WORK

The reward for work well done
is the opportunity to do more.
Jonas Salk

Work is a natural title
to the property it creates,
and the legislation which
does not respect this principle
is inherently unfair.
Jaime Balmes

Keep doing some kind of work,

that the devil may always find you employed.
St. Jerome

I am a great believer in luck,
and I find that the harder I work
the more I have of it.
Stephen Leacock

There is a very old socialist aphorism that says: “every person has the obligation to produce at least the equivalent of what he consumes”.

I have always considered it a good aphorism. However, I agree that, should we try to implement it, we would surely run into a whole series of troubles because all too often it is terribly difficult to establish that equivalence and, last but not least, also because there are many ways of production and many and very different products. Certainly, it is not easy to translate this aphorism into something practical and viable in the real world. All the same and in spite of its drawbacks, it still is an excellent principle as far as I am concerned, because essentially, what it says is that no one has the right to be a parasite.

Ultimately and in a strict sense, work is the activity through which we provide for ourselves and for our loved ones. In other words, all the way from the days of Paradise till today work is what has allowed us to support our family.

Nevertheless, this conception of work, however true, soon becomes too narrow; especially if we consider the vast complexity of the socio-economic structure of today’s world.

For example, if we analyze work from a socio-economic point of view, we will come to the amazing conclusion that in actual fact we never – or almost never – work for ourselves. Most of the time we work for others. Let me ask you to do something: sit in any room and look around you. Once you have taken a good look at each and every object you see, ask yourself just two simple questions:

1)- How many things are there that I have made by myself?

2)- How many people have been involved in manufacturing g all the things I see?

If you carry out this exercise thoroughly I guarantee you’re in for a big surprise. In fact, most likely, you will never manage to come up with the full list that answers the second question.

You don’t believe me? Try it out with a most simple case. Take that curtain by the window. And I will even give you a head start by assuming that it was you who made it. Alright: we have the person who made the curtain. But, who weaved the fabric? How many people worked in the factory that made the yarn? How many were involved in the dyeing? If the yarn is made from natural fiber, who sowed the cotton? Who harvested it? Who brought it to the factory? And if it is synthetic, who prepared the chemicals? Who supervised the process? Who manufactured the machine that transformed the chemicals in yarn? Who packed the finished spools?

And I will drop it here because I don’t want to bore you unduly, but I could keep on asking who manufactured the cardboard box where the spools were packed, who manufactured the truck that transported those boxes and even who built and maintained the road used by the truck. Sometimes it seems incredible, but even a simple curtain requires the coordinated work of dozens of thousands of people and hundreds of different professions. Quite some time ago, together with a friend we tried to compile a list of all that is needed to enable any of us to board and travel on a bus. We had to give up. The list became so long and complicated that in no time it became impossible to deal with.

What is the point in all this? – you may ask.  Well, it is quite simple actually: we do not only spend our lives working for others, but we also live consuming other peoples’ work. Long gone are the days when craftsmen made their own tools, who got their own raw materials and who manufactured in a single integrated process the object of their craft. And yet, if we give it a second thought, we would find that even these craftsmen worked for those around them because they would not keep most of the manufactured objects to themselves. They would barter or trade them with the members of the community.

In today’s societies, this phenomenon is multiplied exponentially. Everyone’s work is interrelated with, and relies on, many other kinds of work performed by a huge amount of people. The point is that we do not work for ourselves, even when we do it to provide for ourselves and our family, or for those for whom in a way or another we are responsible. The point is that in our globalized post-modern society we have reached the point where everybody depends on everyone, and – among many other things – this turns social organization into something far more fragile, complex and sensitive than most people would ever imagine.

All of the above does not invalidate the concept of work as an activity intended to provide for our needs. Quite the opposite: it turns it into something more essential since, as we have seen, the people who in one way or another rely on our job are much more in number than those who are directly within our innermost circle of responsibilities. To the individual aspect of work we must add a social dimension, or to put differently: the sphere of individual work is contained in a social sphere that surpasses it.

Moreover, the concept of work goes even beyond the concept of economic production. As a virtue or a value, the emphasis rests upon what we could call “industriousness”, or “occupation”. If you allow me the wordplay, I would say it is what makes it preferable to be occupied in the solution of a problem rather than to be preoccupied by the existence of the problem itself. This broader concept of work may become important because it includes many activities that normally lie outside the scope of economics. For example, fairly often a young person may be asked: “Do you work or are you studying?”. In my youth, more than once I was impolite enough to question back: “Why? Do you think study is fun and games?”. (OK; granted: at that time I didn’t say exactly “fun and games”, but for now I will spare you the English equivalent of my angry teenager Argentinean slang…). Whoever has studied more or less seriously knows that study is not about carousing around the clock. Like any other occupation, it requires a good deal of dedication, effort, discipline and perseverance. In essence, study, art, philosophy, theology and a whole lot of other not precisely profitable activities constitute an “occupation” – a “labour” – like any other paid job in the market. They require that 90% of perspiration Dr. Favaloro spoke about. necessary to achieve any goal.

In this way the concept of “worker” actually covers a much broader range of professions, jobs and occupations than those normally considered by a petty, narrow and biased conception of industriousness. The industrial worker is not the only one who works. The proletarized office clerk is not the only person who works. The supervisor, the foreman, the manager and the director work too. And so does the artist, the designer, the researcher, the philosopher who honestly seeks explanations for many things, the priest who really has a calling and who serves his faithful with love and dedication. All those who have a goal in life and who constantly carry out their activity with discipline in order to achieve that goal, do work. The artificial division of society in hostile classes has narrowed our perspective on the subject.  All those who work hard, with discipline and perseverance, pursuing a defined and worthy objective are, actually and by strict definition: workers.

And please do come up now with the argument that, by that token, thieves and robbers also work. That’s beyond the point. Leaving aside the fact that many criminals end up working more than they would if they were honest, what we are considering here is how useless and counterproductive it is to divide, classify and stratify different types and styles of work based solely on their socio-economic value. Down deep, like Boris Pasternak used to say, at work you not only make what you imagined; you also discover what you are made of.

But even within the boundaries of work that can effectively be traded for money in the labour market, in an enormous amount of cases – whether implicitly or explicitly – we overlook the fact that any production process involves bringing together at least eight quite different kinds of work.

1.  Design, creation or invention of what is to be produced.

2.  Detailed planning of how and with what the design will be produced.

3.  Procurement, organization and arrangement of the necessary structures and means that enable production.

4.  Direction of  production establishing who, when, how, where and what is to be produced, being this especially important in those complex products that involve parts which are produced separately and later assembled.

5.  Supervision of the process to ensure that the planning and programming is effectively followed, overcoming unforeseen obstacles and correcting errors, if necessary.

6.  Production itself, with all its different components.

7.  Sales and distribution management to ensure the product reaches those who really need it.

8.  Overall administration of the whole process to manage resources and to monitor effectiveness and efficiency.

If you remove a single step of this sequence, any production, anywhere around the world, will become impossible. Consequently, don’t be amazed if you end up realizing that even work presupposes rank, order and discipline.

Of course it does.

Only scatterbrained demagogues would make us believe otherwise!