In Praise of Idleness — Bertrand Russell

Starting question

Essay thesis

Russell argues that modern societies have inherited a harmful worship of work. His main claim is that the path to prosperity is not more moralized labor, but an organized reduction of labor. > A great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and... the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.

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Inherited work ethic

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Russell begins inside the old moral training: 'Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' He says he 'acquired a conscience' that kept him working hard, but his opinions underwent 'a revolution.'

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The reversal

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The central reversal is that the modern world suffers from too much work, not too little. Russell gives it comic force through the Naples beggars: when a traveler offered a lira to the laziest, eleven jumped up and the twelfth got the coin. > 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. He then jokes that YMCA leaders should 'start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing.'

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Kinds of work

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Russell defines work as either 'altering the position of matter' or 'telling other people to do so.' The first is 'unpleasant and ill paid'; the second is 'pleasant and highly paid.' Landowners are not the idleness he praises, because 'their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others.'

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Duty as control

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The gospel of work comes from old systems where the small surplus was taken by warriors and priests. Force came first, but moral teaching was cheaper: persuade workers to serve others in the name of duty. > 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.

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Leisure and civilization

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Russell does not deny that leisure produced civilization. The injustice is that leisure for a few was bought by labor for the many. His key reversal is that the value lies in leisure, not in toil. > Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. > Their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good.

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Technique changes the bargain

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Modern technique makes the old slave morality obsolete. Russell says leisure can now be 'not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community,' and that it could be distributed 'justly without injury to civilization.'

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Four-hour proposal

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The practical conclusion is a four-hour day under sensible organization. The remaining time should not be dictated by moralists; it belongs to the person living it. > If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment. > Four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and... the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit.

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Labor worship persists

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Russell sees old labor worship surviving under new names. In Russia, authority receives a new sacred vocabulary; in the West, inequality, waste, overwork, unemployment, and war keep severe labor seeming necessary. > Authority still represents the will of the Ruler of the Universe, Who, however, is now called by a new name, Dialectical Materialism. > 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.

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Work as means

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Moving matter is necessary, but it is not an end of human life. Russell appeals both to philosophical common sense and to workers' own experience. > 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. > They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.

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Production vs enjoyment

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Profit-centered thinking makes everything 'topsy-turvy.' Russell mocks the logic: cinema production is respectable because it earns money, while cinema-going is condemned as frivolous. > 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. > We think too much of production, and too little of consumption.

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Education for free time

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Education should cultivate intelligent leisure, not just job fitness. Russell is not thinking only of 'highbrow' pursuits; he wants active energies to have room again. > Education... should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. > 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.

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Then Synthesis / Balanced View · AI

Who guards civilization?

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The old leisure class was unjust but produced much of what we call civilization. Universities are an improvement, yet too detached and organized to carry all unutilitarian inquiry. Russell's contrast is pointed. > 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. > Academic institutions... are not adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in a world where everyone outside their walls is too busy for unutilitarian pursuits.

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Freed creativity

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With broadly shared leisure, creativity could escape starvation and institutional conformity. Writers would not need sensational pot-boilers before doing their real work. > 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... for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity.

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Ease makes good nature

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The social promise is moral as well as cultural. With less exhaustion, people would not demand only passive amusements, and their relations with others would soften. > The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. > Ordinary men and women... will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. > Good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.

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Final choice

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Russell closes with a stark choice: modern production has made general ease possible, but inherited morality has kept society attached to needless 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 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 forever.

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Synthesis / Balanced View

A limited duty

Con / Counterpoint

Fear of idle poor

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