Work is Wonderful … Labor Sucks
The dictionary doesn’t, but for the sake of this article let me make a distinction between work and labor.
Work done directly for the sustenance of self, family, and community is right livelihood. And most people, within that context, actually usually work pretty hard. We tend to want to be recognized and appreciated. This kind of work-for-love could be making household repairs, tending a vegetable garden, balancing the checkbook, preparing an enjoyable meal, helping the kids with homework, doing the dishes well; creating pleasure by coordinating a family vacation, giving a good back massage, artfully wrapping presents, leading a bike-ride outing. When people are motivated to be constructive and conscientious about making a contribution they pay attention to and take pride in the accomplishment of this kind of work.
Labor done for alien institutions (institutions “out there” relative to one’s self, family, community) is usually dreary and enervating. Part of the wrongheadedness of the socialists is how they glorify the labor done by the hallowed “working class.” Truth is, people have no particular loyalty to being working class . . . and alien labor sucks, whether it’s done for an enterprise that’s privately owned or publicly owned. Workers aren’t particularly motivated to “take power” to direct the national economy; I don’t think they’d really gain much satisfaction from running their enterprises.
Workers are people and, as such, they’d love to be liberated from that kind of labor.
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Above I cite all family-oriented work because there is very little community-oriented work. There would be community-oriented work if we brought production back to the community, where it originally had been. Within the context of industrial modernism institutions are the locus of most work. Another way to say it is that most productive resources are allocated to institutions. It’s no wonder, then, that community life has withered. The solution is embodied by the Greens’ key value: Community-based Economics.
