Historical Evolution of Work: From Antiquity to Modernity
Historical Evolution to the Emergence of the Concept of Work
Work, as we know it, is not a natural fact. If the valuation of the natural human being as sociable and the current concept of generalized work activity in sectors did not exist, the meaning of work would consist of a set of beliefs, values, and attitudes toward work. Its contents and its role have no universal meaning. A person excluded from work has a psychological problem of social origin. Labor, which is a social construction, can be modified.
Primitive Societies
Primitive societies did not have work structures because their language had a term that can be identified with the current notion of work. They used different terms to encompass activities that are now within the concept of work. There is no notion of work, as there is no specific term to isolate the private acts of human behavior. At present, what we call private had no social consideration, had no identity or social definition. In the social position, those who were engaged and forced to occupy the lowest rungs held positions. Social healers demonstrated their knowledge.
Historical Evolution
The lack of differentiation does not require structural complexity of social and political aspects. Human groups had resolved their survival without economic rules. They thought wealth is in nature and did not feel the need to accumulate. When a new effort is introduced, the person is released. The pre-industrial worker had no specialization, was the owner of his technique, timing, and pace of work. The idea of working for someone else has been unworthy and disgusting.
The Ideological Revolution of Modernity
Modernity began in Europe in the 16th century because important socio-political transformations occurred. During 300-400 years, various events altered the structure and thought of these societies. A new mindset emerged, forging a new attitude toward the world.
Socio-Political Transformations
- 15th Century Discovery of America: Colonization, slavery.
- The Modern State: Absent for more than 10 centuries, it is not universal, nor has it always existed.
- Ascendant Bourgeoisie: Lenders to cover wars, they reclaim political power and prestige for their activities, previously considered unworthy. This bourgeoisie brings new values and bourgeois morality that drives women to leave the home because they did not want them to work in factories.
- The Protestant Reformation: A new relationship with God.
- The New Science: Claims the truth that is revealed by contrast.
- Cartesian, Rationalist, and Empiricist Thought: These drive the distancing of man from nature and legitimize their own transformation. The estimation permeates work behavior, for the effort that goes into producing wealth and happiness.
Specific Aspects Where the Way We Produce Changed
- Manufacturing in the 16th Century: Changes the concept of what it used to be to work at home as an artisan. Merchants group people in a workshop to standardize production quality. Manufacturing is a precedent for industrialization.
- French Revolution: Liberty, equality, fraternity.
- Industrial Revolution: Adam Smith: Work is the source of value, the father of economic liberalism.
- Division of Labor
- Private Ownership of Means of Production and Product
- The Product and Work as Commodities
- Voluntary Work is Institutionalized: Dependent and paid employment, volunteering at the official level, in practice, was obligatory.
- Employer Works with Fixed Capital Accounts: The figure of the entrepreneur.
Division of Labor
Specialization of tasks: skill, time-saving, automation. It lacks the qualification of the craftsman who knew how to produce the entire product because it operates only on a part of the production process, with no overall vision of the process. It is a consequence of industrialization. In short, it is a process of conversion of:
- Economic customs.
- The organization of work.
- Ways of relating people.
- Figures in the workplace: employers, employees, free farmers.
- Growing tensions between rich and poor.
The Protestant Ethic
Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, suggests the idea that people adopt ideas that connect with their world interests. Calvinist Protestants were very active. He argues that capitalism did not originate Protestantism but that it facilitated the triumph of the new values, which gave strength and legitimacy to the pursuit of the satisfaction of its own interests to emerging social groups. Weber also tested the influence of capitalism on religious ideas. Weber highlights the process of rationalization: the substitution of the criterion of tradition for rationality, using more efficient means to achieve the objective. Contradictions appear, moving means to ends.
The Work Ethic
Customs found no sense to continue working to earn more money when you have other things that were necessary. There were more interesting things or more worth doing that could not be bought. Against these customs, they saw the need to change values: one begins to extol the positive value of work and work well done.
Ideological Revolution of Modernity
Many institutions are removed that support and shelter the individual (asking for bread, go look for work). For example, laws privatize the land. Liberalism seeks private property. Idleness arises and those who do not work are criticized. Only those who could not work could live in those institutions.
The Construction of the Concept of Work
Work emerges as a central category in the 18th century. Labor practice aimed at producing useful objects. In this positive meaning, the idea of making a living through their realization gradually joins. If you want to have enough to live and be happy, do something that is recognized as valuable by others.
The Ideological Revolution: Work Ethic
Work is a noble activity and a value in itself. It is the normal state of humans, their ultimate goal is divine, a higher ethical obligation. Work is not only a way to come to God. The myth of the idea of work: Through work, the work of God is completed, beautifying and perfecting it. It is the best way to find personal perfection, and also promotes progress. Predestination: worldly success is interpreted as a sign of divine favor. Religious virtues are also converted into individualism, frugal life, and the glorification of savings. Work favors the accumulation of wealth. Work took shape as a means of personal fulfillment, through which one can create. It is the means to achieve the welfare and progress of all the community. The conversion of work into an abstract, homogeneous, unified notion hides the difference between satisfactory and arduous work, justifies social inequality as a product of the division of labor, and hides the fact that work discriminates since it assigns different status.
The Ideological Revolution: Industrialization
Throughout the 19th century, there was a shift from a traditional agrarian economy based on the transformation of nature and aimed at satisfying production needs to production in plants: goods for consumption.
Industrialization
From workshops to factories — From manufacturing the entire product to the technical division of tasks — From households to recruitment — From individual serfs to free legal persons (but economically required) — From the toolbox to skilled craft and management — From the machine work done to measure the person, its natural rhythms, and unique, the work is defined and controlled by others — From commitment to the task to its completion without thinking — From pride in work well done to accomplish tasks without obvious sense — From artisan to use “parts” of human beings.
Ideological Revolution: Liberalism (18th-19th Centuries)
Political philosophy associated with the principles of freedom of the individual, civil, constitutional, and economic freedoms, representative government, and parliamentary. It based, throughout the 19th century, modern freedoms and the move towards democracy.