Work and Leisure

History of work 21on the same level as the earnings of workmen, with the merchant’s profitscoming from diligence, industry, and hard work’ (Applebaum 1992: 325–6).Thus can be seen the link which Max Weber described in The Protestant Ethicand the Spirit of Capitalism (1930). 1 It is the Puritan attitude towards workwhich, Weber argues, provided the basis for the emergence in the West ofmodern capitalism. Based on a review of early writing, Weber summarises theprinciples of Puritanism, thus:on earth man must, to be certain of his state of grace, ‘do the works ofhim who sent him, as long as it is yet day’. Not leisure and enjoyment, butonly activity serves to increase the glory of God . . . Waste of time is thusthe first and deadliest of sins . . . Loss of time through sociability, idletalk, luxury, even more sleep than is necessary . . . is worthy of absolutemoral condemnation . . . every hour lost is lost to labour for the glory ofGod.(Weber 1976 [1930]: 157–8)The extent to which these ideas directly influenced the behaviour of the massof the people in Christendom is debatable. Cross (1990: 28) notes that theProtestant work ethic was particularly embraced by the English middleclasses, notably in southern England, but not by either the aristocracy or the‘improvident’ poor. Most of the aristocracy lived a life of unvirtuous idleness,while most of the poor, being dependent on an agricultural economy, experiencedseasonal and weather-related variations in work intensity with burstsof intense work interspersed with lighter duties and even periods of idleness.Dedication to or celebration of work for its own sake was not fostered by thisvariable agricultural round, or the folk traditions of rural life or the Catholicchurch, which remained strong in much of Europe. The year was punctuatedby many regular and irregular interruptions to work, including numeroussaints’ day holidays and annual fairs and carnivals which traditionallyinvolved days off work, although it should be noted that saints’ day holidaysrequired attendance at church as well as involvement in festivities. In Europeancities, prior to the capitalist industrial revolution of the late eighteenth andnineteenth century, there was considerable development of industry – sometimesreferred to as ‘proto-industrialisation’ (Watkins 1987: 3) – but it was aculture in which attitudes towards work, time and sobriety were far from theProtestant model. Thus the institution of ‘St Monday’ was common amongurban workers, involving the taking of an unofficial holiday to recover fromthe, often alcoholic, excesses of the Sunday of rest (Cross 1990: 20–1).Work in the modern worldThe ‘modern’ world can be said to have started with the Renaissance, insixteenth-century Italy, bringing new ways of thinking about technology and