The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

wage slavery 475was much admired by late Romantics such as Morris and Ruskin. Butsculpting masons and master builders were a tiny fraction of the medievalworkforce, and in their own day were not admired. No one who had to workwith his hands, including a painter or sculptor, was admired. Mostmedievals were closer to the Monty Python vision of the groveling peasantthan to the pre-Raphaelite vision of the noble saint of labor, admitting thatboth are fictions.Think of the clerkly professions in this way—being a college professor,for example. There are very roughly a million of them today in the UnitedStates, about one out of every 150 workers, more people employed now inpostsecondary education than the cumulative total in all the centurieseverywhere before, say, 1945. The great-great grandparents of the averagecollege teacher worked with their hands, often at jobs providing less scopefor flow. Like everyone else’s, since that’s what a nonmodern economyhad on offer, my own ancestors were dirt farmers and lumberjacks andhousewives—though my mother’s mother took pride in her housewifery, inan age of home canning and home sewing and home making of the sortCheryl Mendelson celebrates in Home Comforts: The Art and Science ofKeeping House (1999); and I expect that some others of my ancestors andyours wielded a spade or spindle joyfully by God’s grace.But nonclerkly jobs in a market society provide more scope, too. Theuncommon but by no means unheard-of Chicago bus driver who worksjoyfully at welcoming his passengers and works conscientiously at arrivingat each stop exactly on time, navigating the snowy streets of the South Sidecon brio, is living a flowful life on the job. The textbook salesman whopushes the envelope (he would say), venturing into new academic buildingsto confront new curmudgeons in English or accounting, armed only withhis open and sunny personality and a giant catalogue he has memorized ofMacmillan books, is testing the limits of his skill.Of course you can refuse to live flowfully, even in a rich, Western society.The tram drivers of Rotterdam are known for leaving just as the university studentrunning to make the tram gets close to the door. They speed up to ramharder when the track is blocked by a careless auto driver. They get satisfactionno doubt in paying back the middle class. One wonders if they wouldn’t dobetter to join it, and make their trams into little sites of bourgeois virtues.Many college professors treat their fascinating jobs as though they wereroutine, and become, as Adam Smith said of the effects of repetitive work,