Review on In praise of idleness

Urdhwareshe Rohan Shailendra

Roll No. 164070008
August 28, 2016
Bertand Russell was a mathematician, philosopher, logician and a famous writer.
He has written many classic and trend setting books, articles, essays and In praise
of idleness is one of them. It was written by him in 1932 and has been one of the
most influential writing of that time.
In his essay, Russell starts by criticising the childhood teachings about taking
work as virtuous things. His notion behind such sayings is that, those are given by
upper class people who wanted leisure. He assumes the whole notion of work as the
oppression of labour class by upper class people.
He has divided the work broadly into three categories: 1. altering the position of
matter 2. telling the people to do so 3. allowing people to do so. He heavily criticises
the people doing the second and third type work. These type of people just take the
benefits of first type workers. But as we all know, man is social being and works in
group. For producing a fruitful work, the group needs to work in particular direction
and a common motive and for that purpose, there is a need of knowledgeable person
who can show the proper way. Though his work does not involve physical efforts but
it does involve the mental efforts. Because of his guidelines, the constructive things
can happen.
On the point of modern techniques, he contradicts with his own opinion regarding industries. In the case of investments, he discourages one to invest in industries
as they produce useless machines according to him. But while expressing his support to leisure of people, he gives the example of pin industry automation. If the
industry is automated, the workers need to work only for four hours a day. So here
industrialization support the leisure of people, but then he opposes the same.
The author talks so much against work. There are two basic aspects with respect
to work in this article that need to be considered. First, what do you call a work
and leisure in the view of a worker and second, what do you do in your leisure. The
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author says, the morality of work is a morality of slaves. This cannot be always
true. As I said earlier, for producing productive things, man needs to work in group
and follow some guidelines where he might have to go against his mind sometimes.
Also, regarding four hour work a day comment, man is competitive in nature and so
every individual will try to earn more by working more. This is common to everyone
and so sudden decrease in work hour, though may be possible, is not feasible. In
regards of leisure, author says, it generates some useful output. So, if some doing
is producing something useful, this in turn becomes a work for someone. There is
fine line between work and leisure and it varies from person to person. The second
thing is, if leisure is just the idleness then there needs to be proper guidelines about
how to enjoy the idleness. The enjoyment of idleness needs to be wise and should
not harm others. This comes through education which is highly required. But then
listening to those things may again become the oppression and act of slavery in the
view of author.
His thoughts regarding investment in government were more relevant in the days
he has written this article. But today, governments have not remained like those days.
The focus is on diplomatic and trade development and people welfare. Although,
there are some civil war situations in the world, but in the relevance of our country
and most of the established countries governments use their money for constructive
use. The annual budget of merely 12% of GDP by India is the best example of it.
The author basically tries to convey his thoughts against the exploitation of
work. But he expresses his views in one-sided manner. Man is a social being and
competitive in nature. So there can be never be an equilibrium and settling point
for growth of mankind. The requirement for better growth is - proper education for
exploring the area of interest, fair competitive environment with no discrimination
for pursuing the same and no exploitation of people who follow our guidelines.