Ch. 3, pp.101-108
Not many images this week. What there is though, is a bit more detail about the labouring classes and their perceived importance in the mid 19th century, a period of rapid industrial growth in Great Britain. We learn that John Ruskin’s love of Gothic architecture was part based on his belief that the workers who constructed Gothic cathedrals did it out of love and the joy of work – an idea that found recurring expression in the 20th century. Looking back at the table of contents, there’s not going to be much in the way of architecture in this chapter but Yamamoto brings it all back to this architectural question of community in Chapter 5, the final chapter. In the meantime, these are all worthwhile things to think about.
Chapter 3: The space of “society” feeding off the space of “the world”
1 Is labouring really laborers’ reason for living?
2 The universality of work
3 From world to society
4 Workers as free as birds
5 How is society managed?
But remembering the 20th century and how this notion of living to work recurred in various forms, led me to remember post-war Japanese corporate culture in the large corporations such as Matsushita (better known overseas as National, Technics, Panasonic …). Like many companies they offered jobs for life, corporate housing in corporate domitories, corporate activities such as lunchtime volleyball and so on. Rather than being communities within a community, they were societies within a society in attempting to provided all for their employees. This is only two centuries after the familistère and other model worker societies Yamamoto has been writing about. On the left below we have off-duty brainstorming at Toyota in 1973 and on the right is kendo lessons at Matsushita Electric, 1934.
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CHAPTER 3
Feeding on the space of “The World”
The space of “Society”
Is labouring really laborers’ reason for living?
“Of late, we have been giving much thought into civilization’s enormous discovery of the division of labour. However, the name is misleading because it is not labour that is actually being divided but people. In 1859 John Ruskin (1819-1900) wrote “People are divided and become fragments of people [as a whole].” (The Nature of Gothic [chapter in The Stones of Venice], p. 39). It was two years later that Albert Roberts exhibited his Albert Cottages at the London Exhibition, and about that time that the first stage of construction began for the Mulhouse Workers City.
At the time, Ruskin was one of Great Britain’s most influential critics. Ruskin emphasized how much the workers and laborers of gothic architecture were passionate about their work and how much the Gothic architectural style was the style of freedom. At the time, the Gothic style was thought barbaric when compared to Greek or Roman architecture. The adjective Gothic refers to the style of the Gothos [Goths]. Ruskin evaluated this style very highly and wrote that there is a freedom of thought in its decoration.
You might scoff when you see the tremendous ignorance of the sculptors of long ago and their rigid sculptures with goblins, misshapen monsters and forms devoid of any analysis. I would like you to see these just once. But do not scoff because these represent the life and freedom of the workers who carved that stone. These show the freedom of thought and the heightened existence of humanity.
The Nature of Gothic [in The Stones of Venice], p. 36)
This is evidence that the sculptors who created those misshapen sculptures are still “alive” today. However, this can only be the result of a mechanism for the division of labour/people. “Gravitating towards the machine leaves workers with no reason for living.” (ibid., p.39) The machine has no capacity for the joy of labour. Ruskin had a high opinion of Gothic architecture and the laborers that made it, and was also extremely critical of industrial society that would lose the joy of that labour. He said an industrialized society “is one where there is no joy in people putting bread upon the table and, because of that, that joy is the only one they want.” (ibid., p.37) A society where there is no joy of labour is one that exists solely for profit. Money becomes value. Ruskin was not advocating an industrial society in which laborers only worked for money, but believed it was necessary to build a world in which the joy came from work itself.
Liberating people from work
Marx was a contemporary of Ruskin (and only one year his senior) but had a completely different view of work, saying it was not their joy but that it was essential to liberate the labouring class from labour. Arendt quoted Marx as saying “The topic is not to liberate the larbouring class but to liberate them from labour.” (The Human Condition, p.160) For Marx, doing away with labour would be “The Kingdom of Freedom”. (ibid., p. 210 note) and “The Communist Revolution … would do away with labour.” (ibid., p.210 note) For Marx, labor was nothing but toil, not pleasure. In fact, at this time, it was also thought that “Labour is the natural result of avoiding poverty and hardship.” (ibid., p168) Labour is forced labour in order to live. Engels wrote “Labour is punishment” (Engels, Conditions of the Laboring Classes in Great Britain, Vol. 1, p.130) because it was toil. However, out was not the case that that toil was brought about by the division of labour. It was not the case that, as Ruskin claimed, the division of labour would cause laborers to drift towards mechanization. Marx was of the opinion that “acknowledging the division of labour and not denying it was a fundamental condition for the social development of humanity. The relationships among the various peoples of a country are dependent on the degree to which the labour force and the division of labour intersect.”) Marx & Engels, The German Ideology [new translation] p.80] The division of labour develops along with society and its various divisions of labor. “How far the production capacity of a country has developed is clearly expressed by its division of labour.” (ibid., p.80) “First, there is the separation of agricultural labour from industrial labour and commercial labour” (ibid., p.80) and then “there is the subsequent division of labour within these categories.” (ibid., pp.80-81) The division of the labour of laborers is a necessary condition for taking the productivity of an industrialized society forward.
It is precisely because of the Industrial Revolution that man’s labor power has improved and for the first time since the beginning of mankind, there is a complete division of labor among all people, which provides sufficient consumption for all members of society and still more abundant reserves and still more leisure time for each person. In this way, most of the valuable aspects of the historically inherited culture – science, art, social forms, etc. – will be preserved and, not only preserved, but freed from the monopoly of the ruling class and become the common property of the entire society, which will then be nurtured.
Engels, The Problem of Housing, p.33)
Whereas Ruskin thought the division of labour was an inhuman aspect of industrial society, Marx and Engels were of the opinion that it was a necessary process of historical evolution, and that it was a core factor in [social] progress. Because of this, the division of labour was necessary in order to free laborers from labour. Arendt notes that Marx was not unlike many other thinkers of the time in thinking that “the never before seen high level of productivity of Western economies was overwhelming”. (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.141) This high level of productivity was brought about by the motivation of the laborers. The labour force of one laborer is more than that necessary to sustain the needs of that one laborer. “This explains why labour productivity is not because of a surplus of labour force due to a surplus of laborers.” (ibid., p141). “If that excess labour force is concentrated in a single direction then it becomes possible to sufficiently supportive lives of ten thousand people by the labour of only a few laborers (cooperative industry), and this is the most effective way of increasing productivity.” Marx thought of the division of labour and cooperative industry as parts of the same process and that there must be the division of labour prior to cooperative industry for labour.
A society of laborers who do not labour
By the suitable distribution of surplus labour force or, in other words, by prohibiting the acquisition of that surplus labour force, “it is possible for only several laborers to sufficiently support the lives of ten thousand, but even then labour is still toil and so labour is performed for only a small part of the day. He [Marx] predicted that “the remaining time would be spent pursuing private activities such as hobbies with their non-worldwide nature.” (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.171) “Furthermore, he thought that that small amount of labour could be converted into some sort of activity akin to a hobby, and that this would be freedom from labour. All social activities would become like hobbies and realize the “Kingdom of Freedom”. The term “non-worldwide nature” refers to activities of which no trace remains as a result. Interests are consumed immediately. In communist societies and socialist societies, all occupations are interests in that it is not the case that there are artists, but persons who spend their time painting pictures. In other words, “I will do this today, and that tomorrow, in the morning I will hunt and in the afternoon I will go fishing. For food I will eat the livestock I raise, the fish I catch and the hunt I kill. I will not become a critic.” (Marx & Engels, The German Ideology [new translation] p.38], as quoted in Arendt, The Human Condition, p.215) Mark thought that “This does not mean that divisions of labour such as hunters, fishermen, herdsmen and critics are dedicated occupations, but merely that various activities are freely performed everyday in a “today I will do this, tomorrow I will do that” kind of way. This must not become a dedicated occupation for then labour becomes toil. “Doing the same job continuously and continually kills motivation and expectation. By changing the content of labour, it will be possible to return motivation and have work take on a new breath of life” (Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part I, p. 502) No work specialization means working out of interest. Freeing labourers from labour meant it woulds be possible to realize a society in which all persons are able to satisfy their interests. “While defining man as a “laboring animal,” labour is for Marx, what leads the “laboring animal” into a society that no longer needs that greatest and most human force of all.” (Arendt, The Human Condition, p.161) It becomes “A society of laborers without labour.” (ibid., p.15) “This kind of fundamental contradiction does not appear in the work of even second-rate authors.” (ibid., p.160) However, Marx’s dream (which for him was inevitable) of turning work into interest is in itself not a contradiction. It merely means that Marx was imagining a similar utopia as that imagined by Fourier.
Marx saw no contradiction but perhaps it is one for us. The contradiction is in our modern society completely believing in the “surplus labour” of Marx. We are of the mindset that the less time we spend at work the better. We believe that the more time saved the better and this is because we believe that work is toil just as Marx did. For Ruskin however, work was evidence of life. We sometimes believe that work is toil and other times we believe that work is living. “I live for my work” is a very real feeling for us (labourers).
• • •
All this talk about freeing laborers from (the toil of) labour seems naîvely idealistic one hundred and fifty years on but, in recent history, how often have we heard about the time we can save by the adoption of new technologies? In the 1960s United States, the promise of saving the time and labour of suddenly overworked housewives was used to boost the production and sales of consumer appliances. In our own field of architecture, we’ve witnessed the CAD revolution, the BIM revolution and now the AI revolution but none of us have any expectation of being on the receiving end of any time and labour savings. This stuff matters. To perform work because one is interested in the job is a concept we don’t hear much of anymore. Of course Marx was talking about the toil of manual labour but what we are seeing now is the devaluation of satisfying intellectual activity. Should a novelist be anything more than someone who spends their time writing novels for other people to read? Is an architect someone who spends their time sifting through AI-generated facade options? I believe work should be engaging but even hobbies and interests can become toil if one feels forced to spend time on them. There’s that new phenomena of internet influencer burnout, for example. These issues are as relevant as ever. In this chapter, Yamamoto will have more to say about work and its place in our society. I’m not sure how this is going to be brought back to architecture but I’m confident it will.
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2024/07/14 Ch. 3, pp.101-107 – this post
2024/06/30 Ch. 2, pp.92-100
2024/06/23 Ch. 2, pp.87-92
2024/06/16 Ch. 2, pp.78-87
2024/06/02 Ch. 2, pp.69-78
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.66-70
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.58-66
2024/05/05 Ch. 1, pp.46-55
2024/04/28 Ch. 1, pp.35-46
2024/04/21 Ch. 1, pp.23-35
2024/04/07 Ch. 1, pp.18-23
2024/03/31 Ch. 1, pp.14-18
2024/03/24 The Space of Power vs. The Power of Space: Preface pp. 7-11
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