Philipp Jakob's Coalbrookdale by Night, a painting that symbolizes the birth of the Industrial Revolution
Recently, and for obvious reasons, there’s been much discussion of work and the notion of 'desert' when it came to how any particular system should treat people who do not or cannot work; that moral worth in some sense comes from their actions, that work is virtuous by virtue of its enabling of the engine of economics, the market. This is a very Proceduralist and therefore Kantian viewpoint. But it’s not a very common one. Much more common is that work, as work is intrinsically virtuous, that good, successful people work hard. This is an Intentionalist account of the moral goodness of work.
Seems reasonable, and taken in isolation, sure, one can see the value in considering work as such. But it fails in the real world, totally. Follow me below to find out why...
The Types of Morality
What do I mean by ‘Proceduralist’ and ‘Intentionalist’? Human thinking about morality can be broadly broken down into three categories, Intentionalism, Consequentialism and Proceduralism. These three major modes under which humans make moral decisions are used to impart morality, either singly or in a mixture - to the person engaging in the act, to the consequences of the act, or to the procedure under which the act was performed.
Going a bit further into detail, Intentional morality, also known as Virtue Ethics, is the idea that what is moral comes from inside the person performing the act. Plato & Aristotle are the ones credited with ferreting out this portion of human morality. An act is Intentionally moral if it is motivated by virtuous thought, and indeed, being virtuous necessitates and engenders moral action.
Consequential morality is the idea that what is moral comes from the result of an act, as described by Bentham and Mill. An act is consequentially moral if the ensuing results of the action are of a character that can be described as morally good. “Leisure is good, therefore I should endeavor to set up systems that allow me leisure time,” is a Consequentialist account of a moral good.
Procedural Morality is the idea that what is moral comes from whether or not the action itself is moral. Kant and Nozick are the paradigm custodians here. A Proceduralist account of morality can be found in free market economics: after trade has resulted in a particular distribution of wealth, that resulting distribution - no matter what it may be and no matter the consequences to other human beings - is considered moral if and only if the actions that created that distribution were moral, irrespective of the motives of the participants.
Questions About Work
If we totally discount the value of work, we run into a fallacy of composition and a variant on the Paradox of Thrift; let's call it the Paradox of Leisure: It may be good for me that I not perform economically useful activities - it gives me time to spend doing other things than creating economic value, but it is clear that everyone cannot also refuse to perform economically useful activities - otherwise there would be no economy to speak of!
People disagree to what exact extent work creates virtue within a person or alternatively and simultaneously, in the perceptions of others regarding that person. A person committed to a variation on the Protestant work ethic will place a very large moral value on work as work, for example. While I happen to agree that considering work a good and assigning it positive moral worth is proper to a certain extent, the idea of work as work being morally virtuous actually manages to raise at least two questions.
The lesser question is, by assigning positive moral value to 'work' which generally comes in the form of work for others as few people are interested in work for self except in that they do so by working for others, then to that extent are we not restricting individual liberty by putting a premium on actions that benefit others in the aggregate, at least equally if not more than ourselves? Is not placing a positive moral value on actions itself a form of coercion? And indeed, once we let economic rents into the picture, this sort of moral tale can become very coercive indeed. Valuing work as work may very well be necessary coercion, but by instructing our children about this positive moral value that is attached to work, by giving them a work ethic unbounded by a relation to how much work or how work interacts with other moral goods, then to that extent we are using social control to ensure that others may benefit from our children's economic activity. This seems illiberal to me. Granted, I'm not married to strict liberalism in the sense that I view perfect autonomy as even a weak candidate for maximizing human well-being, but it is something to consider carefully, especially given consideration that the real world situation is that most people work for others. In this instance, a generalized admonishment to value work results in a coercion to work for others. It should be noted that most forms of Socialism manage to successfully sidestep this coercive problem by requiring that the means of production be held in common at some level, either the level of the firm, the state or the nation. Since everyone is working in an expansive sense for themselves as owners of the means of production, then there is no issue of coercing people to work for others, indeed, it becomes difficult to do so even if one wished to.
The more important question is how much should we value work? It's clear that our consideration of the value of work not an absolute of any sort; whatever level of moral goodness work has, it bows at the very least to human physiological need. You can't work 24hrs a day for instance. But at the same time, a five-day work week is also an encroachment into this moral good, if such it be. If economically productive work is morally good in an absolute sense, then it probably makes sense to be engaged in it as often as possible. This was much more the case back in the 1800's where 10-16 hour days, 6 days a week was perfectly normal. Additionally, raising the legal working age past the point where basic instruction can be taken and simple work performed is also an abrogation of work as moral good. A 10 year-old can perform many economically useful varieties of work. That we subsume the moral value of work to the moral values of having a good childhood or getting a good education, makes it clear that there are very few people indeed who think of the moral good of work in any but quantitative terms, in relation to other moral goods.
Lord Russell, On the Value of Not Working
There are a couple of ways of addressing both questions simultaneously. The first comes to us by way of Lord Bertrand Russell. Lord Russell has much to say in praise of the negative space created by work: idleness. His full argument is not long and as is usual with Lord Russell, full of insight that isn't immediately obvious. I would like to draw particular attention to paragraphs 2, 4 and 7 of his essay
In Praise of Idleness.
In paragraphs 2 and 4, he gives a pitch-perfect example of the Paradox of Idleness, and joins it inextricably to the Paradox of Thrift then destroys the idea that investment is an economic good in and of itself. It's a move of surpassing cleverness. In two short paragraphs, he condemns the amount of emphasis put on work as moral good and sets up a an argument that becomes a convincing claim that emphasis on leisure is also morally good. His point, as can be seen from even this early stage of his essay is that there is too much work going on.
Before advancing my own arguments for laziness, I must dispose of one which I cannot accept. Whenever a person who already has enough to live on proposes to engage in some everyday kind of job, such as school-teaching or typing, he or she is told that such conduct takes the bread out of other people's mouths, and is therefore wicked. If this argument were valid, it would only be necessary for us all to be idle in order that we should all have our mouths full of bread. What people who say such things forget is that what a man earns he usually spends, and in spending he gives employment. As long as a man spends his income, he puts just as much bread into people's mouths in spending as he takes out of other people's mouths in earning. The real villain, from this point of view, is the man who saves. If he merely puts his savings in a stocking, like the proverbial French peasant, it is obvious that they do not give employment. If he invests his savings, the matter is less obvious, and different cases arise.
[…]
But, I shall be told, the case is quite different when savings are invested in industrial enterprises. When such enterprises succeed, and produce something useful, this may be conceded. In these days, however, no one will deny that most enterprises fail. That means that a large amount of human labor, which might have been devoted to producing something that could be enjoyed, was expended on producing machines which, when produced, lay idle and did no good to anyone. The man who invests his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt is therefore injuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for [a surface car] in some place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a frivolous person.
In paragraph 6, he begins to critique the current structure of the availability of leisure time and he does it in classic style, by going after what was called by Ricardo in 1809,
rentiers, people who perform no actual work, but collect income by virtue of their possession of some economic good. Landed gentry are the classical example, but financial rents, monopoly rents and intellectual property rents are all further if more modern examples of the concept. By using economics'
pons asinorum (intellectual hurdle or bridge to understanding), he's able to construct his own
pons asinorum, showing clearly that the rentiers extract leisure rents as well as economic rents from people who do not have access to similar rental income.
Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is a third class of men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. There are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example.
The U.S. version of this argument is trivial to construct. Substitute financial rentiers for landowners.
Extracting Leisure Through The Prisoner's Dilemma [1]
That, “rentiers extract leisure rents as well as economic rents,” is a bold claim, and investigating why leads us to the second method of answering the questions of ‘is a work ethic coercive?’ and ‘is there too much emphasis placed on the moral goodness of work?’ simultaneously. Lord Russell clearly thinks rentiers extract leisure rents and with the help of the Prisoner’s Dilemma it becomes easy to see why he does.
First, let’s look at the standard formulation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma: a table where two players, Alice and Bob are offered a simple choice: choose a life of work, or choose a life of leisure. There is to be no talking and you only get one chance at that choice. There are differential payoffs for each choice and the payoff depends crucially on the choice of the other person.
In the table, Alice (right side of the divisor) and Bob (left side) both get utility out of working (8 each), but get less utility if the other person ‘betrays’ and chooses to exercise leisure (10 for the leisure play, 5 for the worker); and if both ‘betray’ then they both get even less utility (nobody’s producing!). The move for each that offers maximal utility overall is ‘both work’ (16 units), whereas maximizing personal utility is achieved by watching the other person work (10 units). Notice how we've embedded the Paradox of Leisure into the chart? Personal utility is maximized by one choice (leisure) but overall utility is maximized by a different choice (work). Interestingly, the Prisoner’s Dilemma shows up in gun control arguments too, but that’s for another time.
What happens when we introduce rental income changes the game completely. A bonus is granted to a player before playing, like so:
Now the choices are very stark indeed; it profits Bob very little to work at all. The best outcome overall is 26 utility if they both work, but Bob’s maximum personal utility occurs when he collects rents and does not work while Alice chooses a life of work. The best possible outcome for Alice is that Bob chooses to work (gaining 15 utility) while Alice chooses not to (gaining 10), but Alice must think to herself, what
possible reason would Bob have to pursue work at all? Look at the chart, regardless of what choice Alice makes, Bob is at least as well off as Alice could ever be, Bob’s lowest possible utility is 10, which is Alice’s highest. Worse, consider the risk Alice takes if she does choose her preference for Leisure: she risks getting nothing! Bob the rentier can afford to allow Alice to choose leisure, to her utter detriment.
As stated previously, in the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma there can be no communication between the two parties and there is only one opportunity to make a choice. In the real world, not only is there communication between the two parties, there are many opportunities to make the choices over again. It is often the case that the coercive effects of massive financial disparities enable the Bobs of the world to ensure that the Alices do their ‘jobs’ while the Bobs enjoy the fruits of the rent.
Bob, simply by virtue of simply choosing less utility temporarily, can force Alice into the position where she knows that no matter what choice she makes, Bob will pick his row labeled ‘Leisure’. This puts Alice in the situation of choosing between 0 utility for not working while Bob happily refuses to work and 5 utility for working while Bob even more happily refuses to work, the worst possible set of choices she could be making, but the best possible set of choices for Bob. Even worse, Alice’s ‘choice’ to work never turns over into an opportunity to choose leisure – if she switches her vote to leisure at some later date, say by striking, her utility drops to zero and while Bob’s utility also drops, it is still positive. Bob can perpetually wait Alice out. Alice can never win.
Additionally, if there is a pervasive moral theory that labels work as work a ‘moral good,’ Alice has yet another reason to avoid selecting her Consequential morality-inspired leisure preference, because she has replaced a mental calculus that gives her the opportunity to maximize her own utility with another one: the Intentional morality claim that to do work actually makes one good. Alice’s maximum utility comes from not working while Bob works, but the entire Leisure column is blocked to her through the moral claim that working is virtuous.
So, it's clear that the system as set up today is coercive in its encouragement of people to work, and it's clear that the system as set up today extracts leisure from those who must work. How should we value work? Much, much less than we do now. A work ethic is nothing to be overly proud of when someone with overwhelming amounts of wealth can just wait you out and never put you in a situation where you can value leisure.
What do we see in the world today? Rentiers lazing about and workers encouraged to earn their keep and told they don't deserve social welfare benefits if they don't work. Funny that, but only the rentiers and Marx seem to be laughing.
[1] Technically, the form of the game as used here is called Snow-drift, Chicken or Hawk-dove. The difference is that the lowest payoff and the second lowest payoff are reversed. In classic PD the values go from highest to lowest in the form of (T)emptation > (R)eward > (P)unishment > (S)ucker's Deserts. In Snow-drift, they are T > R > S > P.
The two matrices look like this:
PD
RR TS
ST PP
Snow-drift (using Prisoner's Dilemma Values)
RR TP
PT SS
The penalty for mutual defection is much harsher in Snow-drift, while the penalty for being suckered into working while the other guy picks leisure is less. This leads to THREE stable strategies: alternating defection <-> cooperation (each person picks 'defection' at some percentage >50% of the time) or mutual cooperation.
Why call it Prisoner's Dilemma then? Because a) it's just an alternate form of the game and b) people know what the Prisoner's Dilemma indicates, whereas calling it Snow-drift does not give an indication that game-theory is going to be used. Hopefully this footnote ameliorates the issue sufficiently for everyone who would prefer the more exact terminology be used.