For men who consider labour to be the essential thing and the joy of
life, the ground, the basis, of it will always be the struggle with
nature,--not only in agricultural labour, but also in that of
handicraft, mental work, and intercourse with men.
The divergence from one or many of these kinds of labour, and
specialities of labour, will be performed only when a man of special
gifts, being fond of this work, and knowing that he performs it better
than anybody else, will sacrifice his own advantage in order to fulfil
the demands which others put directly to him.
Only with such a view of labour and the natural division of labour
resulting from it, will that curse disappear which in our imagination we
have put upon labour; and every labour will always be a joy, because man
will do either an unquestionably useful, pleasant, and easy work, or
will be conscious that he makes a sacrifice by performing a more
difficult special labour for the good of others.
But the division of labour is, it is said, more advantageous.
Advantageous for whom? Is it more advantageous to make with all speed as
many boots and cotton-prints as possible? But who will make these boots
and cotton-prints? Men who from generation to generation have been
making only pin-heads? How, then, can it be more advantageous for
people? If the object were to make as many cotton-prints and pins as
possible, it would be so; but the question is, how to make people happy?
The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labour.
How, then, can the necessity of painful, oppressing work be advantageous
for men? If the question were only for the advantage of some men without
any consideration of the welfare of all, then it might be most
advantageous for some men to eat others. They say it is savoury!
The thing most advantageous for all men is what I wish for myself,--the
greatest welfare and the satisfying of all my wants which are ingrafted
in me, those of body as well as those of soul, of conscience, and of
reason.
Now, for myself I have found, that for my welfare and for the satisfying
of these wants, I need only to be cured of the folly in which I (as well
as the Krapivensky madman) have lived, consisting in the idea that
gentlefolk need not work, and that all must be done for them by others,
and that, producing nothing, I have to do only what is proper to
man,--satisfy my own wants.
Having discovered this, I became persuaded that this labour for the
satisfying of my own wants, is divisible into various kinds of labour,
each of which has its own charm, and is not only no burden, but serves
as rest after some other labour.
I have roughly divided labour, not in the least insisting on the
propriety of such a division, into four parts parallel to the four parts
of the labourer's day's work, divided by his meals; and thus I try to
satisfy my wants.
These are, then, the answers to the question, "What shall we do?" which
I have found for myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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