Recently, I saw in the newspapers a news about an amendment to the constitution whose objective would be to reduce the working hours of workers to 36 hours a week instead of the current 44 hours.
Many will argue that this is not the way to go and that work ennobles. Here is the question: what type of work are they referring to? According to the dictionary, the definition of work is: “a set of productive or creative activities that man performs to achieve a certain goal.” Another definition present in dictionaries could be: “regular paid or salaried professional activity.” I believe that this latter definition is the result of the alienation of work when appropriated by the dominant class for the creation of “surplus value.”
If we look at human work throughout history, we will see that it has not always been remunerated. In primitive human societies, before the division of labor, humans worked to maintain society without pecuniary payment. Work was performed naturally, and I believe there was social recognition, where all contributors were acknowledged as valuable members of their communities. At that time, work was very similar to the work of animals in the natural world (ants, monkeys, bees). With the advent of more complex tools like knives, wheels, and plows, as well as the domestication of animals, human work began to differ from the work of other living beings.
Initially, humans were gatherers who depended on fruits, roots, and leaves available in nature, which had to be collected with their teeth and hands. The first hominids appeared on Earth around 7 million years ago, and for approximately 4 million years, work was carried out in this manner. The earliest evidence of tool use, in the form of stone tools, dates back to around 3.3 million years ago.
With the advent of tools, humans gained access to enough calories for their brains to develop further. This, combined with the opposable thumb, allowed hominids to handle these tools with greater dexterity. From there, the progress was impressive: small cities were built, roads were made, trade emerged between these cities, monuments were erected, music and poems were created, humans built the pyramids, the hanging gardens of Babylon, conquered space, created the computer, but unfortunately, have not yet achieved perfection in the productive organization of their societies.
This qualitative leap occurred only 1.8 million years ago, and one of the greatest inventions was the division of labor, which culminated in the industrial revolution. Only with the division of labor was it possible for certain individuals to accumulate wealth, such as livestock and land. Many of these individuals were political and religious leaders. Social hierarchies emerged as a natural path for societies. Soon it was realized that one of the greatest sources of wealth was human labor. A single person cannot manage much land, and the more one person has, the less another has. Hence the perception that a person could “hire” another to help came about. Thus, the privileged class realized that the more humans worked for them, the richer they became, as wealth can only be extracted from labor.
With more people working in the fields, the greater the harvests and the better cared for the animals were, resulting in greater wealth. From that moment on, society became divided into classes. Ideologically, the dominant classes of the time clung to religious issues to validate their dominant positions. They were seen as chosen by the gods and, as such, should be respected, maintaining the status quo. One of the first applications of religion was precisely this.
This class society emerged only 10,000 years ago, which is very little in historical terms. During most of human history, work was not salaried with the aim of enrichment. At least not on a large scale. With this explanation, we can emphasize that work as we see it today, appropriated by a social class, is a recent invention in humanity, having nothing to do with its historical and social roots. This is one of the first points that can be brought to the discussion.
Another issue is the conception of what work is in the modern world. In the view of some narrow-minded people, work is everything we do for monetary payment. It is easy to question this view, just ask one of the billions of women whose function is to organize the household and raise children. I believe they would be indignant if this significant part of their lives was not recognized as work. This work is one of the most important we have (it is worth noting that most of this work is not paid).
Work can also be pleasurable. Although some workers can derive pleasure from their activities, I believe that for 90% of the population, work is something exhausting, used only for subsistence. Work can be pleasurable because it can be creative: composing music, writing a text, raising children, exercising, dating, having sex. These are some of the tasks that can also be considered work. In summary, work is inherent to humans. They live for their work, and the view we currently have of it is mistaken.
Freeing up paid work so that more pleasurable work can be done is freeing humans to be more creative and have more enjoyment in life. Today, with the mechanization of production processes, we can clearly live with less work. Unfortunately, considering that the ideal is to work a lot is an ideological issue that only serves those who appropriate our work, who have a status quo to protect, and who are afraid of giving us more time to think and reflect on things.
It is urgent to free humans from alienated work, that which is appropriated by others. Only the working class itself can achieve a significant reduction in its workload. We cannot expect this to be given to us. It will have to be conquered.
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