Fritz Poebel comments: “The world—or the microcosm of it here—awaits your exegesis of the Book of Genesis, chapter 3 verses 16 – 19. So what is God telling us there about work--and workers and their bosses?”
Let us begin with the words of Genesis themselves:
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy
sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy
desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto
the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee,
saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow
shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee;
and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return.”
This is the seminal moment in the human story, according to
the Judeo-Christian tradition. God has created Adam and Eve and placed them in
the garden, commanding them only that they shall not eat of the fruit of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Adam and Eve disobey God, so he
drives them from Eden and lays upon them a curse. This curse becomes the
universal human condition, for each of us inherits Adam’s original sin. What is
this curse?
Labor.
For woman, labor is the pain of childbirth; for man, it is
the work required to get our bread.
For six thousand years, labor is understood as a curse.
Labor is done by the lowly, by the slaves, by the peasants, by the serfs. The
high born, the nobility, do not labor.
Notice that it is not activity that is a curse, but labor.
Both in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in the Greco-Roman tradition,
activity is a blessing, a sign of divinity. God is conceived as pure activity,
and the men meeting together in the public spaces to determine their collective
will are manifesting their godlike nature by their activity. To be sure, monks
and nuns labor in the fields but they do so as penance for their original sin,
not as a fulfillment of their divine nature.
In a brilliant tour de force, Karl Marx takes this ancient
and universal view of labor as a curse and transforms it. He seizes upon the
Romantic understanding of artistic creativity as a self externalization, as a
making actual of that which begins as an idea in the mind. The painter, the
sculptor, the composer, the poet begins with an idea in mind which he or she
then makes actual in the work of art. This act of creation is the fulfillment
of the artist, the realization of his or her inner essence.
Marx changes this understanding of artistic creativity in
two fundamental ways: First, he says that all men and women by virtue of their
humanity have the capacity for this process of self externalization. It is not
just the artistic genius in his or her garret but the farmer in the field, the
weaver spinning flax into thread and weaving it into cloth, the carpenter
carving wood into furniture, the potter shaping vases from clay, who engages in
an act of creative self externalization; and Second, Marx says, men and women
engage in this activity of creative self externalization not as isolated
individuals but collectively, through the division of labor and its
reintegration into the productive process.
Indeed, this act of collective and purposive transformation
of nature is what makes us human, for, as he writes in The German Ideology the following year:
“Men can be
distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you
like. They themselves begin to
distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a
step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men
are indirectly producing their actual material life.”
Alas, under capitalism this natural fulfillment of our human
nature is distorted and corrupted, and it is that distortion and corruption
about which Marx writes in the essay on alienated labor.
That is where I began my lecture two days ago.
26 comments:
If Marx says that men and women "engage in the activity of creative self-externalization...collectively, through the division of labor," that suggests that he thinks of the division of labor as a positive thing.
Yet in The German Ideology he depicts the post-capitalist future as one in which the division of labor will have been abolished ("hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, raise cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner").
Sigh. That is a joke! He is mocking the young philosophers who call themselves Critical Critics.
Love it! Would love to get a taste of what comes next in the course.
I took to Schopenhauer when I had a job doing data entry. It was one of the two or three most depressing times of my life. I was fresh out of college, and I believed (not implausibly!) that there would be no less disagreeable form of paid employment available to me. The challenge, essentially, was to avoid becoming bored to the point of insanity. But as soon as I had the thought, "This, truly, is as good as it's going to get - any change of employment would probably be for the worse," the battle was lost.
I'd like to chalk all that up to "immaturity" and "mental illness," but the truth for me is, "labor as punishment from the gods" still has a good deal of resonance! Here's an interesting and relevant bit from Schopenhauer:
"[T]he sole thing that reconciles me to the Old Testament is the story of the Fall. In my eyes, it is the only metaphysical truth in that book, even though it appears in the form of an allegory. There seems to me no better explanation of our existence than that it is the result of some false step, some sin of which we are paying the penalty."
So it's not to be taken seriously at all as his view of a desirable future? (P.s. It's been a long time since I read the text and I don't have it in front of me right now.)
Sorry, above was my reply to RPW. Michael's comment intervened (which is fine).
Work is boring and if it's physical work, ruins your back.
The Greeks, who were honest and not particularly humane, realized that and had the slaves do the work.
Marx, who, as far as I know, never washed a dish, mopped a floor or hammered a nail in his life, believed work could be a form of self-expression. Where did he dream that up?
It ain't necessarily so, the things that you're liable to read in the Bible- or Marx!
Nice idea, nice try- we ought to try to make life and work more meaningful- work ought not be a Dickensian factory- but this idea is Utopian.
Tell me how it's gonna work, other than your clever language.
This is worthy of discussion- but your premise is that your argument is right and not as it should be, the conclusion, and I'd sooner believe there is a heaven where all good girls and boys go after their time on earth than believe that every house painter is a Michelangelo.
s.w.
Depends on the type of "productive" work, no? Artisans in their workshops, whether they were crafting shoes from leather or carving furniture from blocks of wood or etc., can be thought of as engaging in creative activity. From this standpoint, when the division of labor becomes minute and each worker is doing one little task over and over -- that's when it becomes routine to the point of turning the worker into a "crippled monstrosity" (ch. 14, Capital v. 1). On this view it's not the division of labor in general but the division of labor *in this particular form* that "brands the manufacturing worker as the property of capital.'
when I do a task or a project for myself and not for the capitalist or the boss, after I finish my task I feel a sense of satisfaction. Even as a group or a team of people we feel satisfied, with jobs well done. I bring about some reality that was only a in my head, I have in the process transformed myself. My ultimate self determined labor makes me stronger, better, improved as my body and mind work as one. In capitalistic society that is generally not the everyday notion of work. And without a collective of others who work together to produce solutions that confront our lives, I am dominated by alienated labor, the labor that benefits in general the few.
There's a lot of romanticism about the craftspeople.
I knew a guy back in the 70's in Berkeley who was an architect but as a result of the counter-cultural glorification of "working with your hands", began to work as a carpinter. He did very specialized fine work (he wasn't nailing roof in the construction industry), but already at age 35 or so, he had the kind of severe back problems that I began to have at age 60.
Besides that, most of the work done in any society isn't that of the craftsman or woman. Somebody has to collect the garbage, someone has to mop the floors, somebody has to unload the trucks, somebody has to empty the bed pans.
I look at the face of the woman who cleans the floors in my building every day and there ain't no self-expression there, just distaste for her job and depression.
The period of the day I least look forward to is the period, generally in the afternoon, when I clean house. Some people like to cook (not me), but no one I've ever talked to likes to house clean.
s.w.: Marx, who, as far as I know, never washed a dish, mopped a floor or hammered a nail in his life, believed work could be a form of self-expression. Where did he dream that up?
The belief in question seems to concern activity (RPW: "a blessing, a sign of divinity") as distinct from labor (a "curse"). "This act of creation is the fulfillment of the artist, the realization of his or her inner essence." I suppose Marx would say that his literary-intellectual activity, for him, is an example of just this sort of thing.
But it's doubtful indeed that this description could be applied to more than a minority of jobs. Some current numbers on this (from Gallup):
-percentage of employees "engaged": 21% globally, 32% US
-percentage of employees "actively disengaged": 19% globally, 17% US
Here's how Gallup explains the terminology:
Engaged employees are highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. They are psychological "owners," drive performance and innovation, and move the organization forward.
Not engaged employees are psychologically unattached to their work and company. Because their engagement needs are not being fully met, they're putting time - but not energy or passion - into their work.
Actively disengaged employees aren't just unhappy at work - they are resentful that their needs aren't being met and are acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers potentially undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.
In The Human Condition Hannah Arendt distinguishes between labor, work and action.
Labor is basically mopping the floor, it's the necessary repetitive tasks the products and results of which are "consumed".
Work is what the craftsperson does. And what the poet and sculptor do too. There's a result or product which is not consumed immediately.
Action is involvement in the polis and Marx, in writing Kapital and other works, involves himself in the polis as well as creating a work of philosophy.
Arendt agrees with the Greeks that labor is a drag (although obviously she's not in favor of slavery) and that action is somehow "higher" insofar as it involves all of our potentialities as social beings and also constitutes freedom as she defines it.
It's been a while since I read the Human Condition and I may have forgotten some nuances, but in any case, it's probably better not to run labor, work and action together as economic data often do.
Read this some hours after reading this blogpost, a quote by 1800's American philosopher Albert Brisbane:
"Now for the first time, I had come across an idea which I had never met before - the idea of dignifying and rendering attractive the manual labor of mankind; labor hitherto regarded as a divine punishment inflicted on man. To introduce attraction into this sphere of commonplace, degrading toil the dreary lot of the masses which seemed to overwhelm man with its prosaic, benumbing, deadening influence; to elevate such labors, and invest them with dignity, was indeed a mighty revolution!"
The mighty revolution observed by Brisbane was not that of Karl Marx, but rather Charles Fourier! Perhaps the focus on attraction is what distinguishes the text as about Fourier rather than Marx.
Yeats has something to say on this very subject: https://slate.com/culture/1998/01/adam-s-curse.html
The Genesis curse seems to countenance and even justify a nasty and brutish attitude toward laborers. They deserve to be treated badly because effectively God says so. If you’re a king (or one of the other Exempt—one of the active, as opposed to those who labor), show no sympathy for laborers and don’t heretically put yourself in the workers’ shoes. The Genesis curse applies to most men and all women (who go through child-bearing—the queens and rich women still have to pay their dues). It’s not clear to me, though, why there are exceptions to this curse. As I read the language, God was pretty clear that the curse applied to literally everybody. (How would Scalia or Alito have parsed it?) There must have been a loophole that God or his scribes missed. So, kings et al. are burdened with Original Sin, like the rest of us, but not with labor. Arguably, you could buy yourself out of the long-term effects of Original Sin, even if you weren’t rich—a tithe here, an indulgence there. Seems fair enough. But the vast majority of us have to labor for a living and for a rewarding afterlife in a temperate climate. The universal human condition isn’t really universal. (I don’t know French, but I believe that the French word for labor is travail, which gains from translation into English.) Anyway, that’s my morally tendentious extrapolation on Professor Wolff’s just-so story.
SW:
"Where did he dream that up?"
If I'm not mistaken, it comes out of a Romantic revolt against the "mutilation" of "man" that is central to mainstream Enlightenment thinkers, beginning perhaps with Herder who understands life as an activity of expression. Charles Taylor goes into this thoroughly in Sources of the Self and dubs this realization of the self through expression as "expressivisim"(and I'm delighted RPW organizes his course the way he does) and the period itself as the "Expressive Turn." I think it is central to Marx but I also believe that works of art begin with a mind-body sensation as opposed to an idea, so cum grano salis.
More of interesting a question to me is, where did the writer of Genesis come up with the story of Genesis? (check out Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why)
Professor, given your intimacy with and knowledge of "The Bible," have you ever done work around its history?
Marx's narrative about work being transformed into artistic activity that is liberated from employers has some application in our work world, but may also leave out much more of the continuing story of work transformation in the 20th century. In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer distinguishes a range of work: office work such as the bourgeois professor role, and then forms of hard work such as "dangerous work" such as military duty or policing; "grueling work" such as manual farm field work; and "dirty work" such as garbage collection and disposal.
Some military jobs can be handled in a rather artistic way, such as army press officer (Operator Starsky on YouTube is one current example), or propagandist. But what David Graeber labels "bullshit jobs" that waste our time and burn up human energy uselessly are not fulfilling by definition. Persons sent into a suicide type job to save the people from further harm (such as the New York fireman sent up the towers during the 9/11 attacks; or the fireman who were poisoned at Chernobyl Nuclear power plant in Ukraine) cannot see their work in Marx's liberated way. The difference between the work of the soldier as a conscript (many Russians) versus the work of the soldier as a "volunteer" (some Ukrainians, the men have been banned from leaving the country and must contribute their labour now) is also apparent that are not explained by Marx's narrative of liberated work.
Has the working world changed so much that Marx's 1840's narrative no longer applies to large parts? The job of a higher education professor as distributed by the academically embedded meritocracy of each discipline used to a liberated and artistic mode of life as academic freedom unleashed and now it appears to be evolving into a bullshit job to be distributed according to an ad hoc identity politics which cancels individuality and non-conformity. I do not know why we should assume a linear path of history in which work is finally liberated and humanity never falls back into totalitarian and illiberal contexts for work.
I end with a work joke from my professor role at UPEI. One student wanted to do his undergrad thesis on the theme of the "end of work," or the book The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Markey Era (1995) by Jeremy Rifkin, and associated books such as Hannah Arendt or The Immaterial by Andre Gorz. The student has 8 months to do the thesis project, supposed 4 months reading and research and 4 months composition. He was interested in the rise of robots and some people having lives without any jobs ever (unemployed for life), and in particular students going into higher education and coming out without any jobs available, forced into debt for nothing it seems. I keep adding literary fuel to his bonfire of work literature and we kept discussing orally what he was working on. Lacking experience in thesis supervision, I trusted my hard working student to stay up all night, burn midnight oil and incense, doing his composition.
He acted like a great artist in summoning up all these ideas, and imagining himself working on his writing project, but in the end he did not finish his work and I failed to keep him sufficiently on task. His work ethic turned out to be so underdeveloped that he could not even imagine himself finishing his growing task of understanding the evolution of the working world, that he gave up and graduated without a thesis completed. Art teaches us our fallibility and the limits of human work; and humans cannot master all work needed to make their material lives good enough or agree on the blueprints for a just society due to endless disagreement about the objective criteria which separate genuine progress from its many opposites of repression.
Jerry Fresia: There's a vast, vast scholarly literature on the authorship of the Hexateuch.--I was stupefied the first time I went into a theological library, and saw the thousands of books and journals devoted to Biblical scholarship; it made the literature on Plato and Aristotle that I was used to look like a little niche.-- The basic idea is that most of the stories come from two sources, 'J' (who refers to God as 'Yahweh' 3200 or so years ago) and 'E' (who refers to God as 'Eloi' 3000 or so years ago), along with a more recent author and redactor 'P' (the priestly source'), and 'D' (the author of the appalling Deuteronomy). My standard reference (one of thousands of possibilities) is Gerhard von Rad's Old Testament Theology. A fascinating and suggestive collection of documents indicating prior sources to the stories is the classic collection by James Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern texts relating to the Old Testament. The most recent thing I've read on the topic is the utterly fascinating book by the Swiss scholar Thomas Römer, The Invention of God, which offers an account of the creation of Israelite monotheism over many hundreds of years.--What always strikes me about Genesis 3 is the conclusion, where God seems to be addressing his court and fears that the wised-up humans might now eat of the Tree of Life and live forever. God nips that in the bud and backs it up with a cherubim.
Excellent question! I certainly do, and IIRC always have, viewed laboring as a curse. Perhaps that's because l majored Philosophy? (Or did I study Philosophy because of my aversion to physical labor?)
Well said. I understand the impulse to want socially dignify labor so that one can dignify the workers performing it. At least, I think I do. But I think that I would prefer to free the workers from the INdignity of being required to labor as they do.
I haven't read Arendt's Human Condition, but the description of action seems to me as as Romantic as Marx's view of unalienated labor.
Re the comment above about Brisbane (whom I'd not heard of) and Fourier: there's some good scholarship on Fourier and the other utopian socialists. (But I don't have the inclination or time to go into it rt now.)
The utopian socialists have had a bad press.
I recall learning about them as a teenager. They were presented as guys who believed that the sun turns around the earth, while Marx, a scientist like Galileo, discovered that the earth turns around the sun, that is, scientific socialism.
Robert Owen, who turned his factory over to the workers, was subject to special scorn because we all know that you can't expect the capitalist class as a whole to be so generous.
Of course, over a century and a half has also shown that you can't expect workers of the world to unite. So maybe we should give Owen a little credit for his generosity.
During the Pinochet dictatorship I was briefly associated with a Marxist-Leninist resistance group and I recall how more experienced members mocked me for giving money to a beggar since charity, we all know, only delays the moment of revolution, which we were all certain would soon arrive. Maybe the second coming of Christ will arrive sooner.
"...I recall how more experienced members mocked me for giving money to a beggar since charity, we all know, only delays the moment of revolution, which we were all certain would soon arrive."
Heightened contradictions have resulted in lots of misery.
i must confess that i very rarely read bible passages and perhaps that is why these passages seem so tremendously pointless to me. In a reconstructed historical context, perhaps a certain kind of classification succeeds that shows how the social order of the author(s) might have looked like when the texts were written. But what is really disconcerting is the fact that until today there is a more than 2500 years long tradition of exegesis and interpretation that tries to squeeze the very last drop of metaphysical meaning out of this dried up texts.
I find this splendidly ingenuous:
'this natural fulfillment of our human nature is distorted and corrupted'
I wonder if you will post on Gorbachev?
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