Happy Labor Day!
Monday, September 03, 2018
By a happy accident, I forgot to leave a note Friday that I'd take today off, so here I am posting. To my rescue comes an article by Fredric Hamber that has been republished by Capitalism Magazine a few times. In "This Labor Day Celebrate Man's Mind," Hamber offers the following corrective to a widespread misconception about the nature of productive work that, unfortunately, motivated those who pushed for this holiday:
Well said, and I thank Mr. Hamber for making today's accidentally-scheduled post both quick and valuable!Contrary to the Marxist premise that wealth is created by laborers and "exploited" by those at the top of the pyramid of ability, it is those at the top, the best and the brightest, who increase the value of the labor of those at the bottom. Under capitalism, even a man who has nothing to trade but physical labor gains a huge advantage by leveraging the fruits of minds more creative than his. The labor of a construction worker, for example, is made more productive and valuable by the inventors of the jackhammer and the steam shovel, and by the farsighted entrepreneurs who market and sell such tools to his employer. The work of an office clerk, as another example, is made more efficient by the men who invented copiers and fax machines. By applying human ingenuity to serve men's needs, the result is that physical labor is made less laborious and more productive.
Image via Wikipedia.
An apt symbol of the theory that sweat and muscle are the creators of economic value can be seen in those Soviet-era propaganda posters depicting man as a mindless muscular robot with an expressionless, cookie-cutter face. In practice, that theory led to chronic famines in a society unable to produce even the most basic necessities.
-- CAV
3 comments:
The quote about construction workers doesn't go far enough. Yes, the workers get a boost from those who invent tools that allow them to be increasingly productive. But they also get a boost from the engineers and planners who direct their work. It's one thing to dig a hole with an excavator (and no small thing--that takes real skill!), but it's another entirely to know WHERE and WHEN to dig. On a well-run job site, everyone understands that. It's the manager's job to handle the schedule and planning, and the job of the operators and laborers to do the task at hand. This division of labor allows everyone to be more efficient, and allows the tasks to get done to a much higher standard of quality. Imagine the mess that a modern building site would be in if everyone had to figure out what the next step was themselves!
Yo, Gus, you wrote: "By a happy accident..." I must say it's a shame you didn't gild the lily and write "happy happenstance," because then you'd be the opposite of these guys, one of whose CDs I think I gifted you with once. (The name literally means "unhappy happenstance," which is the Russian legal term for "accident.") And of course they're nuts, so any excuse for a song cue from me.
Dinwar,
True, and things would get mind-boggling quickly if we though about all the giants' shoulders the engineers and planners are standing on!
Snedcat,
I think that CD was on the recent-ish side, too. Thanks.
Gus
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