In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell.

In this essay, Lord Bertrand Russell proposes a cut in the definition of

full time to four hours per day. As this article was written in 1932, he

has not the benefit of knowing that, as we added more wage-earners per

family (women entered the work force) and families shrunk (fewer kids),

and the means of production become more efficient (better machines) the

number of hours each wage-earner must work to support the family has

stayed constant. These facts seem to uphold Russell's point. 



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     Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan

finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child,

I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept

me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has

controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think

that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is

caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be

preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what

always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in

Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of

Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them

jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on

the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean

sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be

required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages,

the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to

do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain. 

     Before advancing my own arguments for laziness, I must dispose of one

which I cannot accept. Whenever a person who already has enough to live on

proposes to engage in some everyday kind of job, such as school-teaching

or typing, he or she is told that such conduct takes the bread out of

other people's mouths, and is therefore wicked. If this argument were

valid, it would only be necessary for us all to be idle in order that we

should all have our mouths full of bread. What people who say such things

forget is that what a man earns he usually spends, and in spending he

gives employment. As long as a man spends his income, he puts just as much

bread into people's mouths in spending as he takes out of other people's

mouths in earning. The real villain, from this point of view, is the man

who saves. If he merely puts his savings in a stocking, like the

proverbial French peasant, it is obvious that they do not give employment.

If he invests his savings, the matter is less obvious, and different cases

arise. 

     One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to

some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public

expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past

wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a

Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire

murderers. The net result of the man's economical habits is to increase

the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it

would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or

gambling. 

     But, I shall be told, the case is quite different when savings are

invested in industrial enterprises. When such enterprises succeed, and

produce something useful, this may be conceded. In these days, however, no

one will deny that most enterprises fail. That means that a large amount

of human labor, which might have been devoted to producing something that

could be enjoyed, was expended on producing machines which, when produced,

lay idle and did no good to anyone. The man who invests his savings in a

concern that goes bankrupt is therefore injuring others as well as

himself. If he spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends,

they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he

spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he

spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface card in some

place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass

of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless,

when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded

as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has

spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a

frivolous person. 

     All this is only preliminary. I want to say, in all seriousness, that

a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the

virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies

in an organized diminution of work. 

     First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the

position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such

matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is

unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The

second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those

who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be

given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by

two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required

for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice

is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing,

i.e. of advertising. 

     Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is a third class of

men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. There are men

who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the

privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are

idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately,

their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others; 

indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of

the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that

others should follow their example. 

     From the beginning of civilization until the Industrial Revolution, a

man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required

for the subsistence of himself and his family, although his wife worked at

least as hard as he did, and his children added their labor as soon as

they were old enough to do so. The small surplus above bare necessaries

was not left to those who produced it, but was appropriated by warriors

and priests. In times of famine there was no surplus; the warriors and

priests, however, still secured as much as at other times, with the result

that many of the workers died of hunger. This system persisted in Russia

until 1917 [1], and still persists in the East; in England, in spite of

the Industrial Revolution, it remained in full force throughout the

Napoleonic wars, and until a hundred years ago, when the new class of

manufacturers acquired power. In America, the system came to an end with

the Revolution, except in the South, where it persisted until the Civil

War. A system which lasted so long and ended so recently has naturally

left a profound impress upon men's thoughts and opinions. Much that we

take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this

system, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. 

Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be

not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly

distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality

of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery. 

     It is obvious that, in primitive communities, peasants, left to

themselves, would not have parted with the slender surplus upon which the

warriors and priests subsisted, but would have either produced less or

consumed more. At first, sheer force compelled them to produce and part

with the surplus. Gradually, however, it was found possible to induce many

of them to accept an ethic according to which it was their duty to work

hard, although part of their work went to support others in idleness. By

this means the amount of compulsion required was lessened, and the

expenses of government were diminished. To this day, 99 per cent of

British wage-earners would be genuinely shocked if it were proposed that

the King should not have a larger income than a working man. The

conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the

holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their

masters rather than for their own. Of course the holders of power conceal

this fact from themselves by managing to believe that their interests are

identical with the larger interests of humanity. Sometimes this is true; 

Athenian slave-owners, for instance, employed part of their leisure in

making a permanent contribution to civilization which would have been

impossible under a just economic system. Leisure is essential to

civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered

possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not

because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern

technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury

to civilization. 

     Modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the

amount of labor required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone. 

This was made obvious during the war. At that time all the men in the

armed forces, and all the men and women engaged in the production of

munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or

Government offices connected with the war, were withdrawn from productive

occupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-being among

unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allies was higher than before or

since. The significance of this fact was concealed by finance: borrowing

made it appear as if the future was nourishing the present. But that, of

course, would have been impossible; a man cannot eat a loaf of bread that

does not yet exist. The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific

organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in

fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world.

If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been

created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been

preserved, and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all would

have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose

work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to

starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not

receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to

his virtue as exemplified by his industry. 

     This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances

totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been

disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment,

a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They

make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. 

Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice

as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be

bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the

manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight,

and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this

would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are

too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously

concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end,

just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally

idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the

unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a

universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined? 

     The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking

to the rich. In England, in the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours

was the ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and

very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested

that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept

adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child, shortly

after urban working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays

were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I

remember hearing an old Duchess say: 'What do the poor want with holidays?

They ought to work.' People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment

persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion. 

     Let us, for a moment, consider the ethics of work frankly, without

superstition. Every human being, of necessity, consumes, in the course of

his life, a certain amount of the produce of human labor. Assuming, as we

may, that labor is on the whole disagreeable, it is unjust that a man

should consume more than he produces. Of course he may provide services

rather than commodities, like a medical man, for example; but he should

provide something in return for his board and lodging. to this extent, the

duty of work must be admitted, but to this extent only. 

     I shall not dwell upon the fact that, in all modern societies outside

the USSR, many people escape even this minimum amount of work, namely all

those who inherit money and all those who marry money. I do not think the

fact that these people are allowed to be idle is nearly so harmful as the

fact that wage-earners are expected to overwork or starve. 

     If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be

enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very

moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do,

because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much

leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off;

such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for

wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they

dislike leisure even for their sons. Oddly enough, while they wish their

sons to work so hard as to have no time to be civilized, they do not mind

their wives and daughters having no work at all. the snobbish admiration

of uselessness, which, in an aristocratic society, extends to both sexes,

is, under a plutocracy, confined to women; this, however, does not make it

any more in agreement with common sense. 

     The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of

civilization and education. A man who has worked long hours all his life

will become bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable

amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. There is

no longer any reason why the bulk of the population should suffer this

deprivation; only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us

continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no

longer exists. 

     In the new creed which controls the government of Russia, while there

is much that is very different from the traditional teaching of the West,

there are some things that are quite unchanged. The attitude of the

governing classes, and especially of those who conduct educational

propaganda, on the subject of the dignity of labor, is almost exactly that

which the governing classes of the world have always preached to what were

called the 'honest poor'. Industry, sobriety, willingness to work long

hours for distant advantages, even submissiveness to authority, all these

reappear; moreover authority still represents the will of the Ruler of the

Universe, Who, however, is now called by a new name, Dialectical

Materialism. 

     The victory of the proletariat in Russia has some points in common

with the victory of the feminists in some other countries. For ages, men

had conceded the superior saintliness of women, and had consoled women for

their inferiority by maintaining that saintliness is more desirable than

power. At last the feminists decided that they would have both, since the

pioneers among them believed all that the men had told them about the

desirability of virtue, but not what they had told them about the

worthlessness of political power. A similar thing has happened in Russia

as regards manual work. For ages, the rich and their sycophants have

written in praise of 'honest toil', have praised the simple life, have

professed a religion which teaches that the poor are much more likely to

go to heaven than the rich, and in general have tried to make manual

workers believe that there is some special nobility about altering the

position of matter in space, just as men tried to make women believe that

they derived some special nobility from their sexual enslavement. In

Russia, all this teaching about the excellence of manual work has been

taken seriously, with the result that the manual worker is more honored

than anyone else. What are, in essence, revivalist appeals are made, but

not for the old purposes: they are made to secure shock workers for

special tasks. Manual work is the ideal which is held before the young,

and is the basis of all ethical teaching. 

     For the present, possibly, this is all to the good. A large country,

full of natural resources, awaits development, and has has to be developed

with very little use of credit. In these circumstances, hard work is

necessary, and is likely to bring a great reward. But what will happen

when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable

without working long hours? 

     In the West, we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We

have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the

total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do

no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over

production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a

large percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense

with their labor by making the others overwork. When all these methods

prove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number of people to

manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if

we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of

all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the

notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the

average man. 

     In Russia, owing to more economic justice and central control over

production, the problem will have to be differently solved. the rational

solution would be, as soon as the necessaries and elementary comforts can

be provided for all, to reduce the hours of labor gradually, allowing a

popular vote to decide, at each stage, whether more leisure or more goods

were to be preferred. But, having taught the supreme virtue of hard work,

it is difficult to see how the authorities can aim at a paradise in which

there will be much leisure and little work. It seems more likely that they

will find continually fresh schemes, by which present leisure is to be

sacrificed to future productivity. I read recently of an ingenious plan