Week 29, 2019
A History of Work: Livelihood, Vocation, and Labour
Each week I share three ideas for how to make work better. This week, those ideas describe three stages in the history of work:
Why am I sharing this? Because as Terry Pratchett said “If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”
That makes sense. Sort of.
Let’s dig in.
1. Livelihood
For most of human history, people lived in small bands of hunter-gatherers. Work was about putting food on the proverbial table; about the immediate survival of the family unit. If there was specialization, it was along the lines of age and gender. Fitness was the going currency and people very much reaped what they sowed — first as roaming bands and later (much, much later) small-scale forest gardeners/farmers.
For more on this, see Wikipedia entry on Hunter-Gatherers.
2. Vocation
Fast forward first to the agricultural revolution in 12K BC, and then onward to the middle ages and the rise of craft guilds. Here we find the next major development or work: the ability to grow and make things to trade with others. People began to specialize. And guilds became the foundation atop which the employer-employee relationship would develop. As master craftsmen got busy, they grew capacity by hiring journeymen and apprentices.
For more on this, see the Wikipedia entry on Guilds.
3. Labour
The next and most recent shift came in the 18th-century courtesy of industrialization: division of labor, timekeeping, and the modern work order. Craftsmen gave way to laborers who, instead of to expertise and finished goods, sold time. Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations. And a few decades hence (well, more than a few actually) Frederick Taylor put the nail in the craftmanship coffin with the notion of Scientific Management.
For more about this, see the Wikipedia entry on Taylorism.
I’m generalizing. Obviously. If you want the full story, please read Brittanica’s History of the Organization of Work. In addition to the above, they also touch upon class structures, slavery, feudal systems and much, much more.
But I do have a few takeaways:
The modern work order is a very recent phenomenon. We’re so used to the 9–5 that it’s helpful to remember that we spent in excess of 95% of human evolution in small tight-knit teams doing a variety of tasks.
In this light, it’s possible to look at the future of work not as a revolution but as a return to a more natural order — one characterized by small, autonomous, and cross-functional teams of people working together to reap what they sow.
Food for thought.
That’s all for this week.
Now get back to work.
