A Short History of Work

Sean O’Shea reflects on the history of work and the changing values attached to it over time. He focuses particularly on ancient times and the Middle Ages, and ends with an account of the development of the factory system.

This is the first in a series of features on work.

The academic study of work undertaken by sociologists reminds us that what counts as work and the value attached to it is ambiguous and has varied considerably across time and cultures.

Consideration of the etymology of the word work demonstrates that while neutral and positive meanings have sometimes been attached to it, negative meanings have persisted. For example travail, the French word for work, comes from the Latin tripallion, which means an instrument of torture. The Greek word for work was ponos, taken from the Latin poena, which meant sorrow.

In the Bible work is presented as a curse or punishment visited upon Adam and Eve for disobeying the Lord. Banished from the Garden of Eden they and their descendants would henceforth have to “earn their bread by the sweat of their brows until they returned into the ground” (Genesis 13:19). But positive views of work are also in evidence in the Bible, such as the story of the sower and the seed.

There is ambiguity in the Hebrew word for work, which can carry both positive and negative meanings. Avodah means work but also means worship. Oved is a worker and Evid is a slave; Avdut is the Hebrew word for slavery. Work involves the idea of serving someone; Avodat Elohim is the service or worship of the true God, which requires an inner humbling, a surrender of self.

In Ancient Greece, society was composed of free citizens, an intermediate group called metoici or resident aliens and the slaves. The slaves did the bulk of the manual work, which the Greeks despised.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle made it clear that the purpose for which the majority of men laboured was to enable the elite to engage in art, philosophy, and politics. While the Greeks also devoted some of their time to commerce, agriculture and warfare, they saw leisure as a prerequisite for engagement in cultural life and the daily affairs of the polis (city state). These civic responsibilities were taken very seriously, and the Greeks felt that you could not become a fully developed citizen unless you had the means and the time to be actively engaged in the public affairs of your community.

A life largely dedicated to work would make the pursuit of virtue or the “good life” impossible. Indeed a person’s morality and wisdom was seen as directly proportional to the amount of leisure time a person had.  If work wasn’t viewed highly by the Greeks, wealth wasn’t either. Some thought wealth and virtue were incompatible. Others, like the Stoics, felt wealth should not be pursued for purposes other than generosity and contributing to the social good.

Our contemporary conception of individualism, with its accompanying notion of privacy and the positive value placed on the exclusive pursuit of one’s own self-interest, was quite foreign to the ancient Greeks. In Athenian democracy someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned primarily with their private affairs was referred to as a “private citizen” or Idiotes. This is the origin of our English word idiot.

The view that working for wages is akin to slavery was present in the ancient world. The Roman writer Cicero wrote in his De Officiis: “Whoever gives his labour for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves”.

 

 

The Middle Ages

The feudal society of the Middle Ages was separated into the Church and the secular orders with defined hierarchies. The secular order comprised the king, the nobility, the freemen and the peasants or serfs. The peasants constituted up to 90% of the population and did the bulk of the work.

Here below some pray, some fight, still others work.

Bishop Adalbero of Laon

 

The peasants were not slaves in the Greek sense but they were tied to the land they worked and were obliged to give part of the fruits of their labour to the lord, who in turn offered protection and a place to live. Most peasants owned a few cows, goats or sheep and were allowed to graze their livestock on common land.

Freemen also worked, and these included businessmen and craftsmen who formed themselves into guilds. The Church proscribed usury or the lending of money at interest. Craft guilds instituted a system of “a just price” which kept quality high and prices low. While craftsmen took pride in their craft there was no intrinsic value attached to work. And peasants working long hours, other than at harvest time, would be seen as not having faith in Providence. Furthermore, the medieval calendar was studded with feast days. At Christmas, for example, no-one was allowed to work for up to 12 days. There was also prolonged celebration after the harvest to give thanks to Mother Earth for her bounty. A girl or doll image would be decorated with grain from the fields, fruit from the trees and paraded through the villages on Thanksgiving Day.

 

From the Reformation onwards

The Reformation brought about a new view of work labeled as ‘the Protestant work ethic,’  a term coined by the sociologist Max Weber. This emphasised the importance of dilligence, punctuality, and deferment of gratification. A key figure contributing to this change was the Christian reformer John Calvin. He believed in predestination and thought that by working hard, and being successful at your work, you could demonstrate that you were among  the Lord’s elect. The value attached to work, the need for all persons to work and the justification of profit provided by Calvin  would  form the ideological underpinning of capitalism.

 

Work for the night is coming

 

Work for the night is coming:
Work through the sunny noon;
Fill brightest hours with labour,
Rest comes sure and soon;
Give every flying minute
Something to keep in store;
Work, for the night is coming,
When man works no more.

Hymn written by Anna L. Coghill 1854

 

The French revolution in 1789 brought an end to the feudal order and heralded the advance of the commercial middle class or the bourgeoisie.The industrial revolution witnessed the triumph of  this class over the landed gentry and nobility. The earth and its creatures, including other human beings, would no longer be likened to a mother to whom we owed caring responsibilities but as a resource for limitless exploitation.

Changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining and transportation had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. There was mass migration from the countryside into the towns, as peasants sought to sell their labour and find employment in the new mills and factories. Here they faced lives regulated not by the rhythm of the seasons or personalised mutual obligations but by strict impersonal working conditions with long hours of labour dominated by a pace set by machines.

In the factories, skill and craftsmanship was replaced by discipline and anonymity. The trend was toward a semi-skilled labour force, usually operating one machine and performing a small piece of a manufacturing process. The factory system did little to support a sense of purpose or self-fulfilment for those who were on the assembly lines. It also threatened the promise of economic reward when output exceeded that which the economy could absorb.

This regime of work was challenged by the labouring classes, some of whom would demand the humanisation of working conditions, while others struggled for a change to the capitalist system itself and its replacement by a more humane and fairer social and economic order.

This however, is another story.

 

April 2012

 

 

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