In Praise of Idleness
Bertrand Russell, 1932
Like most of my generation, I was brought
up on the saying: "Satan finds some mischief still 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 traveller 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 traveller 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 Y.M.C.A. 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 labour, 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 cars in some place where surface cars turn out to be
not wanted, he has diverted a mass of labour into channels where it gives pleasure
to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through the 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 know-
ledge 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 labour
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 I9I7 (1),
I 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, tut 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 labours of the many. But their labours 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 labour 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, 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 physical 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 work 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 as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins arc
already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a
sensible world., everybody concerned in the manufacture 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 labour.
Assuming, as we may, that labour 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 U.S.S.R., many people escape even this minimum
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
already 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 be bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a consider-
able 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 labour, 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 honoured 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 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
labour 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 labour 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 put forward by Russian engineers,
for making the White Sea and the northern coasts of Siberia warm, by putting
a dam across the Kara Sea. An admirable project, but liable to postpone proletarian
comfort for a generation, while the nobility of toil is being displayed amid
the ice-fields and snowstorms of the Arctic Ocean. This sort of thing, if it
happens, will be the result of regarding the virtue of hard work as an end in
itself, rather than as a means to a state of affairs in which it is no longer
needed.
The fact is that moving matter about,
while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically
not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every
navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes.
One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich,
for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labour, while taking care themselves
to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism,
which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce
on the earth's surface. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to the
actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is
not likely to say: "I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling
man's noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his
planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill
in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can
return to the toil from which my contentment springs." I have never heard working
men say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered,
a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure hours that they
derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.
It will be said that, while a little leisure
is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four
hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern
world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true
at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for lightheartedness and
play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The
modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something
else, and never for its own sake. Serious-minded persons, for example, are continually
condemning the habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads the
young into crime. But all the work that goes to producing a cinema is respectable,
because it is work, and because it brings a money profit. The notion that the
desirable activities are those that bring a profit has made everything topsy-turvy.
The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread
are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food
they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you cat only to get strength
for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending
money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd;
one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. Whatever
merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from
the advantage to be obtained by consuming them. The individual, in our society,
works for profit; but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption
of what he produces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social
purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in
a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too much
of production, and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach too
little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that we do not judge
production by the pleasure that it gives to the consumer.
When I suggest that working hours should
be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should
necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should
entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the
rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential
part of any such social system that education should be carried further than
it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which
would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of
the sort of things that would be considered "highbrow." Peasant dances have
died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to
be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations
have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening
to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies
are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy
pleasures in which they took an active part.
In the past, there was a small leisure
class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which
there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited
its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges.
These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of this drawback
it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated
the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies,
and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually
been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never
have emerged from barbarism.
The method of a hereditary leisure class
without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the members of
the class had been taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not
exceptionally intelligent. The class might produce one Darwin, but against him
had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought of anything
more intelligent than fox-hunting and punishing poachers. At present, the universities
are supposed to provide, in a more systematic way, what the leisure class provided
accidentally and as a by-product. This is a great improvement, but it has certain
drawbacks. University life is so different from life in the world at large that
men who live in an academic milieu tend to be unaware of the preoccupations
and problems of ordinary men and women; moreover their ways of expressing themselves
are usually such as to rob their opinions of the influence that they ought to
have upon the general public. Another disadvantage is that in universities studies
are organized, and the man who thinks of some original line of research is likely
to be discouraged. Academic institutions, therefore, useful as they are, are
not adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in a world where everyone
outside their walls is too busy for unutilitarian pursuits.
In a world where no one is compelled to
work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity
will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without
starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged
to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring
the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time
at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity. Men who, in their
professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government,
will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes
the work of university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men
will have time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be
exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt
in their youth, which may, in the interval,, have been proved to be untrue.
Above all, there will be happiness and
joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted
will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion.
Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such
amusements as are passive and vapid. At least i per cent will probably devote
the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance,
and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their
originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the
standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases
that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the
opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and
less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out,
partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work
for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs
most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous
struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease
and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and
starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as
we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there
is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.
Notes:
(1) Since then, members of the Communists
Party have succeeded to this privilege of the warriors and priests. (Russell)
On
Denoting (1905)
Vagueness (1923)
Icarus
or The Future of Science (1924)
What is an Agnostic
Knowledge and
Wisdom
Why I am
not a Christian (06.03.1927)
In
Praise of Idleness (1932)
Of Co-Operation
(18.05.1932)
On Sales Resistance
(22.06.1932)
On Modern
Uncertainty (20.07.1932)
What is the Soul?
(28.09.1932)
On youthful
Cynism (1930)
Philosophical
Consequences of Relativity (1626)
On Astrologers
How
to become a Man of Genius
Education
and Disciple
What
Desires are politically important? (Speech at the Nobel Award, 11.12.1950)
Prolog to his Autobiography: What
I have lived for