Distinguishing Labor from Work

Some time ago, I was in a conversation about whether, if we could do it through technology or other means, we ought to abolish work. I wasn't the only one in the conversation, and you had a spread of opinions, in rather sharp opposition to each other.

The "Yes, we ought to" version is that work might be necessary now, from a productivity standpoint (we need to produce stuff to live, and we need others producing, too), but technology reduces the need for it by making us produce more with less time spent, and eventually we might get to needing zero. Roughly. This is the dream of the AI boosters: Eventually the computer will be able to do everything, and so we can sit back and have fun while enjoying the fruit of the computer doing everything.

The "No, we better not" version is that work is necessary for our souls. We need to feel productive, and if we're not productive, then we'll feel unproductive, and feeling unproductive is bad for us in all sorts of ways. And in the aggregate, if enough of us feel unproductive, it's bad for society. This version shows up in a lot of discourse about the problems with young men. Out of work men get up to no good, and feel terrible while doing it. Go out and get a job instead of spending your days playing video games. Etc.

But what I remember thinking, after that conversation, was that "work" was getting used in at least two ways, two distinct ways, and decoupling them could point us to what I think is the right answer to the question. Namely, if we can do it, we shouldn't get rid of work, but we should get rid of labor.

Here's how to distinguish them:

Labor is undesired activity, and done for some other purpose, primarily, than us desiring to do it. Put another way, if we didn’t have to do it to gain that other purpose, we wouldn’t, and we wouldn’t feel like we’d lost anything.

Work is chosen effort and (largely, but not necessarily entirely) an end-in-itself.

The job you do 9-to-5, or part time, or however often, to earn a living is (typically) labor. If you were independently wealthy, you (likely) wouldn't keep doing it. You'd still be active, or like to be, but that activity would be directed elsewhere.

Our hobbies, on the other hand, are work. We work at them, often quite hard, often to a degree that we come away exhausted or beat. We might even work so hard at them that sometimes we feel like doing something else. But we're doing them because we value doing them. The hobby itself is the reward.

Thus, by these definitions, you labor at the factory, but you work in your garden. We might colloquially say "I work at the factory," of course, even if I think it's better to call it labor. But it would be weird to respond to "What did you do this weekend?" with "I labored in my garden" instead of "I worked in it." And if you say, "I worked in my garden," people would know you don't mean you labored.

So the answer to the opening question, and the debate about ending work, becomes more straightforward. In an age of perfect abundance, or total automation, we could get rid of labor, and that would be a personal and social good. But we wouldn’t want to get rid of work, because the absence of work would, as we'd sit around not trying hard things that are meaningful, be both personally and socially destructive.