Economic development -- Social aspects; Social evolution; Social problems; Work
Social evolution is natural, and natural organic processes are easy and
agreeable, unconscious if they require no cerebral attention, and, if
they do, attended with sensations of pleasure. Granting, as we have
done, that waste of energy is an evil, and any overdraught on our
reserve fund of cerebral energy is naturally resented by the organism,
it is still maintained that normal human work does not involve any waste
of energy or any draught on the cerebral reserve more than is pleasant
to expend, and results in increase rather than diminishing of that
store.
The conditions of normal work are these: First, the individual should be
well stocked. A sick man cannot enjoy work, a crippled, deformed person
is not fitted to work, and a congenital pauper, one born without that
inheritance of nervous energy which should increase with each
generation, is unable to work with pleasure. But given, first, a normal
individual, he should, second, work at what he likes best. This means
social specialisation, and requires for its right development such
education and opportunity as shall bring out all possible
differentiation of faculty. So widely lacking are these conditions, so
hampered is our choice of work, and so undeveloped our power of
choosing, that we look with honest envy at the man who does love his
work and can do the work he loves, like Agassiz or Lord Kelvin.
In normal social conditions every man would do the work he loved and
love the work he did, so life and happiness would become synonymous.
XI: SPECIALISATION
_Summary_
_Organisation means specialisation. Military organisation,
trades-unions, and trusts. Guerilla bands in industrial organisation.
Unspecialised primitive life, the higher the life-form the more
specialisation. The “all-around” savage. Injury of our present
specialisation under false conditions. Waste of energy. Man of thirty
who died of old age. Canoe and steamer. Effect of errors. Normal
conditions of specialisation: shorter hours, variety of work, wide
education. Ownership in collective production. Specialisation should
increase product and decrease effort; it does, but the advantage is
misplaced. Hours of labour in proportion to interest. Especial cruelty
in our conditions of specialisation. Specialisation proves collectivity.
Absurdity of “self-support” idea. Our progress due to such social
distribution as we have, not to “self-support.” Society feeding on
itself. The Social sacrifice. “Unskilled labour” a product of high
social development. Our mistaken attitude toward it. The real nature of
it. Serf and noble. Savage’s exciting monologue. Unskilled labour does
not require inferior men. Line of social growth. Highly specialised work
involves extremely simple details. Our misuse of above fact owing to
false concepts. Unskilled labour is high social service. We punish
instead of paying, or promoting. Height of ingratitude._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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