Let's Be Idle!

“In Praise of Idleness” By Bertrand Russell

Now before you go out and buy yourself a Lazyboy chair with refrigerated, beer holding armflaps, know that Russell demands we actually DO something worthwhile with our time!

I bought a book called Why Work? at a used bookstore in Asheville, NC one weekend. It’s a real gem: it’s a collection of essays about work, capitalism, and consumerism. The introductory essay is called “In Praise of Idleness” written by philosopher Bertrand Russell, originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 1932. I’d like to take a few moments to summarize his argument below.

Russell begins by explaining that there are three classes: the first works, the second works mostly by telling the first what to do, and the third lives by owning land and capital, forcing the others to pay him while he does just about absolutely nothing. Although this creates a space for leisure, it is not desirable. See below.

Essentially, according to Russell, the history of man up until the Industrial Revolution has been one whereby the peasant class has worked just enough to be able to subsist. Any surplus has gone to the warrior and priest class. Russell states that the peasant class—to further perpetuate the idleness of the warriors and priests—is fed a certain amount of ideological persuasion in the form of the value and benefit of WORK (or toil). This justifies the peasant’s suffering while others idle. He can comfort himself with the knowledge he is being ethical. It is his duty to work hard. This has been the primary economic situation for just about all of pre-industrial history. As Russell states, “The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own” (26). The peasants toil, and the warrior and priest classes leisure.

Here’s the rub: a civilization actually NEEDS a certain amount of leisure to advance itself. As Russell states, Athenian slave owners used their time in a way which would not have been possible without slaves. It opened up time for philosophy, the arts, and debate, all at the expense of a toiling, suffering working class. But certainly this state of affairs is not desirable. What to do?

Answer: “By the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world” (27). Because of modern technology, we are able to produce more by working less, so why don’t we work less? The answer to that is above: our pre-industrial attitudes about work persist. We MUST work because it is our duty to our nation and our government. To add to Russell’s explanation one might add we work to continue the consumption cycle that we have unwittingly entered into. Our desires immediately fill any kind of surplus state that is opened up when we make more money. We make more money; we expand, stretching ourselves like some monstrous balloon.

Russell proposes: “If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment—assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization” (28-29). “Moving matter about” just isn’t the point to our lives, argues Russell. It is unjust that so few should idle while so many toil. It is also less productive, paradoxically.

If we worked less, we would become more active. Russell states that the reason we are so passive in our leisurely pursuits is that we are so drained and active during our work. If we worked less, we could be more active in our leisure pursuits, pursuing all forms of leisure which make a civilization civilized; after all, it was the leisure class which “cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated [by the leisure class]” (33).

Above all, an individual could be more happy and joyful, leading interesting, fulfilling lives instead of dreary, depressing ones.

To put it simply: To be idle is to have the freedom to work hard at what makes us most human.

Works Cited

Russell, Bertrand. “In Praise of Idleness.” Why Work? London: Aldgate Press, 1983.
25-32.