Abstract
Work is a curse. For that we have the authority of the Bible:
‘Because you have listened to your wife and have eaten from the tree which I forbade you accursed shall be the ground on your account. With labour you shall win your food from it all the days of your life. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, none but wild plants for you to eat. You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground; for from it you were taken. Dust you are, to dust you shall return’.
Marx was equally lyrical., if less contemptuous. The worker has spun, and the product is his web’.1 However he is apparently caught in his own web because To be a productive worker is not a piece of good luck, but a misfortune’.2
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Notes
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Ibid, Table 18.
Ibid, Table 17.
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Walton, Richard E., ‘Work Place Alienation and the Need for Major Innovation’, paper prepared for the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, May, 1972.
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Thorsrud, E., ‘Policy Making as a Learning Process,’ ch. 3 in Social Science and Government: Policies and Problems, A. B. Cherns, R. Sinclair and W. I. Jenkins (eds.), London: Tavistock, 1972.
Cherns, A. B., ‘Better Working Lives’, Occupational Psychology, 47, pp. 23–28.
Vroom, V., Work and Motivation, New York: Wiley, 1964, p. 183.
Davis, L. E., A. B. Cherns and Associates, The Quality of Working Life, New York: Free Press, 1975.
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© 1976 H. E. Stenfert Kroese bv, Leiden
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Cherns, A.B. (1976). Work or Life. In: Geyer, R.F., Schweitzer, D.R. (eds) Theories of Alienation. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8813-5_10
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