Why can't there be both? I'm a social being and I enjoy knowing whether or not what I do is appreciated by others. Without that occassional demonstration, of appreciation for my efforts in terms of kind words, whatever, I am operating on purse fantasy if I just make up stories to myself that the hard work I do scrubbing the floors til they gleam matters to anyone. What also counts is not just standing back and enjoying the beauty of the floor, which I do, but that my enjoyment of that beauty is also in thinking about how others will enjoy it too. If I never know that they do, or simply project the fantasy of my own enjoyment on them and assume they also enjoy it, then I'm either going to start wondering whether they enjoy it (i get no feedback) or I'm living in a world of my own making, a grandiose narcissist, I guess, who thinks the world is me.
IOW, while I agree with Joanna that doing something for the joy of doing it, in and of itself (I've forgotten Weber's german word for that -- andie, you remember?), I don't think that something that grows magically from the individual, but is learned. And it's learned by watching others do things for the joy of it, but a joy that is social. I don't just enjoy a gleaming hardwood floor on my own, out of thin air. I enjoy it because I've incorporated into my own being certain messages about gender, work, family, etc. Today, that is blantantly exploited by the advertising industry. Cue up the image of a commercial for floor polish, woman glowing, gleaming with pride over her floor, family member enters to express a similar joy in gleaming floor and express appreciation for her efforts.
This kind of thing, of course, influences me. I wouldn't be human if it didn't. People can rant on that it shouldn't, but I think this is naive. The real issue is the delivery and profit system that feeds on the delivery of the message. The same message gets delivered in other forms of class society and it'll surely get delivered in any society not based on class. There's nothing wrong with it, if the message is that it could be anyone, man or woman, who gets joy from a gleaming hardwood floor.
yes, an admittedly silly example, but it comes from my reflections on refinishing furniture, here Speaking in Tungs, http://blog.pulpculture.org/2005/11/19/speaking-in-tungs/, which is about something I love to do My description of it is an expression of Aristotelian and Marxist theory as applied to something likewise mundane. The astute student of Aristotle will see where I'm going with this. A bright shiney dollar to the first person to recognize which of ARistotle's books underpins that essay? hmmm? andie? Ted? :)
I talk about the hardwood floor because it's more common to valorize something that can be thought of as a form of craftsmanship, while ignoring the more mundane work that has to get done. (The infrastructure of workers in Silly Valley that the author worried about in that Salon 2.0 article....)
In order to build a just society, the issue will be how does that mundane work get done. It's surely not going to get done if we valorize only certain kinds of acceptable work and continue to diminish other kinds of work. And the only way to avoid that is -- socially. It's not going to simply be the case that people will just love to do work, in and of itself. People love to work, to something their good at, because they get feedback from other humans about the importance of that work in their lives. Talking only about arts, crafts, and what we think of as obvious work enjoyed by others reproduces the invisibility of other kinds of work that go unnoticed until the shit piles so high you can't stand the stench any more.