apathy maybe
7th December 2007, 11:56
What is considered work and what isn't, is a subject that I've thought about a bit. But I haven't really been able to come up with a simple, definition of what work is.
Well, I was just reading some Mark Twain, and came across a very succinct explanation of the difference between work and play.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
From Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Chapter Two, 1876.
Available from http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Twa2Tom.html
"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
Is there a more simple distinction between labour and fun? Is this even a good distinction?
Of course, this mere discovery of a good distinction does not a theory thread make :). Thus a further comment, it is my opinion that this sort of idea is what Marx was talking about when he said of a future communist society, that one could "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner".
As soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. [Marx, in Tucker 1972:124](Does anyone have title of the book/essay that this quote came from? I can't find it. Oh, and the Tucker is I think the yank Individualist Anarchist. He translated a lot of stuff (revolutionary and other) into English.)
Well, I was just reading some Mark Twain, and came across a very succinct explanation of the difference between work and play.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
From Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Chapter Two, 1876.
Available from http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Twa2Tom.html
"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
Is there a more simple distinction between labour and fun? Is this even a good distinction?
Of course, this mere discovery of a good distinction does not a theory thread make :). Thus a further comment, it is my opinion that this sort of idea is what Marx was talking about when he said of a future communist society, that one could "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner".
As soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. [Marx, in Tucker 1972:124](Does anyone have title of the book/essay that this quote came from? I can't find it. Oh, and the Tucker is I think the yank Individualist Anarchist. He translated a lot of stuff (revolutionary and other) into English.)