O Happy Day

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 06:41 PM 12/14/00 -0500, Yoshie wrote:
>>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>  > I've never dug a ditch, and thank god for that.
>>
>>There are worse things. It's not bad unless your
>>hands are too soft and you don't have gloves.
>>I'd rather dig a ditch then work or even sit
>>around doing nothing in a peach-packing shed.
>>
>>Carrol
>
>We all, however, know that Doug is a socialist of the Oscar Wilde sort:
>
>*****   And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying 
>that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays 
>about the dignity of manual labour.  There is nothing necessary 
>dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely 
>degrading.  It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do 
>anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour 
>are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. 
>To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east 
>wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation.  To sweep it with mental, 
>moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible.  To sweep it 
>with joy would be appalling.  Man is made for something better than 
>disturbing dirt.  All work of that kind should be done by a machine. 
>("The Soul of Man under Socialism")   *****
>
>Yoshie

Ah you people of small faith - it is the social organization of work that
makes all the difference.  Chasing after a moving object or repetitively
swinging a tool can be very rewarding, indeed, if the are named sports
(football or tennis for example), or degrading if named physical labor.
The key difference between the two is the separation of concpetion from
execution - absent from the former and present in the latter.  Physical
implementation of one's own projects while controlling the condition
conditions of that implementation, such as in sports or work of art, is
usually very rewarding.  Being taylorised to a mere tool implementing
someone else's conceptions and having no control over the conditions of
that implementation is very degrading.

wojtek