Leisure What is this life if, full of care We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to turn at Beauty's glance, and watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. W.H.Davies (1870-1940) WHY WORK? Arguments yorthe LeiresS uociety Bertrand Russell Denis Pym John Hewetson William Morris. Cliff Harper Peter Kropotkin George Woodcock Colin Ward Tony Gibson Camillo Berneri Les Gibbard Gaston Leval Ifan Edwards W. H. Davies August Heckscher Vernon Richards (Editor) "No working ideal for machine production can be based solely on the gospel of work; still less can it be based upon an uncritical belief in constantly raising the quantitative standard of consumption. If we are to achieve a purposive and cultivated use of the enormous energies now happily at our disposal, we must examine in detail the processes that lead up to the final state of leisure, free activity, creation. It is because of the lapse and mismanagement of these processes that we have not reached the desirable end; and it is because of our failure to frame a comprehen­ sive scheme of ends that we have not succeeded in achieving even the beginnings of social efficiency in the preparatory work. " LEWIS MUMFORD Technics & Civilisation (1934) FREEDOM PREss 1997 First published 1983 by FREEDOM PRESS 84B Whitechapel High St London E.1. Reprinted 1987, 1990, 1997 All rights reserved ISBN 0 900384 25 5 To the Memory of JOAN TONER (1892 -1978) a generous Friend of Freedom Press and JACK ROBINSON (1913 - March 20 1983) a good comrade of the Freedom Press group Printed by Aldgate Press in Angel Alley 84B Whitechapel High St London E.l CONTENTS Leisure W.H. Davies inside front cover Why Work? Editor's Preface 5 Call of the Wild Les Gibbard 8 1. INTRODUCTION In Praise of Idleness Bertrand Russell 25 Useful Work versus Useless Toil William Morris 35 2. PROBLEMS AND PLEASURES OF WORK Tyranny of the Clock George Woodcock 53 Why Work? S.L. Lowndes 58 The Problem of Work Camillo Berneri 59 The Art of Shovelling /fan Edwards 83 Measuring Misery John Hewetson 91 The Wage System Peter Kropotkin 93 "Who will do the Dirty Work?" Tony Gibson 108 3. ALTERNATIVES AND FUTURES Reflections on Utopia S.F. 115 Collectives in Spain Gaston Leval 115 Significance of the Self-Build Movement 124 Leisure in America August Heckscher 129 The Other Economy as a Social System Denis Pym 137 Visions: 6 drawings by Cliff Harper. Commentary by Colin Ward 149 4. PRODUCTION FOR USE VERSUS PRODUCTION FOR PROFIT Vernon Richards 1. Reflections on Full Employment 155 2. Supply & Demand 158 3. Capitalism or the Survival of the Richest 161 4. More Parasites than Workers 165 5. Workers Wake Up! 169 6. Wasted Manpower 173 7. Nationalisation of Leisure 177 8. A Bit of Indigestion 180 9. Financial Crisis 1961 184 10. Blessings of Prosperity 186 3 11. Unemployment Again �92 12. Redundancy & Revolution 97 13. "Abundance may Compel Social Justice" 201 14. The Wind of Small Change 205 15. Time is Life 209 About Freedom Press inside back cover We know what we should do, but we do not do it. We prefer to remain not so much in our outer darkness, for the lights of wisdom blaze round us; but in a bemused euphoria of a material 'progress' that offers mankind a high standard of living in exchange for his spiritual freedom. HERBERT READ ( The Truth of a few Simple Ideas 1967) Let us take supply-side theory at its face value, however modest that may be. It holds that the work habits of the American people are tied up irrevocably to their income, though in a curiously perverse way. The poor do not work because they have too much income; the rich do not work because they do not have enough income. You expand and revitalise the economy by giving the poor less, the rich more. J.K. GALBRAITH The Rich get even Richer (Observer 17 /1/82) I was interested to read the article on wealth in last week's Sunday Times as I recently totalled the worth of all my possessions if they were sold. It came to about £400. The most expensive item was a radio-cassetted recorder (£70) followed by my tent (£65) and rucksack (£50). I live comfortably in a bed-sit and work in a London hotel. I would not fit anywhere on your wealth chart, but I certainly do not feel poor. I consider poor to be the countries of the Third World, where to have a day's food is to be rich. I think it is a rather sad comment on our society that a person who owns £10,000 worth of possessions is considered "fairly poor" by 32 per cent of your survey. DEREK BAKER How do you test wealth. Letter in S. Times 1982 4 EDITORS PREFACE Why Work? For three-quarters of the world's teeming billions our question would be considered a rhetorical one. The figures speak for them­ selves: 84 percent of the working population in Bangladesh work on the land; 62 percent do in China; 80% in Egypt, 65% in India, 83% in Tanzania, 56% in Nigeria, 72% in Vietnam. And it is no less a fact of life in Zaire, Zambia and Zimbabwe where food production statistically is a mere 15% of the Gross National Product (GNP)1• Compare these figures with those of the "developed" nations of the world, the producers of the so called "food surpluses". And I will start with our own country which has now proudly joined the grain exporting nations and contributed to the Common Market's wheat, barley and butter intervention "mountairrs" (while at the same time importing manioc - a cheap source of protein for animal feed - from the Far East and butter from New Zealand). Less than 3 percent of this country's workforce is engaged in agri­ culture but produces more than 60% of the food consumed. A lot more people are engaged in processing and generally messing about with it, packaging, advertising, marketing, transporting it as well as making a lot of money in the commodity markets. The U.S.A., largest producer of food in the world and the number one exporter of cereals also employs only 3 percent of its workforce on the land and what they produce represents only 3 percent of the GNP. France, the fifth largest producer of cereals in the world, as well as the second largest of sugar beet, not to mention its pre-eminence as a producer of fruit, dairy produce, root crops and meat requires only I 0% of its working population to do so and in all it represents a modest 5 percent of GNP. Even those countries one thinks of as the granaries of the world, such as Australia and Canada, employ 1. I have used the GNP to make comparisons between the material standards of the Affluent and Third worlds, though I agree when Schumacher declares in Good Work (Abacus 1980) that "this concept of GNP means nothing to me . . . b ecause it's a purely quantitative concept . .. The quality of life -­ not the quantity - yes that's what matters". On the other hand it is under­ standable that the hungry should confuse these two concepts. The quality of life can only have meaning when the basic necessities of life have been satisfied. 6 WHY WORK'! ARGUMENTS FOR THE LE!SURE SOCIETY just 6 percent of their workforces on the land and production is 8% and 4% respectively of GNP. And today even the Mediterranean countries, such as Spain and Italy, which one associates with sun­ shine, food and drink, food production represents a mere 9% of GNP and occupies 19% and 13% respectively of their work forces.2 Thus in the "affluent" quarter of the world our question is far from being a rhetorical one. Though the work ethic remains dominant, a growing minority of working people are asking them­ selves this very question. After all not only do most people live and work in towns and cities and are completely divorced from the land; we have now reached the point where more than half the population is either too old, too young, too sick or too rich to be included on the pay roll3 , or are part of the army of the unpaid (housekeepers, allotment holders, voluntary workers of all kinds none of whom figure in the statistics of GNP). Furthermore producers now represent much less than half the workforce and though much of what they produce keeps the wheels of industry and business ticking over very profitably, they use up valuable sources of raw materials and fossil energy wastefully, while adding very little to the quality of life. The latest available figures for the United States, the undisputed world leader in our consumerist society are that 75% of the work force are white collar and 25% production workers. About 8% of the workforce 12 million) are ( unemployed, with or without the dole, but all assured of either Uncle Sam's renowned soup kitchens and poor houses, or Salvation Army charity4. 2. All the statistics have been taken from Atlaseco (Paris 1980 edition). 3. Harford Thomas in his ever interesting and valuable Alternatives Notebook quotes (Guardian March 13 1982) from Leisure and Work that 9% of our available time was taken up in 1981 by work (including travel to and from), 31 % by leisure and 37% by sleep. "These figures are arrived at by aggregating the living time of the whole population including children and retired people and then totting up the time spent in work, leisure, sleep and other essential activities and converting to percentages". See also the Editor's computation on pp 170-171. 4. Buffalo, once a thriving industrial centre on the banks of Lake Erie, now has, thanks to Reaganomics, unemployment figures of 15.3% for whites and double for blacks. With the Federal government's withdrawal from many social services much of the burden for assistance falls on the Salvation Army and other charitable groups. According to Alex Brummer in the Guardian (31 Jan 1983) in the last year 20,176 individuals sought some kind of assistance from the S.A. compared with 9,609 a year earlier. EDITORS PREF ACE 7 A large proportion of existing services and industries in the affluent society could be dispensed with without society being any the poorer. A simple test is to ask oneself the question: "What would most disrupt your life? A strike by miners of Fleet Street print workers; farmworkers or workers in the arms industry; Health workers or journalists; transport workers or salesmen; water, gas and electricity workers or stockbrokers, Members of Parliament and Company Directors; postal services or advertising services; dustmen or asset strippers; grave diggers or underwriters?" You can check your answers quite simply. When government and Media, and the idle rich, attack striking workers for "holding the nation to ransom" and for being "greedy", you can be sure they are workers doing a worthwhile job for society. In most cases they are among the lower paid. Is it not ironical for instance that a higher proportion of farmworkers in full time employment are entitled to Supplementary Benefit than in any other industry? The media for a few days exploited the mass exodus of sorne 1Yi m. Ghanaians from Nigeria for all they were worth. T .V. was prov- ided with a Hollywood spectacular in full technicolour for free. But fascinating as the logistics of this army of the hungry is for the cameras and the journalists, how much more socially important is the fact that over a period of years nearly a sixth of the population of Ghana had made its way on foot, by truck or by boat to oil-rich Nigeria in search of the means of existence (yes, and perhaps dreams of El Dorado. Why not?) while Ghana's ruling group was much more concerned with the old worldly struggle for power and pelf.5 One can only see the "problem" of unemployment in the over-affluent West in its true context by comparing the material sit­ uation of those Ghanaians with that of the 28 million unemployed in the industrialised countries of the OECD. 53% of Ghana's labour force work on the land which produces 48% of the GNP. How can 1 Yz million returnees be fed and sheltered and absorbed into the economy overnight? In the affluent West not only can they afford to keep 28 million skilled and unskilled, willing and unwilling work­ i� ialeness, they can also afford a multi-billion dollar "Defence" �rs budget and embark on costly military adventures .. They can afford 5. Arms sales to the Third World from all sources peaked in 1980 totalling £23,600 million, an increase of £7 ,800m over the previous year (Reuter quoted in Guardian 3. 2. 82). Food exports to the Third World were much lower, at £16,000m. Call of the Wild by Gibbard