Work and Wealth

E-ISSN： 1748-6858|2|2|197-217

ISSN： 0034-6705

Source： Review of Politics, Vol.2, Iss.2, 1940-04, pp. : 197-217

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Abstract

IN DISCUSSIONS concerning such problems as labor-time, leisure, unemployment and thefuture of industrial society, it can be noticed that a number of persons become entangled in a net of confusions and sophisms by failing to consider the finalities of work in the right order. In short, we observe that men profit by working because work provides them with the commodities they need; they profit by working, on the other hand, because labor activities secure a sound training of the mind together with a salutary discipline of the appetites. Thus, two lines of results can be ascribed to labor activity. We maintain that they cannot have the same significance in terms of finality. Harmful confusions are to be feared unless we keep in mind their subordination to one another. We have seen, in a previous study, that labor-activity belongs to the category of transitive activities in the strict sense of the word. It consists in a production, in a casual flow, in the emanation of a term, in the bringing into existence of an effect. Moreover, it is essentially, at least in the primary form of manual work, the production of a term exterior to the acting individual. However profoundly the worker may be affected, in his person, by the work he exercises, it is quite clear that the termswhich defines laboractivity is not its immanent, but its exterior result.