Work is either toil or leisure or some combination or mixture of both. If it is sheer toil, it must be extrinsically compensated, since no one would voluntarily engage in it unless motivated by the dire necessity of having to earn a living.

When work is pure leisure, it may or may not be compensated. It is the kind of work we should be willing to do without extrinsic compensation if we had no need to earn a living. When it is compensated leisuring, it is usually work that produces marketable goods or services. The same holds true for work that involves some combination of both toil and leisure.

There are three pure forms of work: (1) sheer toil that is compensated and thereby earns a living for the worker; (2) pure leisure that is also compensated; and (3) all forms of leisuring that can occupy time that is not taken up by sleep, play, and one or another form of compensated work.

In addition to the three pure forms of work, there are various admixtures of toiling and leisuring. At one extreme of the spectrum of compensated work there is sheer toil; at the other, there is pure leisuring. In between, there are admixtures of toiling and leisuring, in which either the component of toil predominates (and then such work is at the lower end of the spectrum) or in which the component of leisuring predominates (and then such work is at the upper end of the spectrum).

Work that is pure toil, done solely for the sake of the money it earns, is also sheer drudgery because it is stultifying rather than self improving. It improves only the materials on which the worker works, but not the worker himself or herself. It may be either manual work or mental work, but in neither case is it creative. In either case, it usually has deleterious effects upon the worker -- upon his body if the work is mainly manual; upon his mind if it is mainly mental. Far from resulting in any self-perfection, it results in the very opposite -- self-deterioration.

The tasks performed by such work are, for the most part, tasks that can be much more efficiently performed by machines or robots precisely because they are in essence mechanical rather than creative operations.

More than a century ago Karl Marx and, even earlier, Alexis de Tocqueville were right in describing such work as an activity that enhances or improves the materials worked on, but which at the same time degrades or deteriorates, both in body and mind, the condition of the worker. Neither of them could have anticipated the technological progress that has now eliminated many of those tasks from the sphere of human work. That progress promises a future in which machines will further emancipate human beings from the drudgery that a large part of the human race has until recent times suffered, under the dire necessity of suffering it or starving.

At the opposite and upper extreme of the spectrum of compensated work are the tasks or undertakings that persons would discharge or take on even if they did not have to work for a living. Included here are all forms of productive artistry, all forms of scientific research or philosophical thought, political activity that involves compensated employment by government, employment by religious and other social institutions, and all forms of truly professional activity, such as teaching, healing, nursing, engineering, military service, practicing law, and so on.

What characterizes all these forms of compensated leisure-work that makes it possible for us to think of a person doing such work even if he or she did not have to earn a living by doing so?

In the first place, such work is always self-rewarding and self perfecting, in the sense that the worker learns or grows, improves as a human being, by doing it.

In the second place, it is always to some extent creative work, involving intellectual innovations that are not routinized and repetitive. It is in this respect the very opposite of mechanical operations. It may involve some chores that are repetitive, but these are a minor part of such work.

In the third place, like other forms of work that involve little or no leisuring, such work is productive of goods valuable to others and, therefore, marketable, or goods gratuitously conferred upon society. Like other forms of compensated work, which impose certain obligations to be performed for the compensation earned, such work, even though it is leisuring rather than toiling, can be just as tiring or fatiguing as sheer toil. But unlike those for whom work is sheer toil, those for whom work is compensated leisure may find some pleasure in the performance of their tasks. This makes the work they do play as well as leisure.

The larger the creative input of the work, the more it is self perfecting, the better it is as work for a human being to do. The more the work involves stultifying chores and repetitive mechanical operations that machines can perform more rapidly and efficiently than human beings, the less is it desirable work for human beings to do. It has less human dignity as work because it is self-deteriorating rather than self-perfecting, even though it produces market able economic goods or services, or results in other social values. It is more like the kind of work one hopes technological progress will alleviate or eliminate entirely by producing machines that will per form such tasks.

The degree of compensation for the work done does not always match the place it occupies in the spectrum of work. Work that lies at the lower end of the scale usually earns less than work that lies at the upper end of the scale, but that is not always the case.

Nor is it always the case that individuals who have some options with regard to employment exercise their options by choosing work that is more highly compensated. They may, for very good reasons indeed, reasons that express sound moral judgments on their part, choose work that lies at the upper end of the scale, but is not as highly compensated as work that has less of a leisure component and offers them less opportunity for the enjoyment that is provided by doing work that also has the aspect of play.

A well-paid job is not necessarily a good job, humanly speaking. It may be well paid for reasons having nothing to do with the character of the work or the quality of life it confers on the worker. The reverse is equally true. A good job, humanly speaking, may be poorly paid in terms of the marketable value of the products turned out by the work.

The foregoing delineation of the spectrum of compensated work does not exhaust the whole range of activities that are leisuring. What kind of activities constitute uncompensated leisuring?

Before I attempt to answer the question, let me call attention to the etymology of the English word leisure and the words in the Greek and Latin languages that our English word translates.

The English word leisure derives through the French word loisir from the Latin word licere, which means the permissible rather than the compulsory. This confirms one connotation that we have attached to the word leisure; namely, that it is an optional activity rather than compulsory. Regarding leisuring as permissible rather than compulsory leaves open the question whether, in addition to being permissible, it is also obligatory for ethical reasons.

The Greek word that our English word translates is skole, the Latin equivalent of which is schola and the English equivalent school. The connotation hereby given to the word leisure is that it always involves learning, some increment of mental, moral, or spiritual growth, and hence some measure of self-perfection.

These two connotations of leisuring -- (1) an optional use of free time, (2) for personal growth or self-perfection -- leave only one further connotation to be mentioned: In addition to producing self improvement, leisuring may also confer benefits upon other individuals or upon the organized community as a whole.

With this before us, we should be able to see why certain activities that human beings engage in without any thought of financial or economic compensation are leisuring in exactly the same sense as the activities we have called compensated leisuring.

These include all acts of benevolent love and friendship, among which are the acts of conjugal love and the rearing of children.

They include the political activities of citizens who are not holders of public office and who are not paid for the performance of their duties, as office-holders are.

They include travel and other experiences through which individuals learn, such as serious conversation or the discussion of serious subjects. They include sustained thinking and intellectual activity that enlarges one's understanding, amplifies one's knowledge, or improves one's skills.

Every use of one's mind in study, inquiry, or investigation, in reading, writing, speaking, and listening, in calculating and estimating -- all these, when the work involved is purely for personal profit, are instances of uncompensated leisure.

Adapted from
A Vision of the Future (1984), Part I, Chapter 2

Revised 18 December 2000

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