اندیشهفلسفهخردگفتگوحکمتمعناپرسشفرهنگ
Sociology
The Impact of Work on Social Life
Defining work in political economy as the pursuit of self-interest has weakened social solidarity and diminished collective values. The individualism bred by modern work has turned people inward, reducing the spirit of collectivism to a minimum.
فَكَذَّبَ وَ عَصى ، ثُمَّ أَدْبَرَ يَسْعى
پس تکذیب کرد و عصیان کرد
سپس پشت کرد و به سعی و کوشش برخاست
(قرآن ،79: 22-21)
چکیده:
طرح مسئله: انسانِ امروز بیش از پیش در پی کسبِ منافعشخصی خویش است، به گونهای که همبستگی در حیاتِ جمعی، با تهدید مواجه شده است. شخصیتر شدن زندگی، نمیتواند خود به خود و بدون علت به وجود آمده باشد. زیرا میدانیم انسان طبعا موجودی اجتماعی است و زندگیهای اولیه به صورت جمعی و قبیلهای بوده است. یکی از علتهای آن میتواند مورد توجه قرارگرفتن مفاهیمی چون فردیت و حقوق فردی در عصر مدرن باشد. اما به نظر نمیرسد تنها عاملِ فلسفیِ به وجود آوردندهی فردیت بتواند به بازتولید فکرِ فردیت منجر شود. آنچیزی که هر روز در دل خود فردیت را بازتولید میکند تجسم فردیت در مفهوم کار کردن است. امروزه اکثر انسانها به کار کردن مشغولاند ، فعالیتی که برای ادامهی حیات نوع انسان ضروری است. کار کردن از این جهت که بخش بزرگی از زمان و توان ما را در زندگی معطوف به خود میکند، میتواند بخشی از ذهنیت ما را در مواجه با معنایِ زندگی شکل دهد. حال اگر کار کردن در اقتصادسیاسی کلاسیک در تجسم بخشیدن به فردیت، پیگیری نفعشخصی تعریف شود، بعد از حدود دو قرن از این تعریف مسلط از کار، پیامدهای اجتماعی آن باید بررسی شود.
از پیامدهای آن این است که بشرِ عصرِ مدرن چنان غرق در روزمرگی خویش است که گویی هر کنشی را تنها هنگامی انجام میدهد که برای شخص او یا حداکثر برای خانوادهی او سود داشته باشد. رساندنِ هر سود و خیری به غیر از خود و خانوادهی خود در یک واحد بزرگتری به نام جامعه، در اولویتهای بعدی قرار گرفته است. به گونهای که خصوصا با آمدن تکنولوژیهای پیشرفته انسان بیش از پیش در دنیای واقعی تنهاتر شده است و معنای همبستگی اجتماعی کمرنگتر شده است.
ضرورت: با رنگ و بوی فردی و شخصی گرفتن تمام مناسبات حیات اجتماعی، همبستگی اجتماعی و روح جمعی در حال ضعیفتر شدن است. مفاهیمی چون همشهری، هموطن، همولایتی امروزه کمتر دارای بار ارزشیِ جمعی است. بنابراین از این جهت که در حال خالی شدن از معنا هستند کمتر به کار میروند. ارزش-های مشترک که تقویت کنندهی یک زندگی اجتماعی مناسب با طبع انسان است در حال زوال است. ضرورت این بحث از این جهت است که انسان در حیات اجتماعی معنا پیدا میکند اما حیات اجتماعی توسط انسان در حال فروریخته شدن است. بنابراین هرآنچه که حیات اجتماعی را با تهدید مواجه میکند بهتر است مورد بازبینی مجدد قرار بگیرد.
پرسشها: آیا انسان در پی کسب و کار و پیگیری منافع خویش محدودیتهایی هم دارد؟ کار کردن چه تاثیری روی افزایش سطح پیگیری نفعشخصی دارد؟ پیگیری روز افزون منافع شخصی در عصر مدرن چه تاثیری روی حیات اجتماعی گذاشته است؟ چه تاثیری روی اخلاق به عنوان یکی از عواملِ مهمِ وحدت بخش در جامعه گذاشته است؟ افراط در فردیت چگونه انسانهای تنهایی در جامعه خلق کرده است؟
فرضیه: امروزه شاهد این هستیم که انسانها چنان در خود فرورفتهاند که از گرسنگی فرزندان همسایهی خود بیاطلاعاند. یعنی همبستگی اجتماعی به قدری ضعیف شده است که توجه انسانها به یکدیگر حتی تحمل چند متر فاصلهی فیزیکی را ندارد. گویی برای هر انسانی، تنها انسانهای محدود به چهار دیواریِ خودش وجود دارند. عدمِ توجه به حیاتِ دیگر انسانها به این دلیل توجیه شد که هر کس زندگی «شخصیِ» خودش را دارد زیرا روزگارِ مدرن عصرِ به رسمیت یافتنِ فردیت است.
پیگیری منافعشخصی به یکی از اهداف اصلی زندگی انسان مدرن تبدیل شده است. پیگیری منافعشخصی مفروض اصلی انگیزهی کار کردن در اقتصادسیاسی جدید است. اما توجه بیش از اندازه به فردیت آسیبهایی به همراه آورده است، به گونهای که همبستگی و ارزشهای مشترک جمعی از حیات اجتماعی کمکم در حال خالی شدن است. به جای رابطهای ارگانیک و یک پارچه در ادغام افراد برای تشکیل یک کلی متفاوت از اجزاء به نام جامعه، امروزه گویا جامعه چیزی جز جمع جبری فردها نیست. فردهایی که در کنار هم فقط خود را تکرار میکنند و در بازتولیدِ کلی جدایِ ماهیت فردهای خود ناتواناند، یا حداقل با مشکل رو به رو هستند.
Valuing individual rights and individualism in the modern age was embodied in the meaning of work, because work was defined as the pursuit of self-interest. Since man is compelled to work for his survival, he became engaged in work in a manner suited to the new mode of production. Thus, it seems that the assumption of self-interest as the motivation for work can be one of the causes giving rise to this situation, not only in its emergence but also in the reproduction of the existing state of affairs. In the pre-modern world, great emphasis was placed on the concept of the “other” under the rubric of ethics, an emphasis that led everyone not only to think of saving themselves from drowning but also to think of taking the hand of another drowning person, so that, hand in hand, they might form a cohesive society with shared values.
Introduction:
Human growth is not dependent on the self alone. It is in society and alongside one’s fellow human beings that one can flourish one’s talents. Today, the focus on individuality has caused man to forget what duties he has towards his society. The relationship between the individual and society is a two-way, not a one-way, relationship; the individual must benefit from society, and society must benefit from the individual. Aristotle called man a political animal and believed that a solitary being is either a god or a beast, yet today people want nothing from society except their own comfort and ease. Therefore, they work and strive hard to keep themselves and their families safe, oblivious to the fact that happiness is only possible in public life.
In modern philosophy, individuality has been greatly valued. But what is essential is a balance between individualism and collectivism. Today, individuality is reproduced in the concept of working and has minimized the spirit of collectivism. Even the collectivism of modern man is most visible in the domain that can satisfy his individualism, namely, the economy.
Modern man is more likely to participate in any activity in which there is profit. But social life is not merely economic relations, and the motivation for every action is not necessarily material interests. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on the assumptions that have brought us this result and to re-evaluate them.
The concept of work in political economy is one of these assumptions. Adam Smith assumed that the pursuit of self-interest in an activity called working brings about the public good. But it seems the gift of this assumption is something else.
Of course, since it is not only working that gives meaning to life (although it is one of the most principal ones), fortunately this selfishness is not yet unbridled, and culture and religion can still place restraints upon it. But we must see which side weighs heavier on the scale in giving meaning to life today? In the pre-modern era, social life was shaped more on the basis of culture and ethics, and in the modern era, on the basis of individuality. What played a significant role in collectivism in the pre-modern era was the concept of ethics.
Main hypothesis: In truth, without referring to the views of any philosopher, through direct observation and from our own lived experience, we can more or less arrive at the fact that today, most human activities are in the economic sphere. Work, purchase, and consumption constitute a cycle that is repeated almost every day. Working eight hours a day, and that during the best hours we have at our disposal each day, is enough to prove to some extent that even if we do not look at work from an instrumental perspective—that is, even if we do not consider it merely a means of earning a livelihood—work, in whatever sense, still occupies a significant part of our lives.
Given the definition of work in classical political economy, which considers the pursuit of self-interest as the primary motivation for work, one can propose the hypothesis that self-interest has left the economic sphere and entered social life as a goal. Attention to personal life has reduced attention to the lives of others, and this has caused social solidarity to diminish and, in a way, has led to a de-socialization of social life in favor of personal life.
There is no doubt that in the process of socialization, family, school, and peer groups each play a major role in shaping an individual's personality. However, it is important to pay attention to two points in the socialization process. First, socialization through these three components is itself influenced by the perceptions that the agents involved have of the dominant concept of work in their era; this is because, by nature and necessity, humans are compelled to take action to earn a living, and there is no period in history in which humans have been free from this necessity. The second point is that the lifespan of these three components is usually no more than a few years, yet, again due to the aforementioned necessity, humans are always forced to work, even though one might, for example, be free from this necessity in the last few years of life thanks to savings from youth. But there is no doubt about the core issue: humans spend the best years of their productive lives engaged in an issue called working. It is therefore not at all unlikely that this component of the socialization phenomenon has the greatest impact on individuals' personalities.
Main question: In the pre-modern era, emphasis was placed on social life and collective solidarity. The individual, in a sense, did not have complete independence in the face of social life. In criticism of the excess of societal integration, which involved a kind of dissolution of human subjectivity, attention turned to individualism in the modern age so that human subjectivity could be reborn. The individual gained the authority and rights to pursue their own interests as much as possible. The pursuit of interests was first liberated in the economy, and it seems that today the individual has been released and freed from any responsibility in the social sphere. It appears that in the pursuit of modern-era individualism, there has been a falling short in reaction to the pre-modern society's excess of collectivism.
Method: Human actions in constructing and giving meaning to their world are of fundamental importance. We seek to examine the meaning and impact of economic action in the modern world. Therefore, our strategy in this article is interpretive-inquisitive, because "the inquisitive research strategy considers social reality as constructed by social actors" (Nazari, 96: 18). In this research, by gathering information through library methods, we attempt, by referring to the concept of work as one of the most principal actions of contemporary humans and comparing it with the concept of ethics, to understand the excessive attention to self-interest in the modern era and the diminishing importance of solidarity in social life.
Dimensions of the discussion: The subject of discussion will be examined in three domains: economic, individual, and social. In the economic domain, the main assumption of classical political economy will be analyzed and examined; at the individual level, it will be compared with the concept of ethics in past cultures; and finally, we will examine the impact of these two on social life.
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Statement of the Research Problem:
The everyday relationships between people in contemporary societies have taken a form where it seems some individuals, in a solitary manner and detached from others, think only of their own comfort and peace of mind and pay no attention to the consequences their behavior has on the lives of others. Attention to one's own interests over the other is observable both in the individual and personal dimension and in the dimension of social position (the major responsibility an individual might hold in the country's management), or even at the level of relations between countries.
For example, an event that often occurs when we deal with government offices is that, despite the long queue of clients, no work gets done in the offices because some employees are busy with personal phone calls, drinking tea, or chatting with each other, and they care little that "others" are waiting for them to return to their work and fulfill their duties, even when faced with the protests of the people waiting in line. Or, for a simple administrative task, we have to go back and forth to the office several times because the employee did not do their job correctly, and they are completely oblivious to how much of "the other's" time they have taken for repeated visits to the office due to their carelessness in a task that is not necessarily difficult. Because it seems their own comfort is their fundamental priority, even under conditions where the employee is paid to do the client's work and has a duty, during office hours, to be precisely responsive to those who refer to them.
In the city, we witness someone, after consuming their food, leaving the leftovers or waste in the alley or street. This common act becomes a collective one, especially on the days of Tasua and Ashura. Why should someone leave their personal trash in the street and not in a bin, while certainly knowing that an "other" person must come and collect the remnants of their food—in which they had no share in consuming—and finish a task that was the person's own duty? On the flip side of littering in the environment, such as the sea and forest, is that some of us, out of selfishness, do not realize at all that we are trustees of the environment for the "other" generations who will be born in the future, and they need clean land, air, and water.
In driving, we are hasty and impatient, and as soon as the slightest stop caused by another driver occurs for some of us, we lay on the horn continuously, without considering that this horn sound may be harmful to the health of "others." Another example is that recently, signs have appeared in some shops in Tehran reading, "Please do not ask for directions; this is not an information desk." It is explicitly clear that the shop owner expects no "other" person except someone entering the shop with the intention to buy, and is unwilling to offer the slightest help to a fellow citizen without gaining a profit.
In the realm of major responsibilities, there is no longer a need for much explanation. It is enough to glance at the number and massive historical figures of embezzlement and widespread financial and administrative corruption in the last ten years. These corruptions clearly show how some officials view the interests of "others." In the hands of some officials, people's money is so easily spent on personal uses (plundered) as if they forget that every hungry and poor person in this country has a share of that money and, of course, needs it more than they do. The official who should be the trustee of the people and the guardian of the interests of their country's people cares most about their own interests. National interests and national progress are less important to them than personal interests. Why do some of our officials ignore national interests? Why is the focus often on the personal consumption of national resources rather than their fair distribution? Has humanity, throughout its history, pursued its own interests to this extent and at the cost of harming others? How did this change in human behavior come about?
It seems that altruism has a faint presence in social life, and the attention of society's individuals is mostly focused on solving their own problems, as if there are no others in society with whom they share common interests. The sense of sacrifice, help, and humanitarianism is less often aroused in ordinary social life. If someone asks for help, fewer people are willing to offer help because they think helping brings them no benefit. The measure of our actions has become the benefits and profits we gain. The measure of actions, which before the modern era was the responsibility of ethics, has now fallen into the hands of economic relations. When and from where did self-interest enter human life as a criterion for measuring our actions? How did it take the place of ethics? And what impact does it have on social life?
Of course, it cannot be denied that in times of crisis, these boundaries fade, like what happened in the Kermanshah earthquake. We all united to help our compatriots, but what is important about human behavior and can serve as a criterion is the mode of action in conditions of stability and ordinary, daily life, rather than during the occurrence of a crisis. Because a crisis is accompanied by temporary excitement. A crisis affects our behavior for a while, but as the excitement caused by it subsides, we resume our previous behaviors. (Behaviors we think are rational.)
This view of self and other is not peculiar to certain individuals or certain officials in our country; rather, the same pattern prevails at the level of relations between countries. For example, Paul Baran shows how in the eighteenth century “India was one of the most developed countries in the world” (Sāʿi, 95: 37), but with the entry of Britain into that country and Britain’s “deindustrialization” policies, India became a country that supplied the raw materials needed for British textile factories, and as a result “India regressed from a relatively advanced industrial country to a backward agricultural country.” (Sāʿi, 95: 38) The continuation of this process meant that “England’s exports to India, which at the beginning of the eighteenth century were less than one hundred thousand pounds a year, reached tens of millions of pounds at the beginning of the twentieth century.” (Sāʿi, 93: 73) The dimensions of the exploitative relationship between capitalist countries and Third World countries are not confined to India and England alone; on the whole, at present, “capital annually extracts around two trillion dollars from developing countries.” (Snow, 95: 100) This is money that has been generated from the very soil of developing countries and ought to be spent on the development of those same countries, but it is channeled toward capitalist countries so that the economies of those countries profit from the resources of developing countries.
Today, in connection with the way we work, one of the clearest instances of the pursuit of self-interest can be observed in the marketplace. Something that all of us deal with almost every day as long as we are alive: the endless cycle of buying and selling. When we consider a product for purchase, thousands of questions occupy our minds, solely because we do not trust the seller. And the reason is that in the past we trusted a seller and bought a product, and later realized we had made a mistake, because the seller was willing to lie for their own self-interest. Now, whenever we encounter a product to buy in the marketplace, regardless of the seller’s explanations about the product, we ask ourselves: has the product been put up for sale at a fair price, or is it more expensive than in other shops? Is the country of manufacture the same country whose name is written on it, or has another country fraudulently inscribed another country’s name on its product? It is as if self-interest justifies lying, and lying has tarnished mutual trust in social life.
But the main issue concerning work and self-interest lies not in the endless, everyday cycle of buying and selling, but in the very act of working itself. In a general classification, we can divide people, through the lens of the form of working, into two groups: the employer and the worker or employee (one who sells their labor power). What matters to the employer? Profit and more money. For the accumulation of wealth has been regarded as an intrinsically valuable goal since the dawn of the capitalist era. For the employer, the human beings who work for him are merely labor power. That is to say, right from the outset the employer disregards Kant’s moral principle that a human being should be regarded as an end in itself, not as a means.
This inversion has brought about a fundamental change in the natural mode of human life. Naturally, it is the human being that matters, and wealth is considered only for earning a livelihood and sustaining the physical life of the human being. But for the employer, the matter is reversed: the accumulation of wealth is regarded as the primary goal, and the human being, not as a human being but merely as labor power, is solely a means for obtaining wealth. Thus, for the employer, the “other” is merely a means for advancing self-interest.
Now let us look at the issue from the perspective of someone who sells their labor power. When a person sells their labor power to an employer out of the necessity to survive, they can no longer focus on their personal interests and work seriously on them, unless they find a job from the outset that aligns with their personal interest—which, it is abundantly clear, is not a possibility for the majority of society. Here, the individual is caught at a crossroads. Either they must accept the values of capitalist society for the accumulation of wealth and drive the thought of flourishing their inner values and abilities out of their head (become socialized), in which case they too become fixated on accumulating wealth and spend their entire life striving to advance from the position of seller of labor power to the position of employer, and thus, in their way of looking at human beings, suffer the same damage we previously mentioned regarding the employer, and perhaps worse.
But what happens to those who were not willing to accept the dominant values of their time? Someone who is relatively insistent and determined to find their inner values. If we set aside those who have the financial backing to pursue their interests—for they are a limited minority—the rest of these individuals are compelled, in order to earn a living and transcend the bonds of necessity, to sell their labor power. The result of selling their labor power to an employer for these individuals is most likely achieved by moving away from what these individuals loved to pursue in their lives. In exchange for paying such a heavy penalty, what has fallen to their lot? Money.
For some of these individuals, money gradually becomes the most valuable outcome of their entire life, because they have paid the highest cost to obtain it: their lifetime and their interests. Given the hardship involved in earning money in today's economy, it is not unlikely that money becomes the first priority in life and places all other virtues in parentheses. Money makes life more personal; we tolerate "others" only insofar as they are profitable for us, and not just economically profitable. In connection with this issue, Weber writes: "Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the 'world images' that have been created by 'ideas' have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest." (Weber, in: Bashiriyeh A, 93: 56)
From another perspective, the entire relationship between the employer and the seller of labor power rests on one foundation: self-interest. The employer seeks to maximize their profit, and the seller of labor power seeks to obtain the highest income from the employer. This relationship exists in almost all private businesses. Therefore, a person's attention during work is often devoted to gaining more benefit, as opposed to their attention being directed toward securing a livelihood or preserving their survival.
Through daily work, a person practically thinks every day of their own benefit from work, because the concept of work is tied not to earning a living but to the concept of benefit, and an increase in one person's benefit is accompanied by a decrease in another's; thus, in the market, we are dealing with a war of interests. It is precisely in this everydayness of working that the thought of benefit and profiting does not leave a person, and the concept of self-interest and individuality is reproduced in the social life of the human being. For, on the one hand, we are engaged all day in thinking about how to increase our own benefit, and on the other hand, because we have achieved this increase through victory in the war against another, it becomes very important and valuable to us, for whatever is hard to gain is also hard to lose. Attending to one's own profit in modern societies has a strong executive guarantee with the power to preserve the survival of life, namely, working.
In this cycle of work, with the reproduction of profit and loss in everyday life, it is no surprise that what dominates in the space outside the market and business is that which reveals its importance every day during eight hours: namely, the struggle to gain profit at the cost of the "other's" loss. The profit and benefit that were the motivation for work in the market have now exited the economic sphere and found an independent life of their own. Individual profit has become not the motivation for work, but the motivation for the whole of life, and since the individual's self becomes important here, the "other" is, a fortiori, of no account. Social life is composed of individuals who each want their share from the "other," define themselves in opposition to the "other," and shape the modern society of the lonely.
Theoretical Framework:
To pursue the concept of work, we are inevitably compelled to enter the discussion from a broader, and perhaps in some respects more important, concept: the economy. Fortunately or unfortunately, in today's societies, we no longer need to delve deeply into philosophy or seek assistance from great thinkers to prove that, more than anything else, it is the economy that has become the principal action in human life; or, to put it better, it is this economic formation that has imposed its existential being upon all aspects of human life. The excess of market relations in the entire sphere of life has driven work to a point where some experts speak of the fact that
Socrates arrived at this conclusion because he did not forget a fundamental point, a point that Smith overlooked. Smith’s error was that he set no limits whatsoever on human self-interest and selfishness. Smith believes that “everyone seeks his own superiority, and all wish to attain, as far as possible, what their soul desires… no one has any inclination to improve the public interest, nor does anyone know how these interests are increased… rather, each person seeks only his own private gain” (quoted in Mankiw, 13:95). But in Socrates’ view, man is bound by the condition of doing no evil; thus, being just prevents the insane gratification of the soul “as far as possible.” Socrates says, “Doing evil, whether to a friend or to others, is not the act of a just person but the act of an unjust one.” (Plato, 47:92)
Xenophon, who was a contemporary of Socrates, emphasizes that trade and public revenue should serve the commonwealth, but makes this conditional on it not being harmful to individuals. Xenophon writes: “If… work or trade is to the benefit of the commonwealth, and if he who devotes himself to trade with the greatest diligence receives the greatest honour, the number of participants will increase proportionately. And if it is proclaimed to all that whoever discovers a new method for raising public revenue, without it being harmful to individuals, shall receive a good reward, this kind of enterprise will not be so neglected.” (Sedláček, 162:96)
Aristotle distinguished between the art of acquiring wealth and commerce (money-making). In his view, the former is for meeting the essential needs of man and is therefore limited, but the latter has no motive or end other than more money and is unlimited. Aristotle considered the end of acquiring wealth to be in something other than itself and natural. But he deemed commerce unnatural and worthy of censure. For “it often happens that a man with a great deal of money is at a loss for the simple necessities of life; and surely it is a pointless thing to call that wealth, the abundance of which cannot save its possessor from starving, like Midas in the fable, whose greedy wish was granted and everything set before him turned to gold, and he died of hunger.” (Aristotle, 25:93) Thus, Aristotle also sets a limit on the outcomes derived from work, and if this limit is removed, he condemns it. (See: Aristotle, 21-29:93)
Aristotle, like Socrates, considered the goal of work to be non-personal benefits, unless the work is of the commercial kind, which has no goal other than itself. “The art of soldiering or the art of medicine is not for acquiring wealth, but the latter should make a man healthy and the former should bring victory in war. But those who are the subject of our discussion [traders] use all human abilities for acquiring wealth, under the illusion that wealth is the end of life and everything must be employed in its service.” (Aristotle, 27:93) It was for this reason that Aristotle severely condemned usury, considering it the most unnatural and ugliest of practices. But usury was justified about two centuries later by the theologians of the Reformation.
The ancient Greek view held that every occupation had a public purpose separate from the financial fruit of that work, except for traders. But in the modern view, work in the sense of the art of acquiring wealth in ancient Greece disappeared entirely, and only work in the sense of ancient Greek commerce was praised. When the goal of a worker is not to meet the needs of society but to obtain his own profit, no one holds that occupation in respect anymore. It is not without reason that Marx says: “The bourgeoisie has stripped the halo of respect from every profession that was hitherto honoured and respected, and has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, and the man of science into its paid wage labourers.” (Marx, in: Bashiriyeh A, 250:93)
Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Reformation movement, who by introducing Protestantism gradually paved the way for the justification of usury and the promotion of capitalism, held a view of work and vocation close to that of Socrates. “Worldly vocation as a duty was, in his view, the outward expression of love for one’s neighbor, and was justified in this way, that the division of labor compels each individual to work for others.” (Weber, 91: 81) Luther, too, did not fall into Smith’s error and made material gain conditional. In Luther’s view, “the pursuit of material gain beyond personal need must be regarded as a sign of lacking divine grace. And since it is apparently achieved only by imposing loss on others, it is directly reprehensible.” (Weber, 91: 84) Luther “opened the believers’ view to what is necessary and essential for serving others” (Abermann, 87: 148), not for serving themselves.
Jean Calvin, who was far more “sympathetic” to capitalism than Luther, even if he did not, like Luther, see work as serving humankind, did not see it as serving the person himself either. For Calvin, work had a meaning similar to what Thomas Aquinas had proposed before him, namely, work as submission to “God’s will.” (Svendsen, 93: 44) The concept of God in the definition of work could still restrain the insatiable human ego.
Among all the philosophers before him, Smith found John Locke’s view closest to his own and endorsed it. Locke’s thinking on the primacy of pursuing self-interest is very blunt and explicit. “The main idea of the chapter on property in his book is that greed and avarice are not only not fundamentally bad or foolish, but, if properly directed, are supremely beneficial and rational, far more so than noisy altruistic deeds. In his view, by building civil society on the unseemly but solid foundation of selfishness or certain personal vices, humanity will attain common benefits far greater than the benefits of futile appeals to virtues that, by nature, yield nothing.” (Strauss, 93: 260)
Human beings are necessarily compelled to work, but it must be determined what is more important after securing a livelihood: work as the fulfillment of a social duty or as the pursuit of self-interest. We saw that in the pre-modern world and thought, the primary assumption was that work is performed with motives of social duty, altruism, or divine obligation, not the motive of self-interest. This meant that others and collective life were not forgotten in the intellectual sphere of society. Thus, what was daily evoked for the individual in the process of working was the effort to bring good to society, not to oneself. And in this way, the importance of collective life and social existence was daily recalled to individuals. There is a difference between a society whose individuals work to earn a living and bring good to their fellow human beings, and a society whose individuals work to earn a living and satisfy their own ego. In the former, society possesses solidarity and integration; in the latter, society is nothing but the forced aggregation of a multitude of lonely individuals.
In Hobbes’s state of nature, man was solitary and a wolf to man, but there was no law there; consequently, this state of nature was fragile, and in Hobbes’s terms, by employing the faculty of reason, everyone made a social contract to exit this condition in order to preserve self-preservation. But Hobbes’s error was that he thought the only thing humans must fear is death. And he forgot that, in Dante’s words, “one should only fear those things that have the power to harm another; of other things one should not be afraid, for they are not fearsome” (92: 102). The reason Hobbes overlooked the fear of harming another was that he considered humans inherently selfish and in pursuit of self-preservation, and like Rousseau, he did not realize that besides the instinct of self-preservation, humans are also subject to another instinct. Rousseau believed that “human nature is subject to two principal instincts: one is the instinct of self-preservation and selfishness, and the other is the instinct of altruism” (Bashiriyeh b, 1393: 288).
In the post-contractarian era, humanity fled the state of nature, but with the redefinition of the new human—no longer limited to not harming the other—and the consequences of that definition, a new doubt has arisen: perhaps man has once again become a wolf to man, with the difference that this time the wolf is more dangerous, for it is a wolf that has “seen rain.” A wolf that is not without backing; in the early stages of its formation, its existence was theorized by political economy and modern political philosophy, and after its full maturation today, it has law, wealth, and power as its support.
Thus, the liberalism that, out of fear of loneliness and death, sought refuge in civil society through the social contract has ultimately, in the words of MacIntyre and Walzer, once again led to “the isolation, loneliness, and wretchedness of the individual” (Bashiriyeh B, 93: 421). The signs of this loneliness are more visible today than ever: the collapse of the family institution, voluntary singlehood, cohabitation without commitment. It is as if humanity is fleeing from anything that might diminish its individuality. Chomsky said in an interview: “We live in highly atomized societies. People are very lonely: it’s you and your iPad!” (Chomsky, 96: 218). And this is because “the very technologies that promise connection to others deprive us of the opportunity for authentic connection, or even quarantine us” (Delestrani, 95: 67). One of the reasons for this loneliness, individuation, and withdrawal into the self was the validation of human selfishness and individuality, on the one hand by Machiavelli and Hobbes, and on the other by the English utilitarians. Smith, by introducing this concept into the meaning of work, not only embodied it but also, with shrewdness and acumen, managed to find a strong executive guarantee for its survival in people’s livelihoods. Thus, he linked livelihood with self-interest and named the offspring of this union “work.” But today, more than two centuries after the birth of this offspring, its growth has become so unbridled that it threatens collective life and even the spiritual and psychological life of human beings.
Pre-modern philosophy ultimately understood the individual within the framework of social life or political life. In that philosophy, primacy was given to the community, the polis, or cosmopolitanism. However, from modern political philosophy onward, with Hobbes’s reductionist interpretation of natural law, self-preservation took priority. This interpretation, of course, continued Machiavelli’s counsels, for “Machiavelli holds that civilized man is almost certainly an unscrupulous egoist” (Russell, 88: 391). The result, as Strauss says, is that “once Machiavelli’s premises are accepted, solving the political problem through economic means is the most elegant solution: economism is Machiavellianism come to maturity” (73: 62).
With all our attention turned inward upon ourselves and the effort to satisfy our insatiable ego, the space for social and political action is minimized. This non-intervention in the social and political sphere was criticized by Rousseau. In his view: “[We] have many physicists, geometers, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, and painters among us, but we no longer have citizens; if a few are still to be found, they are scattered in the abandoned countryside to die in indifference and oblivion” (quoted in Alem, 93: 344). Alain de Botton, in the context of late modernity, also points out how, with the expansion of communication technology (which today absorbs the most capital), the socio-economic sphere is depoliticized. First of all, these communication technologies eliminate the need for dictators to censor information, because “by disseminating a flood of unrelated news, their need to destroy the political understanding of citizens is met” (96: 173). “In this way, it is not the prohibition of news but the deluge of it that ensures the status quo will continue forever” (de Botton, 96: 176).
Communication technology, which is an investment paradise, by instantly placing a mass of unimportant information at one's disposal via the mobile phone, not only drowns a person in loneliness and isolation but also, through the confusion caused by the information overload, causes what is fundamentally important and should be addressed to be lost, so that no consensus emerges for overcoming the problems of the day. This investment paradise has brought hell for social and political life. There is the human being, the mobile phone, and a mass of bewildering news that diverts our main focus from what truly is, and distances the person from genuine connection with their fellow human beings in society.
Not only in ancient Greece and Rome but also in Hebrew culture, self-interest and altruism, as two contradictory human instincts, went hand in hand, and contrary to Smith's assumption of the invisible hand of the market—which has proven to be nothing but the hand of self-interest—it was not free from every obligation. In the Old Testament, landowners, in exchange for the right of ownership, also bore a responsibility. It is stated in the Old Testament:
"And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord your God.] And in Deuteronomy it is stated [: When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands" (Old Testament, in: Sedláček, 96: 123)
The result of these thoughts was that "[the Israelites] did not consider whatever they produced exclusively their own property... and every three years [a tenth of the produce] was given to the Levites, the strangers, the fatherless, and the widows" (Sedláček, 96: 123), which indicates that the instinct of altruism in Hebrew culture created limitations for ownership. But our culture today does not set any limitation on private property, because in the world constructed and shaped by the thoughts of Hobbes and especially Locke, property holds a lofty position. Locke was so extreme in his defense of property that he considered the joining of human beings within a body politic to be for the preservation and care of property. But we know that Aristotle called man a political animal by nature, meaning that if a person does not participate in political and social life in society, they lose the essential characteristic of being human. Locke could not understand that participation in social and political life is spontaneous and natural, not a means to another end like property, which is even baser than Hobbes's assumption of self-preservation. For life is granted by God to all human beings at birth, so the right to life is intertwined with the human essence and is born with them, but the right to property, at its highest power, is nothing but the product of artificial human conventions. Every human being who emerges from their mother's womb brings nothing into the world with them except their own pure existence.
This rule that a human being inherently possesses the right to life but does not possess the right to property has, with some tolerance, one exception, and that is the birth of John Locke. Hobbes had said of himself that his twin was born into the world along with him, and that twin was nothing but fear. (cf. Alam, 93: 229) Hence, some scholars have said that the emergence of the idea of order and security in Hobbes's thought arose from his own psyche, with the aim that by establishing security—which he emphasized—Hobbes's congenital problem would be solved. Regarding Locke, it can also be said that if Hobbes was born with fear, Locke was born an owner (an heir); yes, he was the heir to his Puritan father's property. So it is not at all unlikely that Locke's excessive emphasis on property—which, according to Russell, was so exaggerated that Locke's political flaw was the worship of property (88: 487)—originated from protecting Locke's own personal interests. Locke interpreted natural law in favor of the interests of owners and heirs in such a way that he himself admitted it "may seem a strange doctrine" (quoted from: Strauss, 93, 231), and Strauss called it a "meaningful doctrine," and Russell saw it as showing that Locke's "property-worship" led him to "foolish conclusions" (88: 478). That interpretation is that "the conqueror or victor has no right whatsoever to appropriate the property of the vanquished: even in a just war, the victor cannot deprive the children or subsequent generations of the vanquished of their possessions." (quoted from: Strauss, 93, 231)
Accepting the assumption that man seeks his self-interest and that private property knows no bounds, what is sacrificed is political freedom. Freedom within this framework is for the self, not for the “other.” But freedom has no meaning except in the presence of others, others with whom man, by nature, always deals within a larger context called social life. Freedom has always been a matter for the public sphere, not the private one. Yet for Locke, the entire political life has no purpose other than the preservation of private property. If political freedom is set aside from the public sphere in favor of economic relations, only one kind of freedom remains: the freedom to pursue self-interest for the new end of modern life, which is nothing other than property. Giuseppe Mazzini, in the nineteenth century, condemned this conception of freedom and warned:
“Some have reduced freedom to a kind of immoral and narrow selfishness, considering themselves as everything. They have declared that the purpose of all social organizations is the satisfaction of personal desires. Others have stated that all governments and states are necessary evils and that governments have no mission other than preventing individuals from harming one another. My brothers, do not accept this doctrine... If you understand freedom imperfectly based on these doctrines, you will lose your freedom... Your freedom will be sacred only so long as the idea of duties and faith in collective perfectibility stand behind it and guide it.” (Mazzini, in: Moyn, 95: 115)
When, in Mazzini’s words, the “self” is considered everything and is freed from every bond, especially the bond of collective perfectibility, it is no wonder why “the main tendency of [today’s] economy, which claims to originate from Smith’s classical economics, has disregarded ethics.” (Sedláček, 96: 14) Because “all moral theories and thoughts revolve around the common good. Morality begins with cooperation, collaboration, and regulation. Life in society requires that each person sacrifice a part of their personal authority for the order and discipline of the community.” (Durant, 87: 40)
The assumption of man seeking self-interest and ethics:
This fundamental assumption of classical political economy not only heavily influenced the sphere of political life through economics but also dealt a severe blow to moral philosophy. For about two thousand years before Smith, moral philosophy had focused on one thought: the “other.” Smith forgot that man “is a being who has already heard and perceived the command of holiness in the face of the other” (Levinas, in: Olia, 88: 97). In his view, human action directed toward the “other” had no “utility,” whereas all Eastern and Western philosophies before the Renaissance held a view contrary to his.
Ethics in the ancient world was also a social ethics, not merely a personal one. The impact of the emphasis on the other in most pre-modern cultures lay not only in the fact that a person became virtuous merely by pursuing good ethics, but also in the solidarity that emerged in social life. In a civilization where everyone has a duty to care about the lives of others, what is strengthened is the collective spirit and the integrity of society. Where a person does not feel alone even in their solitude and knows that society will support them if necessary, in contrast to modern man, who is alone even in a crowd. Thus, pre-modern man derives security from social life, not from the accumulation of his wealth. Because “the presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves.” (Arendt, 94, 94) Security for the preservation of man must necessarily come from a source higher than man himself; where a person feels they have no refuge, everything that depends on them also loses its validity, no matter how much wealth the individual has amassed, because the individual themselves is called into question here. This feeling of security can be transmitted to man from society as a source higher than man, a society that is in decline in the modern era, where what matters is only the person’s own self. Hence, it is not without reason that Hannah Arendt says: “The modern age, with its growing world-alienation, has led to a situation where man, wherever he goes, encounters only himself.”
The tradition of ethics and attention to the “other” has been recounted so frequently in the philosophies of East and West and in various cultures that, on the one hand, one is tempted to consider this tradition natural and self-evident, and on the other, one is astonished at how classical political-economic assumptions reversed it.
If we cast a glance at ancient China, Confucius not only did not consider self-interest the goal of human beings but, on the contrary, advocated selflessness and losing oneself within oneself. For example, we can consider this anecdote:
“Yen Hui said to Chung-ni (Confucius): I have made progress. Chung-ni asked: How so? He replied: I have freed myself from the bonds of charity and the obligation of duty. Chung-ni said: Very good; but this is not yet perfection. Another day, Yen Hui saw Chung-ni and said: I have reached perfection. Chung-ni said: How so? Yen Hui replied: I can, just as I am sitting, consign my self to oblivion. Chung-ni’s face fell and he asked: What do you mean by this statement? Yen Hui replied: I have released my self from the bonds of the body, renounced my rational faculties, and in this way freed myself from the bonds of body and soul. I have become one with the Infinite. This is what I mean by saying that, just as I am sitting, I can forget my self. Chung-ni said: If this is so, and you have united with the Infinite, then crookedness and confusion can no longer find their way to you. If you have lost your self, no obstacle remains. Perhaps you are, in truth, a wise and enlightened person! In my judgment, you are a wayfarer who is permitted to tread your own path of spiritual journeying.” (Noss, 87: 392)
All of Confucius’s teachings can be summarized in the concept of the “other”: “Tzu-kung asked the Master (Confucius): Is there one word that can illuminate and keep pure one’s entire life, and what is it? The Master said: That word is love for others. Whatever you do not like or find unpleasant for yourself, do not impose it upon others.” (Confucius, 91: 70)
It is well known that Christ (pbuh), in his teachings, preached not attention to one’s own house but attention to the house of one’s “neighbor.” Likewise, Christ (pbuh) says in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” In the view of Jesus Christ, attention to the other is so important that it is considered the essence and summary of the Torah and the books of the Prophets. In Islam, as we know, this matter has been addressed in various contexts, and the hadith of Imam Ali (pbuh) on this subject is also well-known and frequently cited.
If we also glance at the ethical teachings in Persian literary texts, we realize that it is perhaps not without reason that the pinnacle of our mystics’ teachings is love, and they constantly speak of love for the Truth and love for God. For neither of these leaves them any selfhood whose benefit they might pursue. Hallaj so utterly cast his self out of himself that he cried out, “Ana al-Haqq” (I am the Truth). In a poignant anecdote, he considers the highest degree of distance from selfishness to be annihilation in God (fana fi’llah), and the highest degree of selfishness to be becoming Iblis.
“It is related that when they placed him on the gallows, Iblis came and said: One ‘I’ you uttered, and one I. How is it that from yours mercy resulted, and from mine, a curse? Hallaj said: You brought ‘I’ through your own door; I distanced it from myself. Mercy came to me, and not to you, as you saw and heard. So that you may know that asserting ‘I’ is not good, and distancing ‘I’ from oneself is exceedingly good.” (Attar, 83: 622)
The mystics were so immersed in the love of the Truth and selflessness that they turned their backs not only on worldly benefits but also on otherworldly benefits. Mansur al-Hallaj “was asked: What is the path to God like? He said: It is two steps, and you have arrived: take one step away from this world, take one step away from the hereafter. Behold, you have reached the Lord.” (Attar, 83: 614)
But most importantly, the selflessness of the mystics led them to the “perception of the presence of the other.” “It is related that Junayd fasted continuously. When companions would come in, he would break his fast with them, and would say: The virtue of sharing with brothers is no less than the virtue of fasting.” (Attar, 83: 452) And “Husayn (Hallaj) says: The true reliant upon God is one who, if he knew there was someone in the city more deserving of eating than himself, would eat nothing.” (Hallaj, 86: 190)
در عصر مدرن با کنار رفتن اخلاق به عنوان هدف زندگی، انسان باید به صورت سلبی جایگزینی مییافت که درد و رنج انسان را کم کند و آن جایگزین سعی و تلاش و کار و کوشش بود. اشتراوس این نکته را به خوبی توضیح داده است:
«آنچه در واقع بر همه چیز مقدم است نیاز است. و این نیاز، این کمبود از لاک به بعد دیگر به صورت امری که به بینقصی، به کمال و تمامیت، میگراید و جویای کمال است در نظر گرفته نمیشود. ضرورتهای زندگی دیگر در حکم شرایطی نیستند که کورهی آزمون ما برای رسیدن به زندگانی خوب یا کامل باشند، بلکه بیشتر در حکم ناگزیری و ناچاریاند. پس ارضای نیازها دیگر محدود به قوالب یک زندگی نیکو و پسندیده نیست، بلکه چنان است که گویی هدفی برای آن نمیتوان تعیین کرد. طبیعت ایجابی ندارد و هدف امیال ما را به صورت سلبی مشخص میکند: باید از درد و رنج پرهیز کرد. کوششهای بشری برای آن نیست که درک قبلی کم و بیش روشنی از لذات حاصل از آنها داریم:
Individual rights cannot be left to themselves. No right is granted to anyone unless, in return for these rights, a “responsibility” is placed on that individual’s shoulders. Where does the responsibility for human rights lie? A human being has the right to life and freedom in various spheres, yet bears no responsibility or duty in return. However, just as much as a human being has the right to preserve life, they are also a social being. To preserve social life, it is necessary to rethink the granting of rights without responsibility to human beings. Just as these rights have guaranteed the preservation of individuality as a fundamental dimension of the human being, they must also guarantee the other fundamental dimension of human beings. The latter is a more fundamental dimension than the former; if it were otherwise, over the course of 2,500 years of human philosophical and intellectual civilization, the concept of “the other” would not have been so remarkably emphasized, and “individuality” put in its place, in nearly all of humanity’s diverse cultures and religions.
It is better to reconsider the meaning of work. An economic plan can be devised in which a person does not see only their own self-interest in work. Or, instead of most of a person’s useful time being spent on work, working time could be reduced so that an opportunity arises for action in the realm of preserving social life.
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The Impact of Work on Social Life
Author: Majid Kiaei (Political Science Student, University of Tehran)
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