Modern workaholics and medieval lazy nobles: work is love work is life (Fromm, 93)
Statistics show that people work more now than they did in the Middle Ages. With United States at one of the highest. While peasant life was harsher, there is an increasing amount of time labouring that did not occur in the olden days.
Before entering into a false equivalency, peasant work was mega tough. Sitting at an office desk for ten hours pales in comparison to half the time farming. Unlike contemporary farming, peasants were not privy to the technological advancements that have eased farming and farming can still be considered more difficult than an office job. Debatable but it also depends where on the totem pull and which branch. Nonetheless, the medieval lackadaisical workday was not bumming around but recovering. Farming was intense and work was exhausting. Days off was to regain strength to return to work with full strength. A few days off for holidays and recovery went a long way for peasant approval. A good way to avoid uprisings was to provide laxity to those labouring in the hot sun. A good way of maintaining the peace. Less work time but more effort in many cases.
What is relevant is not necessarily what is better. Reddit threads debate which life is better. Pro-peasantry blame modern industrialised urbanisation and anti-peasantry accost feudal hierarchical servitude. Both sides miss the mark. Namely, that pro-peasantry look at farming as an alternative to corporate jobs but forget the social and technologically inferior society. The anti-peasantry side forgets the communal foundation and religious concern to ensure peasants were happy. It wasn’t perfect and was disease ridden but there were positive elements that have been lost to time. Still, the focus is not of preference but of a historical shift. Why work more with greater technology and greater comfort? If modernity has reduced poverty and brought individuality, why are people working more? Is this all just a ruse? Technological advancements, do not mean comfort is easy to attain.
The start of the extended work week was a personal choice. Autonomically, people ventured to work more to make more. The renaissance was the first to deal with this. With people gaining their own land, they had to work it to reap the benefits. Without servants to provide the additional labour to reach the sufficient agricultural periods, they worked overtime to reach those marks. To make a profit, working more than necessary was intended to attain the mark they needed. There was no societal program that demanded a rule book. It was their land and they could farm it as they saw fit. They decided that working more meant making more. This idea still looms today. Working hard will help you make more. Most people believe that getting rich is from hard work. Hard work means you put in more effort than average. Going above and beyond would supply the surplus so desperately sought. A newfound freedom that eclipsed the original peasant life. Owning land was not their responsibility. The former peasant could now take initiative and control of the situation.
Overtime was a mainstay of early modern Europe. The renaissance was the forewarning for the demise of feudalism. The onset of the reformation spoiled the feudalistic framework. In a similar vein to the renaissance though with different political status, the citizenry were freed of their lordships. They no longer were tied in mass quantities to aristocratic supremacy. Royalty was a major factor but for many nations, the average Joe was empowered to find his own way. Peasant rebellions spawned in Germany and spread wide. Luther’s call was an alarm bell shouting divine right for peasant might. Social reforms were instituted over religious charities. Welfare became built into the system in many protestant nations. Secularism spread wide despite Luther’s intent. Though the removal of the institutional authority did pose a threat to religious sanctioning. Social systems like hospitals and mills were built around free man working for the state instead of a lord. Royalty maintained its authority though for some time. It was akin to the state only to be marshalled out with democratic revolutions.
The Black Death contributed to the demise of feudalism with so much land for survivors to cultivate. Though only as a parcel of the full equation. Extended trade and evolving social laws had been in affect since the early Middle Ages but hit its apex with the reformation. With the age of exploration in full order, mercantilism capitalised by producing exports more than importing. Leading to colonial expansion in Africa, Asia and the Americas. For many, this was a fresh start away from religious and economic persecution. Yet prioritising trade also was good for citizens back home. Merchant trade already in the Middle Ages was tough due to lordship taxes thus befriending the monarch was to go over their heads, all the while the giving more power to the crown. Symbolically, exploration was leaving the feudal repression for surplus abroad. Protestantism with catholicism following along preached hard work and honest earning in light of religion. Combining pious enrichment with religious notations. Empowering people to establish themselves in a new age.
By quantity the highest hours worked were in the mid eighteenth century. The Industrial Revolution coincided with a strong laissez faire approach to economics. On the back of modern individualism, capitalist thinking placed the employer and employee in a sacred encounter. The state was to stay out of citizen affairs and allow the market to enable prosperity (ironically this was poised by liberals, how things have changed). There was a hint of social darwinist thinking but that didn’t take away from philanthropic donations from the wealthiest. Yet it was lack of state regulation that permitted employers to deal with their employees more or less however they wished. Didn’t work a full day didn’t get paid, was sick one day the next fired. The centricity on production and profit hurt many workers compelling the first union. Unions united workers against their scamming employers. While one worker could be swapped, thousands could not. At least not quickly enough for profitability.
Prior to union forming, there was little intervention and seventy hour work weeks. Dangerous conditions and deathly hours forced a free citizenry back into the lion’s den. It was a neo-peasantry. Employers acted like noblemen and without a social backdrop to protect them, employees were at the mercy of their employers. It was hell and deadly. With the rise of machines many classic craft jobs were taken over by the inventors. Generational craftsmen were forced to find work elsewhere namely amongst their friends in the factory. It was a cloudy time but they had a way out. Unlike the peasantry before them, they could fight back. Noblemen weren’t superior no more. They only had economic power but with worker unification, the employer could do nothing. If the state wouldn’t intervene for the employee it wouldn’t intervene for the employer. In the democratic system it was a double-edged sword with no status protections for the employer. Unions banded and then resorted to get the government to intervene. The reforms of the early twentieth century demonstrated this shift in worker lives.
Spain is the originator of the eight hour work day but its more modern form came during the unions in the late 1800s. By the time the depression rolled around work hours had been confined to a five day work week. After WWI, the federal government only furthered its support for unions. Unemployment soured with the high death toll from the war along with the Spanish Flu. Not all jobs were eight hour days but more federal legislations through the twenties bettered conditions for all workers. Famously the roaring twenties was a time of post-war trauma, pleasure seeking and new outlooks of looking at the world. Immigrants seem to have largely aided in reducing the work week to five days at the beckoning of the recession. With Jews being fired regularly for religious reasons, unions fought back and a five hour week was granted. Ironically, the anti-semitic Ford also pushed for a five hour week though with more productive hope than worker sympathy. Yet the 30s brought a sinister moment when the established work week was met with lay offs.
Post-WWII saw workers seeking more hours. Federal law attempted to cement a specific amount of time but workers wanted more hours for more compensation. Already in the pre-war era consumerism was accorded with advertising tangible items. Material excess as a reward for hard labour met its match with meaning seeking roaring twenties. It only evolved further after the war. Barnay’s propaganda shifted from radio to television. While the message was the same, the visual was ever more powerful. Desiring more hours to buy these rewards as well as enjoying family vacations brokered workers to add hours. Apparently men said that consumerism was an escape from their wives nagging them about work. The problem grew that less time meant less money. While many fought for higher wages, it didn’t always translate. As federal legislation commissioned the shorter work weeks it was easier to push for higher wages with the progressing consumer culture. Hours radically declined as technology and intervention made work simpler. Growing prices through the second half of the century assisting in endearing the middle class with more leisure and pleasure.
Overall into the twenty-first century hours have dropped. There is a noticeable rise since 2020 but it may be more to do with corona than an actual trend. This will simply be a blimp in more hours to compensate for the lost time. There has been an increase in working from home that may raise hours by permitting leisure of home but still in work mode. This trajectory is too soon to tell. It may be an overcompensation or it may be a new trend. Only time will tell. Nevertheless, the theory that today people work more than the past is not true. Up until the pandemic hours were falling globally. There has been a consistent descent after the unionisation in the mid nineteenth century. The mid 1800s was the peak of labour. People working ridiculous hours. Extorted to work under gruelling conditions with severe implications. Modernity met its first crisis and the citizenry banded together. Bringing back some medieval social unity against the noble-like control. The state swooped in and gradually reduced the imprint of workforce presence.
So what is the deal? Why do we think we work more now than before? To some extent the eight hour work week is built into contracts or is estimated. Many people work more hours. Yet this change may also represent older generations too. There is a perceptional illusion that we work much more than our parents. Our parents are older and work less. Especially younger workers who stay late out of some customary hazing or to please a senior manager. It depends on the situation. Though in many cases, not all those hours are devoted to actual work. Beyond the necessary breaks is the lounging and fiddling with your phone. Still the office hours add up. Whether or not work was done throughout the day, staying in the office for the entire time feels trapped. Adding in the travel and it becomes burdensome. There is a feeling of working intensely when in reality much time is waiting for something to happen. This is not the case in every job. Some people work multiple shifts to make ends meet. It depends on the position and the dire need for compensation. There is a growing exhaustion with the long hours at the office. Not because the hours are so high but there is less to do. Doing four hours of work in an eight hour work day is tedious. It’s all just contextual.
There are people who work seventy hour weeks. Whether that be multiple gigs or a corporate owner who is running around endlessly. Though that is not the norm nor for the average individual. There are a lot of complaints with the forty hour week. There isn’t much work flowing but caged in the office. Since you’re stuck at the office you might as well find something to do. In the end boredom causes more distress than the actual quantity of hours worked. It is the quality that is ruining one’s sanity. Work also has grown to include consumerist aspects. Going to the mall or buying groceries are attached to work. On the way home from work an errand needs to be run is linked to the excessive workload. Not all errands are necessary but the consumerist mind of the past half century says it is required. Then again the inclusion of work-at-home days has only enchanted employers to have employees add more hours. At the same time, actual work is sporadic and the quality of work is more comforting as the hours swing by.
Given the statistics, the workaholic fascination isn’t as strong. Oates coined the term in the seventies despite the decreasing hour load. A third of the population is affected by this buzzword of immense devotion to work. My grandfather worked till he passed on and my father’s devotion to work may also infect him till his end. Thought it could be curtailed by an enjoyable hobby. My grandfather was a workaholic but he also was poor so not only did it get him out of the house, he also then made money to pay. More seniors were working one hundred years ago than they are working today. Seniors retire and enjoy their funds in elderly communities. Some still work. Yet the consistency and hourly rate falls. My grandmother still works as a librarian but in the past decade she has reduced her time from two and half to two to one day a week. While perceptional conclusions will seek to describe longer arduous hours it is all relative to experience. It was way longer before while today voluntary choice adds more time with better conditions.
The perceptual issue is also hypnotised by the visual markers on television. Advertisements display pictorials and slogans that indicate harsher work. It is portrayed as a tougher time when in reality it has only gotten better. DeGrasse Tyson once remarked that people always say that life is so hard yet do not realise the good that they have in technology and medicine. Yes the current era brings its own challenges but some of those obstacles are better difficulties than the disease ridden past. Humanity gets so caught up in ego trips and self-victimisation. Voiding responsibility and trying to find the easy way out. Most of the responses on Quora concerning eight hour work weeks were negative. Complaining how difficult the long week was. Saying how ridiculous it was. These are our burdens. That we can spend four hours doing work and the other relaxing. What a time we live in. A good way to deal with the elongated day is to bring a book or find a hobby to do whether that be writing or playing solitaire. The difficulty is boredom and that can be overcome with a little initiative.
Workaholism exists. Some people need to work. There is a psychological phenomenon to it as well as social expectation accompanying it. Yet statistically hours are less than they were two centuries ago. While they may be more than the peasantry they are no doubt easier than them. There are issues in the employment area but forced to work for a noble with little labour laws was treacherous. There were few if any rights. Adding the lacking medicine and privileges, it was a toxic life. There is an advertised work-for-life model. The upcoming generation struggling to pay off debts and purchase shelter. The future is up in the air but nevertheless, the freedom employed but the democratic apparatus does supply leeway to make the most of work and to even find ways out of the burnout eventuality.
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