firecat

I recommend this essay, and to tempt you I've swiped a bunch of quotes from it, both from Russell's essay and Maria Popova's surrounding text.

The only thing I have a problem with is that I suspect Mr Russell, in claiming that we can set things up so that no one has to work more than 4 hours a day, wasn't thinking about some of the kinds of work women are more likely to do, like childcare.

In Praise of Idleness: Bertrand Russell on the Relationship Between Leisure and Social Justice by Maria Popova

Leisure is not the same as the absence of activity… or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness.” -- German philosopher Josef Pieper, "Leisure, the Basis of Culture"

Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery. -- Bertrand Russell

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. -- Bertrand Russell

I remember hearing an old Duchess say: “What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.” People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion. -- Bertrand Russell

[Russell] considers the radical shift that would take place if we were to stop regarding the virtue of work as an end in itself and begin seeing it as a means to a state of being in which work is no longer needed. -- Maria Popova

The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake. -- Bertrand Russell

The seedbed of this soul-shriveling belief is the notion — a driving force of consumerism — that the only worthwhile activities are those that bring material profit. -- Maria Popova

In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational potboilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity. -- Bertrand Russell

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From:

ysabetwordsmith

>>The only thing I have a problem with is that I suspect Mr Russell, in claiming that we can set things up so that no one has to work more than 4 hours a day, wasn't thinking about some of the kinds of work women are more likely to do, like childcare.<<

It's perfectly possible to arrange things that way, if you have multiple adults sharing the workload, and especially if older children are capable of doing many things for themselves. There have been cultures that managed this. Most hunter-gatherer cultures don't have a work ethic at all -- they only work when it's necessary, and they think the mainstream obsession with working all the time is unhealthy.

From:

cjsmith

This is good to hear. I too worried about work such as childcare and home maintenance.

From:

firecat

I know that's what people say about hunter-gatherer cultures, but I don't know if the people studying such cultures asked any women, or if they found out whether childcare was considered "work" in those cultures.

I do believe it's possible to set up a society to minimize workload, including work typically assigned to women. I also think that there's a risk work typically done by women will be overlooked in trying to plan such a society.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> I know that's what people say about hunter-gatherer cultures, but I don't know if the people studying such cultures asked any women, <<

Some do, some don't. It's usually possible to tell if you look at the source material. Sometimes there is a hilarious difference between what the anthropologist drew as conclusions, and what was actually going on, if you know anything about the culture itself.

>> or if they found out whether childcare was considered "work" in those cultures. <<

In my observation, most anthropologists use their own culture's definition of "work" instead of the source culture's definition -- unless they are discussing the division of labor and how tasks get sorted out along gender lines. They rarely pay attention to other divisions like age or moiety.

So then, this raises the question of what "work" even is. If it means accomplishing something, then the book that started this discussion is rather pointless because it was all about having time to do things -- science, art, writing, etc.

That implies the author's interpretation of "work" as something one doesn't wish to be doing. Which can be anything. I spend most of my time writing or working on related tasks. I enjoy it. Some people would hate it. Some people enjoy childcare and don't consider it work in that light. Or cooking, or weaving, or raising horses, or whatever. Probably most people would consider housecleaning to be "work" they'd rather not have to do.

>> I do believe it's possible to set up a society to minimize workload, including work typically assigned to women.<<

Modern conveniences, in my observation, are only somewhat useful in this pursuit. Washer and dryer, sure, they change several hours of work into several minutes. But a lot of "conveniences" just swish around the time required so it looks different but isn't much. Some things, like television and smartphones, suck all the time out of your day.

What really makes the difference is community. If you have five people each watching their own kids, all those adults are tied up in childcare. But if you put the kids together, some of the adults can be doing something else. Or they can all be sitting around, occasionally glancing up at the kids, while talking and doing lapwork like knitting or shelling peas. Some of that stuff, like shelling peas, is really fucking tedious to do alone. But in a crowd of friends, it stops being work and becomes something to do with your hands.

Competence also matters immensely. People who aren't competent have to be supervised, which ties up more people on the same task. Competent people can get more done by working independently or as a team of equals. This includes children. If you teach them self-care, safety, and practical skills they can be useful about the time they can walk. I've seen a team of Amish kids swarm a carriage to clean it. It was the toddler's job to wash the wheels. Our favorite bakery there is usually staffed by teen and tween girls. Contrast that with mainstream America that doesn't even want legal minors to walk to the park alone -- and then is surprised when citizens wind up fat, isolated, and unhealthy. :/

>> I also think that there's a risk work typically done by women will be overlooked in trying to plan such a society.<<

Depends on whether it's patriarchal, matriarchal, balanced, or some other design. Good and bad examples have appeared in all of those. Starting from our current American base, it is difficult but not impossible to create something more balanced and less tedious.

If you like the idea of a low-work society, check out intentional communities. They represent pretty much the range of economic systems that humanity has discovered, from a gift economy to socialism to income-sharing to capitalist. Almost all of them have a system of member support for community needs. I think the most common are cash and hours, often a combination; but some juggle it around so that members with high-paying jobs can pay all in cash while some members don't have outside jobs and do most of the communal labor. There can be a gender tilt there, but not always, because many intentional communities are assertive about gender equity.

Interestingly, four hours a day is a pretty typical contribution in communities that support themselves fairly well -- where they have a community business (one community does hammocks, another does rope sandals, and so on) and/or a farm that grows most of their own food. The rest of the time is for personal projects and socializing, so lots of people do crafts, cook from scratch, play musical instruments, etc.

It is NOT EASY to set up a thriving community and balance all this stuff. People have been working on it for decades -- the modern IC movement dates back to the 1960s but there are actually much older (and much weirder) examples. Much has been written on the topic so you can see what works and what doesn't. The "frat house problem" is a famous failure mode, where the men don't care that the place is a dump so the women wind up doing all the work. But some people have succeeded in creating communities that really work, where people can spend most of their time doing things they enjoy and not much time doing unpleasant but necessary chores. It's fun to compare these versions to historic cultures.

Some books on communal economics are here:
https://www.ic.org/community-bookstore/category/topics/cooperative-economics/

The rest of the bookstore has more about the social aspects of community, but those are more scattered. You'd have to root through the descriptions to see which ones speak to your interests in how people spend their time and how that affects their happiness.