For Whom shall we Toil?

Abstract

For each of us it is a job, a career, or a paycheck; for those hiring it is a position, an input, or a factor of production. Economists have for a long time used that term, factor of production - labour is a factor of production. The paradox is that work is a part of our personalities, often the essence of being a human entity, while to those we work for we are for the most part, a cog in a production process, a replaceable cog. Our adulation of stars is perhaps a manifestation of our desire to transcend the cog status. We envy stars because they seem liberated from the demands of work, the exigencies of the paycheck. They are the butterflies each of us lowly toiling caterpillars would like to be. Even if we do enjoy our jobs, we are unceasingly made aware that from the hirer’s point of view, we are replaceable cogs in large production processes. When some working people turn to hunting, fishing, wood-working, and gardening in their leisure time, and others to crafts and art they both are signalling that there is another kind ‘work’ the expression of which fulfills them as human beings. There is a sphere in which they are not replaceable cogs. They are the entities which they are content to be. It is perhaps not surprising that labour as a factor of production receives a disproportionate share of attention in economics. It also represents about seventy percent of annual national income, the flip-side of GNP. It is a large item and of course it talks back whereas capital and natural resources, the other two components of national income, do not.