aristotle placed on private property suggest that he was very concerned about the prospect of acquisitive behavior threatening the stability of society. In sum, work for the Greeks was a necessary activity that needed to be performed for the sustenance and progress of the city-state, but was in no way glorified into something larger.
Perhaps the earliest example of work being imbued with spiritual undertones comes from Hebrew religious doctrine. Hebrew thought held that work was the duty of mankind to absolve the race from the original sin committed by the forefathers. Work was more than a natural or “blind tragic necessity” as it was for the Greeks (Tilgher 1977: 11). In the Talmud it is written that, “man does not find his food like other animals and birds but must earn it, that is due to sin.” Work is accepted by the Hebrews as a penalty, an expiation, through which man can atone for sin and regain original spiritual purity. Work thusly assumes a religious virtuosity under Hebrew doctrine.
The Hebrew notion of the “virtue” of work is limited however to man’s worldly existence. The divine activity which created life had nothing in common with man’s earthly condition. The sanctity of the Sabbath, with its prohibition of work, is reflective of the superior divine existence. Tilgher (1977: 13) writes that, “for the Hebrew thinker, man’s task is to lead the world, troubled and disturbed by man’s abuse of his liberty, back to the cosmic unity and harmony which reigned when man was first brought into being by divine activity.” Work is clearly a consequence of man’s transgressions on earth and not a natural or divine affliction. In Hebrew thought, work becomes the continuous process of restoring the original harmony that existed when man was first brought into being by divine action.1 “To work is to cooperate with God in the great purpose of the world’s salvation (Tilgher 1977: 16).”
Yet, Hebrew thought did not counter the penalty of work with an acquisitive existence. Hebrew religious doctrine identified the rich as the wicked and the poor as the holy and righteous. Contrary to contemporary social attitudes, early Judeo—Christian teachings placed little emphasis on production and material pursuits. There was no need in the Kingdom of God for hoards of worldly possessions. The Bible teaches that Jesus’ followers relinquished their occupations and possessions (Matthew 4: 18–22). Biblical references to the indifference of work abound, including the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, who receive the same pay for differing hours of work and Jesus’ admonition of Martha, who is absorbed in work rather than his sermon.
When it comes to the accretion of wealth as opposed to manual labors, the bible’s lessons turn from indifference to hostility and disapproval. The Sermon on the Mount admonished that treasure is not to be stored up on earth but in heaven (Matthew 6: 19–20). When a wealthy young man queries Jesus about the path to perfection, he is advised to sell his personal property and give the money to the poor (Matthew 19: 21 and Mark 10: 21). Moreover, the Bible is replete with anti-acquisitive aphorisms: “No one can serve two masters … You cannot serve God and Mammon (Matthew 6: 24),” “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (Mark 10: 23–32).” Beder (2000: 12) concludes that “Early Christian, Hebrew, Roman and Greek philosophy all contain the idea that humans once lived in a golden age, communally and in harmony, sharing all that they had, and that the struggle for individual possessions spoiled that harmony and created conflict between humans.” It would be the height of naïveté to deny that these societies were not racked by other economic and social conflicts, but the salient point is that the prevailing moral philosophy in pre-capitalist cultures attempted to minimize economic opportunism and invidious wealth distinctions.
The early “fathers of the church” generally persisted along these acetic lines with Basil (c. 330–79) making egalitarian pronouncements that “whoever loves his neighbor as himself, will possess no more than his neighbor.” Gradually, however, fault lines developed in the interpretation of the Bible that led to an expanded role for private property and the eponymic work habits associated with John Calvin. Writing in Athens around the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria began preaching an allegorical interpretation of the Bible as an alternative to the literal interpretation (Spiegel 1991). As such, the rich young man that was advised in Mark 10: 21 to sell all of his possessions is now counseled to “cast from his mind all attachment to and longing for wealth.” In Clement’s analysis, Jesus was preaching a purging of the soul rather than explicit corporeal acts. Clement went on to parrot many of Aristotle’s arguments for private property, in particular the religious virtuosity of practicing liberality, charity, and munificence. Clement redefines wealth as a gift from God designed to enhance human welfare. The doctrine that wealth was a tool that could be used either righteously or diabolically marked an attitudinal shift that would eventually achieve great prominence in Western civilization.
The rise of the Puritanical labor process: Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin
The writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas were pivotal in advancing the social acceptance of private property and acquisitive behavior. In his synthesis of Christian doctrine and Aristotelian beliefs, Aquinas places private property in harmony with the laws of nature. Like Aristotle, Aquinas displayed no preference for an egalitarian distribution of wealth, only that wealth be regulated by the government and shared with others by the owner. Profit, in itself, was neither reprehensible nor praiseworthy but morally neutral. Yet Aquinas still held reservations about the corrosive potential of wealth accretion and argued that those wishing to lead a life of moral rectitude should limit themselves to communal property.
Although Aristotle, Aquinas, and later, Augustine, made great strides in redeeming the image of the businessmen or merchant, it was not until the sixteenth century that profit-making and diligent work behavior would acquire significant moral virtue. Like Aquinas, Martin Luther served as a halfway house toward the market mentality through his promotion of assiduous work habits. Early promotion of the market mentality was forced to advance in a measured and slow progression as the denizens of medieval society did not aspire to amass ever-increasing wealth, or to work with growing intensity and efficiency. Influenced by such medieval mores, Luther espoused hard work but favored those activities with a tangible bias. Agriculture, fishing, and artisan or manual toil were superior forms of work, where banking and trade (or speculation) were sinful. Bernstein (1997: 35) aptly summarizes Luther’s confliction:
His medieval perspective led him to approve of traditional toil in the field or workshop, but compelled him to oppose the new capitalist “spirit” that seemed to undermine all that he cherished. His particular dislike of merchants and bankers stemmed from their desire to be successful in this world, to ‘climb out of the place where God had put them’.
While Luther blessed the sweaty brow of labor, he worried about the power and influence of the growing business establishment. Luther, like so many to follow, was impaled on the horns of the progress paradox, encouraging a devotion to work while proscribing wanton desires to amass wealth and improve one’s station in life. Luther’s faithful were to engage in sustained and sedulous work, while abstaining from the lust for acquisition and gain. Trade was permitted provided it was confined to the exchange of necessities and that the seller demanded no more than would compensate him for his labor and risk. Work was benevolent, but it had to be practiced under a moral asceticism that denied the ambitious the full fruits of their labor. The collection of interest on money lent was also anathema to Luther, even though significant concessions had been made by the canonists on the issue of usury. Luther maintained that “the greatest misfortune of the German nation is easily the traffic in interest … the devil invented it, and the Pope, by giving his sanction to it, has done untold evil throughout the world (Tawney 1937: 104).” Given Luther’s reserved embrace of the market mentality, business interests would have to look to John Calvin and his puritan successors for a broader social acceptance of economic gain.
In the late 1500s, French Theologian John Calvin resuscitated the ancient doctrine of predestination in a form opposed to that of free will, meaning that the souls of the righteous are preordained to be saved while others are abandoned. Calvin also diminished the role of priests and the Church hierarchy from the relationship between individuals and their “Creator,” leaving the individual alone before God. This autonomy was of little use on judgment day, however, as God’s benediction was predestined. Assiduous work and benevolent behavior would not change one’s fate, but people who were blessed were known to engage in such behavior. Oddly enough, for Protestants the virtue of hard work was not the golden key to heavenly salvation, but merely a signal of one’s preordained status. Good deeds were not a way of attaining salvation, but they were indispensable as proof that salvation had been attained. Thus, people intent on convincing others, or themselves, of their “chosen status” had to devote the utmost diligence to their labors.
Under Calvinism, sedulous work effort not only promised pecuniary awards but the outward appearance of salvation. Beder (2000: 15) points out that this differed from Catholic doctrine, “unlike Catholics, Calvinists could not be forgiven for occasional lapses; rather, such lapses were a sign that a person was not one of the elect.” Protestant preachers in both Europe and America frequently made work the preferred topic of their sermons and the importance of work remained a keystone of many Christian teachings well into the eighteenth century (Bernstein 1997).
Calvin’s emphasis on self-control and methodical behavior helped prepare a generation of workers for toil in an industrial setting. Attention to detail and attendance during afternoon nap times or saints’ days was critical for the success of the workshops, factories, and counting houses of the new era. Calvin thusly acted as an important bridge between medieval life and modern capitalistic notions of work. Tawney (1937: 120) writes that “it is not wholly fanciful to say that, on a narrower stage but with no less formidable weapons, Calvin did for the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century what Marx did for the proletariat of the nineteenth.”
Time was now viewed as a precious commodity because it made possible the production of other commodities. Efficient use of the commodity of time was aided by the widespread use of clocks and watches—known to the Kabyle people of Algeria as the “devil’s mill” (Thompson 1967: 89). The very analogy of a precision time piece was used to reinforce the concept of proficient labor. Baxter (quoted in Bernstein 1997: 79) writes that lives “should be … as parts of a clock or other engine, which must be all conjunct, and each rightly placed.” With the introduction of time measurement and Puritan views, there was to be little rest in the world. Mumford (1934: 14) opines that “the clock, not the steam engine [was] the key machine of the industrial age.” Leisurely agrarian rhythms—that once afforded Spanish workers 5 months’ annual leave for religious holidays and festivals and French workers in excess of 100 days for saints’days—rapidly gave way to the exactitude of the clock and the religious opprobrium of idleness (Reid 1996). Hunnicutt (1988) observes that before “struggling about time” workers “struggled against time” to protect their diurnal activities and rhythms from the sterility of the clock. Prior to the industrial age, Hunnicutt (1988: 46) writes, “bursts of concentrated work alternated with long periods of milling about. Moreover, skilled artisans enjoyed considerable control over their trades. Not only were they able to set their schedules and control their work rhythms; they had the chance to perfect traditional skills and designs and often incorporated their own creative ideas into their work.” With the rise of mass production, the “time-frame” supplanted the “task” as the focal point of production. As church and school fell in line with industry’s time requirements, workers grudgingly accepted the new time disciplines. Punctuality and diligence became central aspects of individual, social, and moral life. Anthony (1977: 44) writes:
Work had every advantage. It was good itself. It satisfied the selfish economic interest of the growing number of small employers or self-employed. It was a social duty, it contributed to social order in society and to moral worth in the individual. It contributed to a good reputation among one’s fellows and to an assured position in the eyes of God.
Such religious values gave work and profit-making a quiet nudge forward, offering a philosophy that shaped Anglo-Saxon work values for generations to come.
The vilification of vagrancy and the spread of Social Darwinism
The antithesis of hard work—unemployment or idleness—attracted severe odium in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Unemployment became a badge of moral degradation and humiliation. This societal contempt and disdain for the poor broke with early Christian attitudes toward the downtrodden, which viewed pauperism as an opportunity for those more fortunate to provide succor. Beder (2000: 16) writes, “whereas beggars had been tolerated in medieval society as a natural part of the normal God-given order, even glorified because of the opportunity they gave Catholics to do good deeds, they were despicable to Protestant society.” In the Protestant paradigm idleness was a sin and the destitute were seen as being responsible for their state through their own wickedness. Consequently, charity and alms—incumbent upon the wealthy in early Christian times—should not extend to those who were able to work for themselves. Calvin complained that there is “nothing more disgraceful than a lazy good-for-nothing who is of no use either to himself or to others but seems to have been born only to eat and drink (from Bernstein 1997: 56).”
It should be noted that Europe at the time was experiencing rapid social, economic, and technological change that resulted in the displacement of workers from a variety of backgrounds. Events in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, such as increasing life-expectancy, population growth, the enclosure movement, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, placed tremendous pressure on workers and swelled the ranks of the “drones” loathed by the Protestants. Yet, there was little recognition from the Protestants that the circumstances of the condemned mendicants and vagrants were beyond their control.
Many of the tramps and beggars imprisoned for being idle were displaced by the enclosure movement or by the depression of the 1590s. While the earliest enclosures dated back to the Statutes of 1235 and 1285, it was those of the Tudor era which first appropriated large tracts of land in England. By 1500, significant acreage had been enclosed, including much of Essex and Kent. Men and women accustomed to agrarian life found themselves subject to pressures they could neither understand nor control. Sixteenth-century England was a period of inordinate economic disruption caused by an agrarian revolution, a waning manorial system, a waxing industrial system, and a rapid spread of commerce. The economic stress generated a large class of wandering laborers. The upheaval led members of the ruling elite and the middle class on a campaign of stereotyping the poor, which largely persists in modern political discourse.
This condescending opinion of the indigent eventually permeated the public view and policies of sixteenth-century England. Feagin (1975) chronicles British policies that resulted in beggars and vagrants being whipped, forced into compulsory service or put in prison. The British Beggars Act of 1536 allowed for even harsher corporeal punishment. If whipping did not provide sufficient motivation, a part of one ear could be severed. In 1547, the Duke of Somerset permitted the enactment of laws that required healthy vagrants to be branded with the letter “V” (Bernstein 1997). Although the practice was short-lived, similar treatment resurfaced in the 1603 Poor Law which stated that “incorrigible rogues” should be branded on the shoulder with a large “R” (Garraty 1978). Thus, discipline and order became the Puritan watchwords of the late sixteenth century and significant resources were devoted to the task. In the Middlesex Quarter Sessions Court, whipping and branding proceeded at a rate of one person per day in the ...
