No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Much of the recent interest taken in work springs from our present plight of high unemployment, united with fears that the microchip technological revolution will increase unemployment such that we shall have to move to a leisure society, where to work is a privilege.
This presentation (in the medical sense) of the problem affects the diagnosis and affects, too, the way we think of work. For instance, very few commentators seriously challenge the equation of work with paid employment. This shoft-term focus excludes areas of work which should be included both because they are definitely work, and also because taking cognizance of longer-range matters might help us see the present position more clearly, although at a greater distance from the plight of the depressed ex-steel workers of Consett. Incidentally, here it is worth remembering that if we look at the world as a whole, the vast majority of its inhabitants are not in paid employment — they are either outside the market economy altogether, living in subsistence societies, or, as in Britain, supporting those in paid employment by the hidden subsidy of home work, the cooking, cleaning, child-rearing necessary for the maintenance of society, and the consuming necessary for the maintenance of our kind of capitalist society. Thus out of a British population of some 55 million, only about 18 million are in paid employment. On the old model of society these 18 million were seen as supporting the rest; a shift in the phantasm, partly brought about by reflecting on the possible consequences of the micro-chip, has enabled us to see things a little differently — the old,
1 E.g. Aristotle, Politics, Bk III, Ch. 3/5. Although there are other, very different, attitudes to be found in the Greeks, and even within Aristotle, I want to argue that the one delineated here has been the most influential.
2 The realm of freedom only begins, in fact, where that labour which is determined by need and external purposes ceases. Capital, III, va 111/2, p 873.Google Scholar
3 Workers at Lucas Aerospace, given the opportunity of deciding how they would like to apply their knowledge, skills and machinery, came up with plans for designing and making a variety of useful artefacts, including several aids for handicapped people.
4 A version of this paper was first given to a meeting of the Christendom Trust in July 1980. My thanks to the Trustees for their invitation, and to Adrian Cunningham, Ricca Edmondson, Alan Holland and Russell Keat for their help.
You have
Access