A man who has come to recognise his calling to labour will be naturally
inclined to that change of labour which is proper for him for the
satisfying of his outward and inward wants, and he will reverse this
order only when he feels an irresistible impulse to some special labour,
and when other men require this labour from him. The nature of labour is
such that the satisfying of all men's wants requires that very
alternation of different kinds of labour which renders labour easy and
pleasant.
Only the erroneous idea that labour is a curse could lead men to free
themselves from some kinds of labour, that is, to seize other men's
labour, requiring from other men that forced occupation with a special
labour which is called nowadays the division of labour.
We have become so accustomed to our false conception of the arrangement
of labour that it seems to us that for a boot-maker, a machinist, a
writer, a musician, it would be better to be freed from the labour
proper to man. Where there is no violence over other men's labour, nor a
false belief in the pleasure of idleness, no man will for the sake of
his special labour free himself from physical labour necessary for the
satisfying of his wants, because special occupation is not a privilege,
but a sacrifice to a man's inclination and for the sake of his brethren.
A boot-maker in a village having torn himself from his usual pleasant
labour in the field, and having begun his labour of mending or making
boots for his neighbours, deprives himself of a pleasant, useful labour
in the field for the sake of others, only because he is fond of sewing,
and knows that nobody will do it better than he does, and that people
will be thankful to him.
But he cannot wish to deprive himself of the pleasant alternation of
labour for all his life. The same with the starosta, the machinist, the
writer, the learned man.
It is only to our perverted ideas, that it seems, when the master sends
his clerk to be a peasant, or government sentences one of its ministers
to deportation, that they are punished and have been dealt with hardly.
In reality they have had a great good done to them; that is, they have
exchanged their heavy special work for a pleasant alternation of labour.
In a natural society all is different. I know a commune where the people
earn their living themselves. One of the members of this community was
more educated than the rest; and they require him to deliver lectures,
for which he has to prepare himself during the day, that he may be able
to deliver them in the evening. He does it joyfully, feeling that he is
useful to others, and that he can do it well. But he grows tired of the
exclusive mental labour, and his health suffers accordingly. The members
of the community therefore pity him, and ask him to come and labour in
the field again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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