|
Attitudes to Work |
Attitudes to work in pre-industrial societies |
|
Keith Grint notes that until relatively recently the Western attitude to work has been prejudiced against it. Firstly, this follows the Graeco-Roman tradition that equated work with slavery. Secondly, the barbarian tradition that praises the ‘warrior’ who lives by booty. Thirdly, the Judao-Christian tradition that praises contemplation over action and teaches that work is a punishment for sin.
|
|
The Protestant Work Ethic |
|
The idea that one ought to work has been traced by Weber to the influence of Protestantism, and especially Calvinism – it is called the “Protestant work-ethic” and protestants tend to believe that they earn their place in heaven by means of work. Victorian Englishmen tended to adopt the same attitude, as expressed in Samuel Smile’s dictum that ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’. Another source of the modern work habit is the advent of modern industry. The historian E.P. Thompson argues that pre-industrial work was task orientated – that is, people worked hard in proportion to the demands of the task. But modern machinery requires regular work patterns which were imposed on factory workers during the industrial revolution, although not at first without opposition and conflict.
|
|
A Capitalist Trick |
|
From the C19th onwards it is claimed that employers have subjected employees to ‘propaganda’ about not wasting time. The Russian anarchist Kropotkin argues against this ‘capitalist trick’ by writing: “Let us begin by satisfying our needs of life, joy and freedom. And once all will have experienced this well-being we will set to work to demolish the last vestiges of the bourgeois regime, its morality derived from the account book.”
|
|
