“Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.”
Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness”
*
This spring, my wife and I went on a week-long vacation to Seattle, something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. We went to museums, visited bookstores, visited the pier, and ate all kinds of great food. When we were planning this trip, we realized that this was the first real vacation we had ever taken in our nearly 20 years as a couple. Sure, we’d done a few trips here and there with family and friends, but we’d never gone on a trip just the two of us for longer than a weekend. There were many reasons for this: we both went to college (and I to grad school), we had a lack of disposable income, and up until a few years ago, we didn’t have paid vacation time. Once we did have the money and time, a once-in-a-century pandemic hit the world and we were stuck at home. Now that the pandemic has largely subsided, we were finally able to take the trip we’d always wanted to do. We were very lucky.
But many Amercians today are not as lucky as my wife and I. According to an analysis from the Washington Post, “Americans are about half as likely to be on vacation now as they were in the 1980s.” As Business Insider elaborated, “In early 1980, an average of about 3.2% of the American labor force was on vacation at any given time, according to the Post. In December 2022, that rate fell to just 1.7%.” Why is this the case? For one, many American workers don’t have any form of paid time off at all, such as part-time or gig economy workers. Full-time workers, such as myself, often have their vacation, sick, and personal days all in one pot, leaving us to perform the balancing act of when to take each type of day. Finally, many workers feel that if they take a step back from work, they may get left behind and could miss promotions, pay increases, or even lose their employment altogether. The “rise and grind” mentality among the modern workplace is stifling workers’ ability to relax and enjoy their lives outside of work.
So, if we’re working so hard and not taking vacation days, we’re at least being paid better, right? The answer to this is a resounding “no.” As the Economic Policy Institute noted, “From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).” With wages not keeping up with productivity, workers either have to work more hours just to make the same or more than they did a generation ago, or they go without some things— and that means fewer vacations, fewer hobbies, and in general, less leisure for everyone. Some may blame this on globalization; in order for western workers to keep up with the rising economies of the east, we have to work far more than in the past. However, I think the real reason for this is less from outside forces and more from forces from within. These changes, according to the Economic Policy Institute, have far more to do with specific policy choices, such as the decline in unions, deregulation of businesses, and a tax system far more beneficial to a staggeringly small number of those at the top of the economic ladder.
What we need is a vision for our society; one that prizes leisure as well as labor; idleness as well as productivity, for the moments where we recharge and enjoy life spur creativity, innovation, and a more robust economy overall. How do we get there? I think some of the answers come from a British philosopher who advocated such leisure-centric ideas nearly a century ago.
Bertrand Russell, arguably the most important British philosopher of the twentieth century, grew up in a life of privilege. His grandfather, Lord John Russell, had served as Prime Minister during the days of Queen Victoria. A mathematical prodigy, he would go on to revolutionize mathematics and logic with a ground-breaking philosophical treatise he co-authored with Alfred North Whitehead called the Principia Mathematica. Russell served as one of the key figures of the analytical movement in philosophy, which emphasized the centrality of reason, logical argument, and the complexities of language. With that kind of background, you would think that Russell was a stuffy, professorial type, but he wasn’t like that at all. In fact, he was also a profound social critic, challenging the conventions of his day on subjects as varied as sex, marriage, capitalism, and education. He was also stridently anti-war, living long enough to criticize both World War I in his 40s and the Vietnam War in his 80s and 90s. He was a humanist in the broadest sense of the term: a thinker deeply committed to considering how humanity can improve itself and provide the foundation for the flourishing of all people.
In 1935, he published In Praise of Idleness, one of the most insightful and enduring works of his long career as a philosopher and social critic. In this collection of essays, Russell opined on topics as wide-ranging as education, public housing, the roots of Fascism, and the origin of the human soul. We’ll be focusing on his views about work and leisure from this book and how they can provide us with guideposts to build a better future for us all.
His central idea is that people work far too much, something that has kept pace since the 1930s. As he writes in the title essay, “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.” He wants people to challenge the idea that work is virtuous in and of itself; work is only virtuous in relation to what it provides to us. Conversely, work can be seriously damaging, both to yourself and others. To illustrate this, Russell sets up a thought experiment about a man who invests all his time and money in a business which eventually goes belly up. To Russell, the conclusion is pretty clear. “The man who invests his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt,“ he writes, “is therefore injuring others as well as himself.” Sometimes, in Russell’s estimation, it’s better for us to spend our money now on delights which bring us pleasure than to save it towards a company that will likely fail.
Now, Russell’s not advocating people be lazy and not work at all; he’s arguing that with advances in technology and industrial production, we should devote our time to better pursuits, which to him are leisure and education. These things actually move our society towards being more humane, equitable, and just. “Leisure is essential to civilization,” Russell declares, “and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.” The emphasis on education, mixed with more leisure time, would produce a society that celebrates art, literature, and sport— in essence, all the things that make life worth living. “It is an essential part of any such social system,” writes Russell, “that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently.”
Russell’s specific policy solution to get us towards the leisure-oriented society he envisions is a radical one, one that’s still radical today: the four hour workday! In the future Russell envisions, technology and modern management methods would require the majority of workers to labor only a few hours every day. This would also solve the problem of unemployment, since the work would be more evenly distributed among society. As he writes, “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.” Russell is aware of how revolutionary his proposals are, noting, “this idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure.” Russell thinks this is pure nonsense; as we improve our organization of the economy and investments in public education, most people, regardless of class, will fulfill their talents and passions in the leisure-oriented society.
He expounds on this in more detail:
In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.
This will all lead to a society with a focus on “happiness and joy of life, rather than of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia.” It will also be a society predicated more on freedom, since humanity’s leisure time will embolden us to move forward and improve our lot. “Without the leisure class,” Russell concludes, “mankind would never have emerged from barbarism.”
Now, his ideas are great in theory; who wouldn’t want to work but four hours a day and have the rest of their time devoted to improving themselves, their families, and their communities? But this is pie-in-the-sky thinking. How would we actually achieve the leisure-oriented society that Russell advocates for? His vision for the future is actually a lot closer than you might think.
While the four hour workday is not catching on just yet, the four day workweek is. As the Washington Post reported earlier this year, “Dozens of companies [in the United Kingdom] took part in the world’s largest trial of the four-day workweek — and a majority of supervisors and employees liked it so much they’ve decided to keep the arrangement. In fact, 15 percent of the employees who participated said ‘no amount of money’ would convince them to go back to working five days a week.” The trial’s rules stipulated that the companies who participated couldn’t decrease the annual pay of its workers as it lowered their weekly work time, leaving people’s economic levels the same but providing more leisure. It was not only massively successful, with “employees report[ing] a variety of benefits related to their sleep, stress levels, personal lives and mental health,” it proved to be good business sense as well. The companies who participated either saw no loss of revenue or their revenues rose 35% during the six-month trial and afterward. One excellent benefit of this arrangement was parents spending more time with their children. As one employee said about the study, “It makes a huge amount of difference to parents. . . . I could pick him [her nine-year-old son] up from school, [and] we could spend more time together.” This study was so successful that over 90% of the companies that participated “reported they would continue with the four-day workweek, with 30 percent saying it’s a permanent change.”
Lowering the amount of time people work works, and it should be implemented more and more across our economy. But this won’t come about merely from the goodwill of a few companies who were involved in a study. The fight for more leisure will come from a variety of approaches, from growing and expanding unionization, changing workplace laws in states and localities, spearheading programs for a universal basic income, and from social movements that demand better pay and working conditions for workers. For example, the Fight for 15 movement, dedicated to expanding the minimum wage to $15/hour or more, has found successes in cities like Seattle, Washington and states like Delaware, Rhode Island, and even Florida! Getting better wages for workers is essential, as inflation and other cost of living changes make it harder for working people to make ends meet. But we shouldn’t stop there. Not only should we fight for 15; we should also start a fight for four— first for the four day work week and then for the four hour workday. The future should be one where we’re working less and enjoying life more with the ones we love.
In all, we need a vision for the praising of idleness for the 21st century— embracing Bertrand Russell’s dedication to less work and more play for all while adapting it to the unique challenges we face today. We must go against the grain of the mindset of overwork and develop a healthy balance between labor and leisure, one that places work in the proper perspective: as a means for us to achieve all the things we want to do and not as the end that we constantly judge ourselves by. One of the only silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it gave us more time to be home with our loved ones, to finally read that book we’ve been wanting to read for forever, or to bake the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. It was a moment for us to radically reevaluate the basic conditions of our overworked, underpaid, and wildly burnt out society. People realized, many for the first time, that there was a world beyond work.
As such, they started to reconsider the basic work arrangements in this country, which have not changed in a major way in nearly 100 years. It is high time we reevaluate this setup and move towards a leisure-oriented society; it will not just help those like me who work in an office, but it will help gig workers and part-time folks to improve their wages and benefits. A better balance between work and leisure won’t only make for better employees, but it will make for better citizens. With workers having more free time and less economic precarity, they will be able to fully participate in our representative democracy. They can devote energies towards improving our societies— from education and healthcare to election workers and candidate canvassers. They can build the social movements and political programs necessary to improve our world. The fight for less work is not merely a slight change in our daily arrangements; it's a revolution that will radically alter our lives and our country for the better.
*
“Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”
Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness”
*