This is Charles Fourier's thoughts on the arrangement of labour I really like the lists that he writes like this one and very much this one. I also hope that I would be able to prove my "integrity and ability" but worry I might not.....
IN THE CIVILIZED MECHANISM we find everywhere composite unhappiness instead
of composite charm. Let us judge of it by the case of labour. It is, says the Scripture
very justly, a punishment of man: Adam and his issue are condemned to earn their
bread by the sweat of their brow. That, already, is an affliction; but this labour, this
ungrateful labour upon which depends the earning of our miserable bread, we cannot
even get it! A labourer lacks the labour upon which his maintenance depends-
he asks in vain for a tribulation! He suffers a second, that of obtaining work
at times whose fruit is his master's and not his, or of being employed in duties to
which he is entirely unaccustomed . . . I
The civilized labourer suffers a third affliction through the maladies with which
he Is generally stricken by the excess oflabour demanded by his master . . . He suffers a
fifth affliction, that of being despised and treated as a beggar because he lacks those
necessaries which he consents to purchase by the anguish of repugnant labour. He
suffers, finally, a sixth affliction, in that he will obtain neither advancement nor sufficient
wages, and that to the vexation of present suffering is added the perspective of
future suffering, and of being sent to the gallows should he demand that labour
which he may lack tomorrow . . .
labour, nevertheless, forms the delight of various creatures, such as beavers,
bees, wasps, ants, which are entirely at liberty to prefer inertia: but God has provided
them with a social mechanism which attracts to industry, and causes happiness to be
found in industry. Why should he not have accorded us the same favour as these animals?
What a difference between their industrial condition and ours! A Russian, an
Algerian, work from fear of the lash or the bastinado; an Englishman, a Frenchman,
from fear of the famine which stalks close to his poor household; the Greeks and the
Romans, whose freedom has been vaunted to us, worked as slaves, and from fear of
punishment, like the negroes in the colonies today.
Associative labour, in order to exert a strong attraction upon people, will have
to differ in every particular from the repulsive conditions which render it so odious in
the existing state of things.
It is necessary, in order that it become attractive, that associative labour fulfil
the following seven conditions:
- That every labourer be a partner, remunerated by dividends and not by wages
- That every one, man, woman, or child, be remunerated in proportion to the three faculties, capital, labour, and talent.
- That the industrial sessions be varied about eight times a day, it being impossible to sustain enthusiasm longer than an hour and a half or two hours in the exercise of agricultural or manufacturing labour.
- That they be carried on by bands of friends, united spontaneously, interested and stimulated by very active rivalries.
- That the workshops and husbandry offer the labourer the allurements of elegance and cleanliness.
- That the division of labour be carried to the last degree, so that each sex and age may devote itself to duties that are suited to it.
- That in this distribution, each one, man, woman, or child, be In full enjoyment of the right to labour or the right to engage in such branch of labour as they may please to select, provided they give proof of integrity and ability.
- Finally, that, in this new order, people possess a guarantee of well-being, of a minimum sufficient for the present and the future, and that this guarantee free them from all uneasiness concerning themselves and their families . . .
I n order to attain happiness, it is necessary to introduce it into the labours which engage
the greater part of our lives. Life is a long torment to one who pursues occupations
without attraction. -
