Labour
From a curse fit for slaves to the measure of value and the question of its own future.
Each star is a thinker or work; solid lines draw the constellation of a school, dashed threads the passage of ideas between eras.
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All entries by era
Labour 400 BCE – 2030 CE
From a curse fit for slaves to the measure of value and the question of its own future.
- 350 BCE
Aristotle, Politics. For Aristotle, manual and wage labour deform body and mind and leave no leisure for citizenship or contemplation; it is fit for slaves and the banausic, not the free man. This contempt for toil, shared across the classical world, sets the low baseline from which the idea of labour will have to climb.
- 516 CE
Rule of St Benedict. Benedict's monastic rule prescribes a daily rhythm of labour and prayer — ora et labora — treating manual work as a discipline of the soul rather than a mark of servility. In the monasteries, for the first time in the West, work acquires positive spiritual dignity.
- 1690 CE
John Locke, Second Treatise. Locke argues that by mixing one's labour with the things of nature one makes them one's own — labour is the origin of legitimate property and adds nearly all the value to what we use. Work is elevated from a curse to the very foundation of ownership and worth.
- 1776 CE
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. Smith opens with the pin factory: dividing work into specialised tasks multiplies output enormously and is the true source of a nation's wealth. Yet he also warns that endless repetition can render a worker 'as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become'.
- 1844 CE
Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts. The young Marx argues that under capitalism the worker is estranged from the product, from the act of working, from fellow workers and from his own human nature. Labour, which should be the free expression of our species-being, becomes a hostile force sold for a wage — alienation.
- 1867 CE
Marx, Capital vol. I. In Capital, Marx distinguishes labour from labour power — the capacity to work — which the worker sells and the capitalist uses to produce more value than the wage costs. This surplus value, extracted in the working day, becomes the hidden source of profit and the core of his critique.
- 1911 CE
F. W. Taylor, Scientific Management. Taylor proposes to study each task with a stopwatch, strip it of wasted motion and prescribe the 'one best way', separating the planning of work from its execution. 'Scientific management' raises productivity dramatically while draining skill and autonomy from the shop floor — a bargain still argued over today.
- 1913 CE
Henry Ford, the moving assembly line. Ford's moving assembly line cuts the time to build a car from hours to minutes, and his five-dollar day makes workers into consumers of what they build. Labour becomes both an input to be minimised and a market to be paid — the paradox at the heart of industrial capitalism.
- 1958 CE
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. Arendt distinguishes labour, the endless toil of keeping life going, from work, which makes lasting things, and from action, the political life among others. She warns of a coming 'society of labourers without labour', freed by machines yet knowing no higher activity to fill the void.
- 2013 CE
Frey & Osborne, automation debate. A widely cited study estimates that nearly half of US jobs are susceptible to computerisation, and the rise of gig platforms and generative AI reopens the oldest question: what is work for? Debates over a shorter week, a universal basic income and the meaning of a life without steady employment carry Aristotle's and Arendt's questions into the algorithmic age.
The milestones
c. 350 BCE
Aristotle, Politics
Toil as unworthy of the free
For Aristotle, manual and wage labour deform body and mind and leave no leisure for citizenship or contemplation; it is fit for slaves and the banausic, not the free man. This contempt for toil, shared across the classical world, sets the low baseline from which the idea of labour will have to climb.
c. 516 CE
Rule of St Benedict
To work is to pray
Benedict's monastic rule prescribes a daily rhythm of labour and prayer — ora et labora — treating manual work as a discipline of the soul rather than a mark of servility. In the monasteries, for the first time in the West, work acquires positive spiritual dignity.
1690
John Locke, Second Treatise
Labour as the source of property
Locke argues that by mixing one's labour with the things of nature one makes them one's own — labour is the origin of legitimate property and adds nearly all the value to what we use. Work is elevated from a curse to the very foundation of ownership and worth.
1776
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Division of labour and its price
Smith opens with the pin factory: dividing work into specialised tasks multiplies output enormously and is the true source of a nation's wealth. Yet he also warns that endless repetition can render a worker 'as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become'.
1844
Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts
Alienated labour
The young Marx argues that under capitalism the worker is estranged from the product, from the act of working, from fellow workers and from his own human nature. Labour, which should be the free expression of our species-being, becomes a hostile force sold for a wage — alienation.
1867
Marx, Capital vol. I
Labour power as a commodity
In Capital, Marx distinguishes labour from labour power — the capacity to work — which the worker sells and the capitalist uses to produce more value than the wage costs. This surplus value, extracted in the working day, becomes the hidden source of profit and the core of his critique.
1911
F. W. Taylor, Scientific Management
The stopwatch on the worker
Taylor proposes to study each task with a stopwatch, strip it of wasted motion and prescribe the 'one best way', separating the planning of work from its execution. 'Scientific management' raises productivity dramatically while draining skill and autonomy from the shop floor — a bargain still argued over today.
1913
Henry Ford, the moving assembly line
Mass production and the wage bargain
Ford's moving assembly line cuts the time to build a car from hours to minutes, and his five-dollar day makes workers into consumers of what they build. Labour becomes both an input to be minimised and a market to be paid — the paradox at the heart of industrial capitalism.
1958
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Labour, work and action
Arendt distinguishes labour, the endless toil of keeping life going, from work, which makes lasting things, and from action, the political life among others. She warns of a coming 'society of labourers without labour', freed by machines yet knowing no higher activity to fill the void.
2013 →
Frey & Osborne, automation debate
The future of work in question
A widely cited study estimates that nearly half of US jobs are susceptible to computerisation, and the rise of gig platforms and generative AI reopens the oldest question: what is work for? Debates over a shorter week, a universal basic income and the meaning of a life without steady employment carry Aristotle's and Arendt's questions into the algorithmic age.