In Social Economics we have a large, but simple problem. Here is the earth, our farm. Here are the people, who own the earth. How can the most advantage to the most people be obtained from the earth with the least labor? That is the problem of Social Economics.
Looking at the world as if you held it in your hands to study and discuss, what do we find at present?
We find people living too thickly for health and comfort in some places, and too thinly for others; we find most people working too hard and too long at honest labor; some people working with damaging intensity at dishonest labor; and a few wretched paupers among the rich and poor, degenerate idlers who do not work at all, the scum and the dregs of Society.
All this is bad economics. We do not get the comfort out of life we easily could; and work far too hard for what we do get. Moreover, there is no peace, no settled security. No man is sure of his living, no matter how hard he works, a thousand things may occur to deprive him of his job, or his income. In our time there is great excitement along this line of study; and more than one proposition is advanced whereby we may improve, most notably instanced in the world-covering advance of Socialism.
In our present study the principal fact to be exhibited is the influence of a male culture upon Social Economics and Industry.
Industry, as a department of Social Economics, is little understood. Heretofore we have viewed this field from several wholly erroneous positions. From the Hebrew (and wholly androcentric) religious teaching, we have regarded labor as a curse.
Nothing could be more absurdly false. Labor is not merely a means of supporting human life—it is human life. Imagine a race of beings living without labor! They must be the rudest savages.
Human work consists in specialized industry and the exchange of its products; and without it is no civilization. As industry develops, civilization develops; peace expands; wealth increases; science and art help on the splendid total. Productive industry, and its concomitant of distributive industry cover the major field of human life.
If our industry was normal, what should we see?
A world full of healthy, happy people; each busily engaged in what he or she most enjoys doing. Normal Specialization, like all our voluntary processes, is accompanied by keen pleasure; and any check or interruption to it gives pain and injury. Whosoever works at what he loves is well and happy. Whoso works at what he does not love is ill and miserable. It is very bad economics to force unwilling industry. That is the weakness of slave labor; and of wage labor also where there is not full industrial education and freedom of choice.