There used to be a spot in Berlin known as Checkpoint Charlie. It was a crossing point between West and East Berlin, a portal through the Iron Curtain. I like to think of it as a time machine. There you could go from the seventeenth/eighteenth century to the nineteenth century. Our side was the former; the Soviet side was the latter. I say this because the United States, which controlled the Western side of Checkpoint Charlie, was and remains an eighteenth century adaptation of the work of a seventeenth century philosopher, John Locke. Soviet East Germany was based on the work of a nineteenth century Hegelian hack, Karl Marx. Well, that division series is well over, and we know how it came out.
It is interesting on Labor Day to reflect on the theories of labor that were held by Marx and Locke, respectively. Both thinkers began from the simple observation that some things are worth more than others. A field of wheat is worth more than a barren field; a loaf of bread is worth more than a bag of grain. But where does the increased value come from? Where do we find the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Marx thought it came from the elbow grease of the workers. Upper body strength and thigh muscles were the source of all true value. He was a materialist, and they like tangible, bulging things. When Marxists think of labor they think of huff and sweat. John Locke also thought that wealth came from human labor, but his understanding of labor was much more flexible than that of Karl Marx. A man who swings a cycle to cut grain adds labor to nature's bounty, but a man who organizes a more efficient farm or bakery can produces far larger increases in the value of the available resources. Mental input, manipulating information rather than materials, has made the modern world rich beyond the imagination of seventeenth century men (Locke, perhaps, excepted).
Locke was right and Marx was wrong. Software giants like Bill Gates or those charming folks at Google, add tremendously more value to the human store than I ever did when I hammered nails into plywood roofing as a teenage construction worker. That's a good reason why they are rich and I am not. That is not to say that we can do without elbow grease.
On Labor Day it is good to celebrate that simple worker who pours tar onto a roof, or chops a chicken into McNuggets, or puts the chips into the motherboard of a laptop. But the word "labor" should be an inclusive rather than a divisive term. All those who turn an input into a more valuable output are laborers. And that is pretty much all of us. Happy Labor Day!
Recent Comments