Labour under socialism — intense exertion (1979)

From the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

“In the sweat of thy brow shaft thou labour”; this was Jehovah’s curse upon Adam. Once this is labour for Smith — a curse. Tranquility appears as the adequate state, as identical with ‘freedom’ and ‘happiness’. It seems quite far from Smith’s mind that the individual “in his normal state of health, strength, activity, skill facility”, also needs a normal portion of work and of the suspension of tranquility.

But Smith has no inkling whatever that the overcoming of obstacles is itself a liberating activity . . . hence as self-realisation, hence real freedom whose action is precisely — labour. He is right that in its historic form as slave-labour, serf-labour and wage-labour, labour always appears as repulsive, always as external forced; and not labour by contrast as ‘freedom’, ‘happiness’.

. . . for labour which has not yet created the conditions for itself in which labour becomes attractive work, in no way means it becomes mere fun, mere amusement, as Fourier conceives it.

Really free working, e.g. composing, is, at the same time, precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion.

(The Making of Marx’s Capital, p.611.)