WORK AND WISDOM IN THE WORLD

THIS CHAPTER REVIEWS THE BEST OF WISDOM IN PREMODERN RELIGIONS ALONG WITH OUR SUGGESTION FOR POSTMODERN RELGIOUS WISDOM...ENJOY, TRYoung and Nancy Maxson

CHAPTER TWELVE

Besides being wise,
The Preacher also
taught the people knowledge;
weighing and studying and
arranging proverbs with great care.
The Preacher sought to find pleasing words
and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
...Ecclesiastics

Work, Labor and the Human Condition: The place of work in the drama of the Holy has varied greatly over human history. For most people for most of the time, the production of essential goods and services has been a source of great honor and esteem. With the advent of agrarian societies, especially those based upon great hydraulic systems, ordinary work receded as the source of wealth, power and esteem. In ancient colonial Greece, techne (understood as expert production of goods) was last on the list of honored activity after praxis (politics) and episteme (theory). Social philosophy of the Mideast gave pride of place to faith and meditation as pathway to reunion with God while the way of work was third. ¹

In postmodern theology, given a human role in the dramas of the Holy and given the multidimensionality of the sanctification process, the way of work bears a very large share of the god process. In an earlier essay, I made much of the fact that dance is a pathway to the Holy. All such art as well as emancipatory science, critical literature and enlivening poetry that opens the soul and extends the heart is part of the drama of good work that sanctifies society and nature. But most of us are in quite ordinary occupations and are not engaged in the production of such cultural forms. It is thus easy to take our own work lightly and to feel it outside the drama of the Holy.

This essay, then, locates the sanctification process in the work of ordinary people. It reunites work-in-the-world with the wisdom of ancient theology in a larger context of postmodern theology. There is much at stake in the way work is organized for the drama of the Holy; there is much at stake in structuring moral agency into every task, every job, every trade, every occupation. Postmodern theology requires the sanctification of each work and each worker but more than that, postmodern theology requires each work and worker be architect and author of the drama of Holy.

The conditions of work, the character of goods and services, the needs of the community, the integrity of the environment as well as equity in the international system together with the moral character of a society all argue that work should be a matter of intense theological analysis and advocacy. Indeed, such is the labor of postmodern workers. We will survey four major approaches to a philosophy of work that the reader can, in the same place, weigh their implications in terms of the concerns mentioned above. The first one we shall examine is the marxist philosophy of work. Then we shall look at a capitalist philosophy of work; then the Christian tradition of work as liturgy. Finally, we will provide the reader with an appreciation of a Buddhist philosophy of work. We will try to do justice to the spirit of each approach and set forth our understanding of the positivities and negativities of each philosophy. ²

The point these differing understandings of good work is to speak to our readers in the kind of language they understand: to speak out the symbolic universe in which they live. We want to help create a world and a way of working in the 21st Century which does not offer honor, wealth and acclaim to those who work in occupations which subvert the human project. We want to encourage those in advertizing, in theatre, in politics, in sports, in education and in medicine to consider the worth of their labor in terms of the spiritual values embedded in the foundational concepts of these four traditions. We want to encourage critical self-reflection on the part of those who help engineer a managed society; an alienated dramaturgy; the military ventures to oppose liberation; or theoretical work which is assimilated to the ideological needs of the oppressor.

For Christian readers, it might be well to remember that the word 'liturgy' originally meant good work, not just praying on Sunday. The word comes from the Greek, leoturgia = leot, people and ourgia = work. It referred to the public service to which one was called. Taken over by priestly functionaries, it referred to the rites of passage by which one was allocated standing and responsibilities in a community of believers. It also referred to the rituals by which that community is known and felt in the daily lives or special occasions of a community. Liturgy is the soul of the drama of the Holy by which people are sanctified or desanctified. The postmodern spirit distributes such good work across the population generally rather than assigning it to an elite set of practitioners exclusively.

For the Buddhist reader it is well to consider that everyday there are more and more occupations that are outside of the eight-fold noble path. Right action, right effort, and right speech are not foregone when one works for wages or salary. For capitalists and market liberals who read these pages, it might be well to calculate the long term and indirect costs and benefits that exclusion from work and adequate resources to life's demands entails for destructive behavior on the part of those excluded.

For socialists, it might be well to remember that the whole point of socialist organization of work is to ennoble the human spirit. Praxis requires good work on the part of the communist planner as well as the communist worker; indeed, the two tasks are united in a full understanding of the concept. The marxian project began as an effort to understand the social origins of human alienation. That task led to an obsession with class exploitation but there is more to exploitation than class relations since Marx sat in the middle of the industrial revolution centered in Europe. Gender, racial and age grade degradations predated capitalism and postdated bureaucratic socialism. It would be good to keep these points in mind as one contemplates the drama of good work.

Postmodern explorations in prose, poetry, art, science, cinema and theatre all provide parallel vantage points in postmodern theology from which to reflect and to draw inspiration; from which to bring ideas; from which to create a good and decent society. But it is in the daily waged labor of billions of good hearted people that major responsibility lays for the sanctification of people and nature. So...the reader is invited to use imagination and think deeply about what part each of us might play in the drama...the dharma...of good work.

The Marxian Theory of Work: In this philosophy of work, wage labor is not the central form of human labor--the formation of social relationships and the shared creation of oneself as a moral agent as well as the various forms of culture--these are the unique and necessary forms of human labor. The production and distribution of material goods is, to be sure, a part of the labor process and fundamental to all else. But animals produce food, shelter. and other physical goods as well. The creation of material culture is of interest to the Marxist humanist since it provides the possibility for the production of human culture.

For Marxists, labor is the "appropriation of nature" in order to constitute people collectively as "Species being." (Marx, 1972). Mead, Cooley, Blumer, and the other symbolic interactionists would agree that the creation of the individual self and others is always collective work, never individual work. As Marx has said:

Supposing that we had produced in a human manner; each of us would in his [sic] production have doubly affirmed himself and his fellow man. I would have:

(1) objectified in my production my individuality and its peculiarity and thus both in my activity enjoyed an individual expression of my life and also in looking at the object have had the individual pleasure of realizing that my personality was objective, visible to the senses and thus a power raised beyond all doubt.
(2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have had the direct enjoyment of realizing that I had both satisfied a human need by my work and also objectified the human essence and therefore fashioned for another human being the object that met his need.
(3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species and thus been acknowledged and felt by you as a completion of your own essence and a necessary part of yourself and have thus realized that I am confirmed both in your thought and in your love. In my expression of my life I would have fashioned your expression of your life, and thus in my own activity have realized my own essence, my human, my communal essence. (Cited in McClellan, 1975, p.34)

Alienation Marx was not the first philosopher to make a reasoned case that the conditions of work were central to alienation. But for most social philosophers of the time, alienation was either separation from God or separation from a perfect understanding of the character of objective reality or both. Human misery, pain, suffering, and travail derived either from the righteous anger of God, from one's own individual or species failings or from ignorance of objective reality. And for such who follow the model of Plato, some persons possessed of virtue were naturally entitled to appropriate the social process to their own vision of ethics and morality. Wisdom, courage, prudence and justice, in the Platonic world-view, informed a division of labor which privileged some as philosophers, some as soldiers, some as merchants and others as the raw material of politics and economics.

In marxian theory, the solutions to human problems required a revolutionary change from one mode of production with entirely different technologies of production as well as entirely different relations to production. For religious philosophers, solutions to human problems entailed reunification with God, acceptance of God's will as revealed in the scriptures and in the teachings of the church. For modern theorists of alienation after Hegel, the end of alienation was to be found in a rational process by which the laws of nature and society were gradually uncovered by successive approximations which we now call the scientific method. This knowledge was to be used to control nature by an administrative elite in whom all wisdom and rationality abided. The state was the 'March of God' in history for those who vested such authority in state control of reason and rationality. Marx' critique was that capitalist, feudal and slavery modes of production alienated workers, serfs, and slaves from their full humanity. In these modes of production, relations of work degraded or discarded the worker. In primitive communal societies, the means of production were so meager that the human process was as risk. Only work-as-praxis reunited the individual with community and nature in a modality worthy of the human project.

In marxian theory, there are several forms of alienation centered around work:

Loss of Creative Work. In the first place, work is the appropriation of nature, i.e., the use of the raw materials of nature to produce a human and human culture. To lose one's control over the work process, i.e., to the shaping of raw materials (including one's own nature, is to lose the capacity to express oneself as a human being. One loses the potential to be a skilled and contributing worker within a community of workers.

In some modes of production, work is degraded and deskilled by the division and the subdivision of labor. Such a subdivision of labor does two things: it permits the use of unskilled (and cheaper) labor power and it permits closer control of the labor process by a second party: the slave master, the feudal lord or the owner. The first alienation is, then, to be alienated from one's self as a skilled artist in the productive process. Another alienation here, is in the becoming of an instrument to the will of a second party...but see the fourth alienation below.

A second alienation is to lose control over the products that one creates from the raw materials of nature. Without these products, one is unable to support a distinctly human life. One cannot build or participate in distinctly human activities. Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly, distinguished news reporters at CBS, once did a special feature entitled, Harvest of Shame, which narrated the ways in which the migrant workers who harvested the foods of America were unable to feed their own children on the wages they received. The documentary ran, one time, on Thanksgiving Day before it and Murrow disappeared from the company.

One needs a wide variety of goods to build a family, to keep a community going, to respond to the needs of friends, to create works of art, science and religion. Instead of using part of the wealth they produce for such purpose, the wealth produced by the workers as a group is used against the workers as a class. Rather than serving community needs for health, education, retirement or cultural amenities, that wealth is used often used to build forms of domination which stand against the worker. The gold produced by Black Africans in South Africa is used to purchase the weapons of war to police those same Africans. Law, religion, and the national state become so many ambushes behind which hide the interests of ruling and privileged elites when wealth is concentrated such that the political process can be bought.

The third alienation of work is to be alienated from one's fellow workers. Some modes of production pit workers against each other; pit ethnic groups against each other, pit women and men each against the other, use children to disemploy adults, use workers in one nation to drive down wages and working conditions in another.

A fourth alienation is loss over one's own senses and sensibilities. When one sells one's labor power, when one is indentured as a serf, when one is slave to a slavemaster, or when one is a lower echelon functionary in a bureaucracy, one loses control over one's own wit and wisdom. One must think, act and feel as one is directed to think, act and feel or one is replaced. One must set aside one's own better judgment, one's own reasoning, one's own moral sense in deference to "higher" authority. Modes of production which use such hierarchies in the same moment degrade the workers and create that worker as the mindless instrument of another's will. Mind, morality, and human agency are lost in such a division of labor.

Of the five modes of production in history, Marx said that slavery, feudality, and capitalism were the worst offenders in transforming work from praxis to alienated labor. Primitive communism also was alienating...not by virtue of one's relationship to the means of production but rather by virtue of the very means of production itself. The idiocy of rural life against which Marx inveighed was against the technology of rural life at the time. Were Marx alive today, one would think he would have parallel criticisms to make about the idiocy of bureaucratic life...especially in putatively socialist economies. The means of production may be superior but elitist relations of production in art, science, transport, communication, housing and agriculture subvert the human project.

Praxis If alienation is centered in the world of work, so too is its solution, praxis. Praxis, as a concept entered into philosophical discourse with the early Greeks who saw a natural division of labor in which women and slaves could apply natural law to ordinary household and agrarian work. This form of labor is techne and is located in a well run estate (ecos + onomy). A second form of labor, praxis, was the province of men and required judgment and wisdom in public affairs. Political science is its heir. The third kind of action was theoria, understanding of divine law. Theoria was the province of gods but, some men, rational and insightful, could remember a time (alethia) when they were part of the drama of the Holy before birth and, with encouragement, draw out (e + ducire) of memory, the Will of God. The messengers of god also helped reveal divine law but, for Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, education was the province of theory. In Greek thought, alienation was failure to act according to one's nature; slaves were to be perfect slaves and women to be perfect women.

For Marx, praxis was the unification of theory and technology in service of the common good without denying the individual good. Instead of a natural division of labor, such divisions were made by human beings for the benefit of human beings; slave and master, lord and serf, bourgeoisie and proletariat were not natural or god-given divisions but divisions instituted by force and maintained by law, religion and morality. The elements of praxis understood as unalienated labor stand against the forms of alienation above. Instead of loss of skill and control over the labor process, praxis requires participation in judgments about what and how is to be produced. The Manifesto called for common ownership of the means of production, an eight hour working day. Instead of the wealth of nations going to serve the private needs of the capitalist class, wealth was to go to serve the common good. The manifesto called for progressive taxation of the rich and an end to the transfer of wealth by inheritance. Instead of control of law, religion and the state by an elite using the profits of workers, the Manifesto called for a revolution establishing a worker's state. Instead of divisiveness among workers each and all competing for the uncertain supply of jobs, the Manifesto called for workers of the world to unite.

Markovi� (1974) suggested that the 'moments' of praxis include creativity instead of sameness, autonomy instead of subordination, sociality instead of massification, rationality instead of blind reaction and intentionality rather than compliance. What ever the moments of praxis upon which one wants to focus, the basic idea that work must enhance both society and individual emerges. In some political economies, relations of production funnel wealth to some and away from others, toward private good and away from common good, toward conspicuous consumption and away from basic needs. In the sanctification of work is the sanctification of both nature and society. In the profanation of work is the profanation of the worker.

Marx and his successors too often used the state as the repository of wisdom, knowledge, and morality. In the concentration of planning and purpose was the desanctification of all those persons excluded, the desanctification of all those institutions omitted, the desanctification of all those occupations in which mental and physical labor were subdivided; the one residing in Moscow and the other in the workplace. Marx was not ignorant of the potential for alienation of the state, by the state and for state functionaries. In his call for the gradual withering away of the state, he was calling for the gradual distribution of the knowledge process, the political process and the critical process. What will emerge from former socialist economies is of considerable interest to marxist humanism since the state has had more than sufficient time and space to produce the 'socialist' man and woman who can build a praxis society.

But Marx was not unappreciative of the more positive contributions of capitalism. The most productive system in human history, the most flexible, the most innovative, the most concerned with empirical knowledge, capitalism went everywhere and studied everything. In so doing, capitalism destroyed feudalism, slavery and almost modernized almost every society on the face of the earth. In passing, capitalized decentered male hegemony over occupations, ethnic privileges over markets, age grade norms over goods and services. Setting utility as the measure of all good rather than piety, humanism or compassion, capitalism reconstructed the drama of work into its own image.

B. Capitalism and Modernization Theory.
For the capitalist social philosopher, the solution to human misery and degradation is to be found in the extension of capitalist relations throughout the whole world. This is called modernization theory. Poverty and squalor at home and in underdeveloped countries will yield most quickly and most completely to private investment and private marketing. Along with private control of the means of production, there is a corollary philosophy of work. The market serves to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

In the capitalist philosophy of work, one is to realize one's humanity in hard work and a thrifty, disciplined social life. One is to compete with others on an equal and fair basis, aspire to move steadily through the hierarchies of an organization and realize success after a lifetime of hard work. For the capitalist social philosopher merit, understood as utility to the marketplace, determines status and power. One is to provide for one's family and one's later years out of prudent management of current income. If one's income is modest, one's needs must be modest.

Capitalist philosophy of work stresses creativity. One is to prepare the better food product, paint the better picture, sing the better song, build the better automobile and reap the rewards of one's own genius. Capitalism stresses productivity. One is to work harder, faster, longer, and give more attention to detail so that one produces more, better, and cheaper than another worker, another firm, another country.

Capitalist philosophy of work stresses flexibility. One is to respond to the demands of the market on the terms above and, if those demands change, one is to change with them. Consumer demand is, after profit, the most sacred principle of the capitalist work ethic. If demand does not exist, then one is to move to a different line of work and produce that which is in demand. (In the past 50 years, a whole industry has grown to create and shape demand but more of that later.)

In the ordinary course of events, new technology arises as capitalist workers and entrepreneurs in pursuit of profit, invent more efficient ways of producing goods and services. This efficiency reduces labor costs, saves time, improves quality, expands wealth and increases profit. This emphasis upon the private accumulation of wealth by the owner (with a bonus to the creative, innovative employer) has produced new means of production and new realms of production. Capitalism's best claim to historic stature is its capacity to create new means of transport, of communication, of food production, of housing, of health care and of fabrics, fibers and producer goods...in a word, technology.

Patriarchy, racism, ethnocentricism, patriotism, and religious bigotry are daily weakened by the need for lower labor costs and for larger and larger markets. War, coercive politics, and shameful racist practices are inimical to the long range interests of the capitalist world system for a stable and manageable flow of goods, raw materials, and profits. The short range interests of this or that capitalist, this or that capitalist nation, this or that capitalist work force may promote war, racism, sexism, patriotism, or bigotry but, in the capitalist view, the long range result is prosperity, a rational division of labor in the world, an improvement of goods and services as capitalist dynamics work themselves out in history.

In the quest for profits, there are four kinds of costs to be controlled by the capitalist firm: the first is the cost of production goods (i.e. capital goods) including factories, machines, and routines. The second is the cost of raw materials, while the third is the cost of labor power. The fourth cost is the cost of reproducing the system of capitalism about which more later. Of these four costs, only labor power is really negotiable since trying to cut other costs may entail an interclass warfare and destabilizing interclass warfare. ³ Other capitalists produce the capital goods and other capitalists own the raw materials. Without a general peace within the capitalist class, the entire system is threatened since its social base is so small.

The only cost amenable to reduction without destructive interclass warfare is that of labor power and then only when there is a surplus labor pool. Women, the poor, minority groups, children and foreign workers now provide a vast, world-wide labor pool from which a cost-conscious capitalist may draw upon to obtain less expensive labor. Patriarchy, along with racism, national chauvinism and ageism can not withstand the press for lower labor costs as capitalism becomes a world system with competition between more and more sets of national capitalists. One does not antagonize other capitalists when one can hire women to drive wages down for all workers and, ceteris paribus, as with patriarchy, capitalism tends to use racism to drive wages down.

The costs of reproducing the capitalist system complete with managers, security forces, lawyers, friendly politicians, the intelligentsia, advertizing and public relations, are not negotiable. Without administrative, legal, social control and ideological hegemony, capitalism with all its many virtues would soon disintegrate. Whole ranks of functionaries are needed to control the unruly worker, to defuse the consumer movement, to fight the efforts of state agencies to control corporate crime, to lobby politicians and to create ever-expanding layers of needs.

The very nature of work is shaped by the needs of capital; industrial capital elevated the occupations of physical scientist and engineer over the scholar and the priest. Commodity capitalism privileges those who could enlarge market and motivate millions to consume. Finance capital rewards those who can ensure the flow of information through the uncertainties of nature and society. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are the heroes of industrial capital since they reveal the deep structures of physical law. Sir Francis Drake and Michael Jordan are the heroes of commodity capital since they open markets and colonize desire. Guilliermo Marconi and Claude Shannon are the heroes of finance capital since they provide a mean of communication essential to the safe, certain and swift movement of capital around the market. Those who bend the work process to such need find great reward. Today, most scientists and engineers work directly or indirectly for the military apparatus which ensures peace in the global world economy.

Capitalism, as did patriarchy, feudality, colonialism and slavery before it, needs social peace. The capitalist world system needs peace on a world scale as did no national system before it. As a productive system, capitalism creates more wealth than its own workers are able to consume. In order to realize profits, new markets must be developed. First regional, then national and now international markets are created by the very productivity of capitalism and by the control of wages: workers are not paid one hundred per cent of the wealth they produce so they can't buy back 100%. Therein lies the necessity of new markets abroad--and the consequent necessity of peace on the high seas. War may be profitable to some capitalists some of the time but the objective interests of the world capitalist class as a whole is peace. It may be an unjust peace and a false peace but world capitalist system needs commerce and commerce needs international peace.

In its creativity, capitalism needs new and more exotic raw materials from which to fashion new and more exotic goods. Peace is needed in order to obtain these raw materials in the first place, transport them in the second place and process them in the third place. With less than 6% of the world's population, the USA uses 1/4 or more of the yearly extraction of raw materials. As competition works its way through the marketplace, other nations will of a course, increase its share of the raw materials and wealth of nations.

It its flexibility, capitalism requires the freedom to move wealth quickly anywhere in the world to take advantage of new markets, new products, new labor reserves, new subsidies, new politics or new resources. War, national hubris, ethnic antagonisms, ancient enmities or political boundaries are obstacles to this flexibility and tend to be the object of ideological denouncements and international diplomacies by the capitalist nations which benefit from present arrangements.

The logics of capitalist production tend to destroy national boundaries as more and more production and distribution becomes global. Capitalism needs the freedom to transfer capital, goods, profits and people around the world apart from national animosities or national prides. In its early years, capitalism forced open the most reticent nations with gunboats and wars of colonial conquest. Now markets are opened, resources are acquired and company officers are deployed with the aid of more peaceful means: the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund, A.I.D., C.I.A., and other international agencies not excluding the U.N. or the Peace Corps.

Improvement in the means of production, increased control over natural and social forces, the destruction of patriarchy, racism and national chauvinism along with the impetus towards peace all derive from the logics of the capitalist philosophy of work. That there have been monumental advances in the welfare of the human race cannot be denied--yet there are negativities to the capitalist social philosophy which need to be weighed in and balanced out with those very positivities.

Those negativities center around the distortion of the symbolic interactional process; the disconnection of self from prosocial labor as well as society itself; the subversion of the political process at home and abroad; the imbalance in allocation of resources to basic social institutions; neglect of the common good and use as well of the magic and mystery of the sacred to the marketing needs of commodity capital. And in the commodification of labor, goods, services and raw materials is the desanctification of nature and society alike. Today, the US Supreme Court permits the patent and commodification of life forms. In ownership comes the right to use, to change and to market genes, bacteria, plants, and animals. The market now intrudes into the last province of God the Creator and God the Judge.

Capitalism has been progressive for the human process in a number of ways mentioned above. It has been emancipatory for much of its history and continues to this day to have emancipatory moments. The task of the philosophy of work as a discipline is to extract the positive moments of capitalism and to integrate them into the positive moments of other philosophies of work. Some of those alternative positivities are to be found in the religions of the world. We shall examine the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Buddhist religion. As we shall see, both have affinities with the marxist philosophy of work and both have great discontinuities.

Capitalism then, has great impact upon the nature of work and upon the relationship of workers to the larger economic system. For 30 to 70 percent of the working class, capitalism has most beneficial. For 5 to 15 percent of the people, capitalism is a most destructive arrangement. For the rest, economic cycles endemic to capitalism decide their fate. Enclosed inside and responsive to the drama of Holy, market dynamics can serve the human project; outside the drama of the Holy, capitalism degrades and desanctifies both work, workers, and the ecosystem upon which all wealth and health ultimately depend.

There are several grand narratives which provide an envelope into which to insert market dynamics and thus, resanctify society and nature. In the western world, Judaic traditions provide foundational concepts with which to guide and judge the wisdom of given labor forms. Christian and Buddhist philosophy also speak powerfully to the drama of good work. ⁴

Hebraic Concepts of Work: Ancient religious ideals still inform the most basic notions of work in the Jewish tradition. Although sometimes contradictory, these ideals represent the wisdom gleaned from historical experiences of people within an ever-changing society. As we explore a few central conceptual themes of Hebraic and Christian traditions, the prophetic vision of a healthy and unalienated society might offer a framework from which to critique contemporary philosophies of work.

A large share of the Hebrew scriptures are devoted to describing the manifold expectations God holds for humanity. In the Torah, Genesis 2:15, we are told that Adam is commanded by God to till and keep, to cultivate and watch over the land. Such human stewardship and ecological awareness penetrated the whole social fabric of the Hebraic community. Catholic theorist and theologian Francis Fiorenza remarks, "The words "till and keep" represent two basic complementary aspects of not only farming, but of all human work. Such work belongs to human existence and is commanded by God (Fiorenza, 1977: 29).

Work-as-a-curse is a partial yet classic interpretation of the Genesis account which ascribes everyday pain and hardships as punishment for human sin. Work in this scenario is merely the means of survival in a hostile environment that is now forsaken by God since Eve and Adam partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and in that act, lost their innocence. Absent innocence, they are left to their own devices and must suffer the consequences. Absent the protection of God, those consequences are severe indeed. Now they must labor in a hostile terrain for their sustenance. This view of work has been appropriated by those philosophies which see work as naturally alienating.

A third view found in the Book of Proverbs praises work for its maintenance of the status quo. Here is a collection of didactic teachings for youth which promise that work will bring success while laziness and sloth will bring poverty (Proverbs 10:4). In this understanding, a justification for slavery is found by those who need such, "the hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor" (Proverbs 12: 24). A more apposite excerpt praising work is, "A son who sleeps in harvest brings shame" (Proverbs 10: 5). Other similar passages intend to teach the faithful that idleness causes poverty and despair while hard work results in joy and success.

Fiorenza notes that such praise of work often benefits the educated upperclass. These passages identify women and slaves as the primary workers while men are free to sit at the city gates and talk politics. He notes a dramatic change in tone by the prophets, such as Micah, who see the disparity between rich and poor caused not by laziness or industry but rather by exploitation and greed of the rich. Landholders "abhor justice and pervert all equity" (Micah 3:9). "They covet vineyards, and seize them; and houses, and take them away" (Micah 2:2). This point has been reappropriated by contemporary liberation theology as we shall see later.

The image of the vineyard and its gardeners is a useful metaphor for understanding the creative and liberating quality of human work. Dorothee Soelle traces this imagery as it functions throughout the Bible as a grounding for loving work, for peace in the abiding relationship between Israel and its God, and for economic justice. The metaphor imagines a time when the planters shall enjoy the fruit of the vine and the oppressors shall be driven away (Jer. 31:5; Isa. 27:2, 55:1; Soelle, 1984: 80-81).

Deuteronomy (second set of laws) were intended to maximize the communal and ecological orientation of work and its fruits. By remembering that they had been redeemed, which meant brought out of slavery by the Lord, the Hebrews were to acknowledge their debt to God by sharing their flocks and land with each other; providing help for the traveling sojourner, widows and orphans; and releasing the debts of their countrymen every seven years. Charging a usury or interest fee was forbidden. Farmers were to harvest their fields in one pass leaving the rest and the perimeter to be gleaned by the poor. Every seven years the cultivated lands were to be given a "sabbath" rest and left fallow for a year.

According to Leviticus 25, every fiftieth year in Israel was to be a year of jubilee which affirmed equitable relations between persons and lands: liberty was given to all Israelites who were in bondage to any of their countrymen; ancestral land was returned to those who were compelled to sell it because of poverty. This meant it was impossible to sell a piece of land permanently. Land was to be worked rather than owned. The spirit of the Torah sought to insure justice to the workers and mercy to the needy as concrete ways to serve God, and concurrently, to develop the basis for disciplined and secure social and economic life.

The dialectical pattern of work as both act and relationship is reflected in the Jewish liturgical understanding of human existence. Abraham Heschel, an articulate contemporary spokesman for Judaism, writes that the religious deeds of human beings are both their daily work and worship. He describes the ancient ideas of halakhah (specific laws for just action) and agadah (the spirit of unlimited striving and devotion) as vital to the understanding of both work and worship. Halakhah and agadah are dynamically related to give ethical direction to daily tasks. The stability of the law in halakhah evokes the spirit of service in agadah "...[in order] that the preference for justice should become our second nature; even though it is not native to the self. A good person is not he [sic] who does the right thing, but he who is in the habit of doing the right thing" (Heschel, 1959: 180). As Heschel notes in these words, the heart's devotion and striving is revealed in concrete actions.

The main function of observance is not in imposing a discipline but in keeping us spiritually perceptive. Judaism is not interested in automatons...a moral deed unwittingly done may be relevant to the world because of the aid it renders unto others. Yet a deed without devotion, for all its effects on the lives of others, will leave the life of the doer unaffected. The true goal for man is to be what he does.....the goal is not that a ceremony be performed; the goal is that man be transformed; to worship the Holy in order to be holy (Heschel: 164).

It is the God-who-acts in concrete events of history, not a theoretical ideal of the Good, that the Hebrews worshipped as Yahweh. The work of God, in creation and liberation of the Hebrews, is the fundamental reality to which Jewish religious life is the ethical, work-as-worshipful response.

The words of the prophet Micah capture the essential responsibilities humans have in relation to God's creation. His is not only a description of duties required but a plea for work oriented toward life (l'chaim) and active virtue: "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8 RSV)

A Traditional Christian view of work. New Testament sources offer us little in the way of a systematic theory of human work. What we do find are ongoing Jewish literature and newer stories about the lives of persons at work. We are left to interpret its religious message about good work for our own day. To that end, in this section we will review some biblical accounts and intentions concerning work. Then we will examine some specific historical interpretations and consequences of those accounts as well as a Christian comment of the contemporary experience of work. We will conclude this section with a critique which encompasses the Judeo-Christian philosophy of work.

Biblical Accounts: When Jesus announced the beginning of his ministry in the synagogue, he spoke of the acts of God that would announce a new Kingdom. He quoted the prophet Isaiah's account of the presence of God in works that bring comfort to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. (Luke 4:18 RSV)

Jesus' ministry, which included healing and attending to non-Jews, children, women, and others considered outcasts, embodied social justice in daily working affairs. He rebuked strict Pharisaic laws whose original intentions had been corrupted into narrow pietism, and told his listeners that "each tree is known by its own fruit." (Luke 6:44 RSV) He reduced the commandments in the Torah to two, loving God with all one's abilities and loving one's neighbors, which included one's enemies, as one loved one's self. This last injunction did not exclude the workplace from its writ.

He taught with stories using the work situations of ordinary laborers. The gift and nurturing of God's love he likened to the planting and harvesting of grain and fruit in the fields and vineyards. His message of God's universal love acknowledged no tribal, political, or sexist boundaries. Those of his followers who forbade the powerless, children or the sick to come close to him, he reprimanded. To wealthy landowners and religious elites he directed his most scathing remarks, "Woe to you...for you tithe [tax] mint and dill...and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done" (Matthew 23:23 RSV).

In the Gospel of Luke, caution is given about spending one's time working for endless accumulation of wealth: "beware of all covetousness; for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (12:15 RSV). Instead, Jesus encouraged his followers to attend to their spiritual growth and to "lay up treasures in heaven; '...for where your treasure is, there is your heart also" (Matthew 6:20 RSV). The accumulation of wealth through an exploitative economic relationships were enjoined in favor of spiritual growth. The sanctification of each person by every other person was the practical expression of spirituality rather than worship of rules and traditions.

The heroines and heroes of Jesus' stories were the common people who gave evidence of that spirituality to God by concrete acts of this-worldly compassion, forgiveness, humility and generosity toward those living around them. He threatened those in positions of power and status, promising the last would be first in an eternal Kingdom of justice where one who treats the least fortunate one will be attending to the "needs of the divine" (Matt 25:32-46). The emphasis on this-worldliness brought compassion and generosity into all of everyday life...not merely the hours of worship and meditation.

In letters to young Christian communities, Paul, disciple of Jesus, encourages the deep bonding work relationships that support community. In a letter to the church in Corinth, he addresses the early believers as the "body of Christ" each with different talents and duties:

Each one benefits from the discipline of work and has obligations to work for sustenance of one's self and others. Work makes almsgiving and well-doing possible out of love for Jesus (2 Thes 3:8-15). Paul's teachings emphasize the work required to build a moral community whose criterion of faith is a divine empowerment to love and to do justice. Such a community, as Kingdom of God, would embody what Paul called the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal.5:22 RSV).

These passages often have been used as a gloss to deny things of this world and to find salvation in "another" world. To the extent that such a reading serves a quietistic social philosophy in which one does not work for social justice in this world nor challenge the conditions of work for self and others in this world, one is narrowing the radical scope, intention, and spirit of New Testament writings. Exploitation, injustice, domination and oppression continue. But an adequate reading of the teachings of Christ must take account of the social import of his teachings, recognizing that conditions of work can be improved, and that justice must be worked for in this world.

Forbidden Work As Christianity spread throughout the Mediterranean area and became more formalized, the Christian philosophy of work became transformed. In its early days, the New Testament texts were used as a basis for codifying general rules for daily living. Although no organized system of acceptable Christian callings yet existed, there were vocations that Christians could not enter. Any employment connected with idol-worship or Emperor worship, or any job related to bloodshed or capital punishment was unacceptable work for Christians.

Ernst Troeltsch writes of the severe vocational consequences of such a religious ban: "Christians were debarred from taking service under the State...they could not serve as judges or...[undertake] any kind of military service" (Troeltsch, 1960: 123). This ban included many cabinet workers, carpenters, engravers, butchers and gardeners who were formerly employed in connection with temple worship. "A Christian could not be a school teacher nor a teacher of science, since those professions were connected with idolatry" (Troeltsch: 124).

After Constantine became Emperor and designated Christianity the official religion of his empire, the ban on most employment became moot. Christians were free to enter most areas of work. In the centuries that followed, differing views regarding vocation have been taken by various Church authorities, from judging certain occupations as forbidden to taking a more active stand in creating the ideal community of the Kingdom of God in the living world.

In medieval Catholic philosophy, the sin of sloth or acedia was considered one of the seven deadly sins. Its meaning approximates indifference to others and apathy more than laziness. Acedia, (a = not + kedos, care), defined a soul without love or charity and thus, spiritually dead. Good work, to the medieval mind, was a remedy for such a "sinful" state.

The dignity afforded such good work is mirrored in the monastic Rule of St. Benedict:

Focusing on the liberating spirit of work was a method of discipline for the mind, the overall intention being to foster humility and equality and to eradicate acedia among those alive in this world.

The remedy for acedia according to Thomas Aquinas is a life of divinely inspired dedication to one's work. Good work in this context is work which produces necessary goods and services in the community, while offering the workers a fair return and the opportunity to mature as full persons.

Deemed equally as deadening to the individual or collective human spirit, was the sin of avarice. The religious perspective was reflected in secular legislation that prohibited charging pure interest (usury) for a loan and equated this practice with adultery.

Medieval religious justice condemned as most immoral and sinful the attempt to produce an increase of material wealth. Payment was properly claimed by the craftsperson making the goods and the merchants who displayed them. "The unpardonable sin is that of the speculator or middleman, who snatches private gain by the exploitation of public necessities" (Tawney: 38). At the Council of Lyons in 1274, money-lenders were declared outlaws. They were excommunicated, refused confession and Christian burial, and their wills were deemed invalid.

From the same tradition, Francis of Assisi taught that labor was worthy of being given as a gift. Early Franciscan monks offered their skills to local farmers at harvest time, as a gift to the community. The idea of work as gift conveys a profound insight into the many ways that work enhances life. The narrow view of work as wage labor unnecessarily limits such activity.

Varying renditions of the Protestant work ethic are perhaps the most dominating and familiar pronouncements concerning human labor in our day. Emerging from Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others in the Western Enlightenment era, a new understanding of work as a calling (vocation) from God was emphasized.

The calling of the elect, as Calvin referred to the "true" Christians, was marked by industriousness, careful use of one's time, and the accumulation of goods which was taken as proof presumptive of the surety of her or his salvation in the next world.. The emphasis upon work as a way to salvation displaced both faith and meditation as the preferred ways to reunite with God in earlier Christian orthodoxy. Such a change had profound consequences for the world of work, for social change and, as Max Weber argued, for economics. The ethics of Christianity become oriented to the spirit of Capitalism by this new interpretation of the meaning of work. The ascetic monasticism of medieval Christianity informed such self-denial, not in the interest of accumulating wealth but in the interest of placing spiritual values before pleasures of the flesh.

According to Calvin, each Christian has two callings, a spiritual and a temporal one. The first is to know and believe in God, the second is to apply one's faith in God to the practical task of producing essential goods. Protestantism was strongly informed by Calvin's humanistic ideas of community and good government that would be grounded upon biblical laws. "True" Christians acknowledged their dual callings by leading lives that reflected two basic characteristics: cleanliness and profit through work. These hallmarks, in turn, identified what Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch later called an inner-worldly asceticism. They suggest that the drive for profits combined with the religious calling for earthly dominion created the basic elements for a capitalistic economy.

It is equally valid to suggest that the spirit of Calvinist ethics pointed toward a sharing of individual profits within a system of "endowments and investments." Again, interpretation is everything. Calvin has been appropriated by some rich and powerful today to serve their interest as a religious gloss to their privileged position. These endowments were originally intended by Calvin to teach people how to use their wealth ethically in order to create more goods in common. Their aim was to diminish the temptation of hoarding or wasting wealth.

History records the less than satisfactory success rate with which the Western world has responded to the communitarian visions-- much less the religious ones--of Augustine's City of God or Calvin's progressively divine earthly abode. In the wake of the industrial progress of the nineteenth century and a growing middle class, moral values increasingly become an instrument of economics and politics rather than an metaphysic for shaping and judging them. Utilitarianism displaced other virtues and came to mean that which was useful to the marketplace. The truth value of a thing is marked by its utility for effecting selected goals. The question of the goals was to be left to demand in the market by a nascent capitalism. Social reform and social justice that result from individual or communal faith in divine care now appear to be prizes fought for and won or lost anew by every generation of Christians in each political campaign.

Generally, medieval social theory assumed that economic interests were secondary to the real business of life, which was salvation. A Christian society was to be one held together by mutual obligations and joys, not merely self-interest. Economics was a central aspect of personal ethics. Work and trade were instruments by which salvation was reached; they were not secular irrelevancies. The operative question centers around the nature of salvation: is one to find grace and reunification with God in active participation in this world or is one to await deliverance in the putative next world. The possibility of a social philosophy of work in the Christian tradition depends upon which interpretation becomes operative in the world today.

A Contemporary Christian View of Work. In the best sense of a calling, work is the practical activity that merges personal expression and character with the creation of useful products for a community. To the extent this occurs, a 'universal we' emerges and offers a vantage point with which to insert the 'objective' observer who would judge the actions of its members in terms of its promises. It is this view of work that can be judged since it sets forth the religious ideals to which it aspires. Yet contemporary work is often marked by a morally neutered character for employees and morally questionable endeavor determined by managers, bureaucrats and owners.

Thomas Aquinas divided material wealth into three categories: those that are necessary, those which are useful, and those superfluous. Catholic theorist Peter Maurin appropriated Aquinas' categories of work to explain contemporary relationships to property:

If one did an inventory of material possessions in contemporary America, one might find a family with two houses, three automobiles, four television sets, five radios, six phones, seven coats and innumerable pairs of shoes. In a market economy driven by demand and in a society with great inequality in income, demand for unnecessary goods and services determine investment and production.

More contemporary Catholic theological analysis and critique of the work experience is found in Pope John Paul II's Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation and in the Encyclical Letter on Work. First are excerpts from the former regarding a gospel of work:

In part, John Paul II was trying to defuse the burgeoning interest in liberation theology found in South America and in the Philippines. In part this passage reflects an abiding interest of Christianity in a community of justice and equality in the "Fatherhood of God" and in the "Brotherhood of Jesus." Whatever the case, the sacred authority of the Pope is now on record in favor of a philosophy of work which sets the worker as prior to profit. What happens to this papal letter in history will be of more than passing interest to a Christian philosophy of work.

Notice in his excerpt, Pope John Paul's definition of work as an ennobling and transforming goal of human beings is the actuality of religious freedom. The value of human work is not determined primarily by the kind of work being done, but by the fact that the one who is doing it is a human being. In a one-sidedly materialistic civilization, work is considered an impersonal objective dimension to life; yet this letter on work identifies the worker as the proper subject of work.

Unjust work relationships are a result of devaluing forms of human labor in favor of capital. Such a devaluing creates the idea of the "poor" who are then eliminated from contributing or benefiting from the communal wealth. Regarding work and the poor, the letter continues:

His latest encyclical, Centissimus Annus, (July 1991) is even more radical in its condemnation of exploitative working conditions and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of spiritual values. In another time, Marx could have written those words. In these times it is important, to hundreds of millions of the poor and the oppressed as well as to their theologians, that a modern Pope speak to the misery and degradation of work in the world today.

The biblical concepts of justice and freedom as they apply to human work are being reappropriated in liberation theology, with practical and revolutionary implications, in some Third World countries; especially in Latin America (Nicaragua, Brazil, and Mexico) as well as in the Philippines.

Originally a Catholic peasant movement, liberation theology is redefining not only biblical and theoretical ideals but the very role and purpose of Christian theology in the world. Emerging from three hundred years of domination in Latin America, liberation theology addresses the social sources and political uses of the post-Enlightenment ideas of "progress" and is first and foremost a theology of praxis.

Contemporary Protestant theologian, Harvey Cox rigorously investigates its roots and intentions, and its differences with much modern theology; "it is a style of theology...based on the conviction that all human thought is a form of action." (Cox: 1984: 136) As a form of action, liberation theology energizes and mobilizes persons as it provides a guide to opposition and transformation of existing relations in work.

Liberation theology is praxical in that it grows out of the continued interaction between theory and action, prayer and work. It sees the task of theology as liberating people from economic as well as intellectual stupor. Its method is to learn and teach about as well as change, the structural causes of poverty. It strives to recover the communal sense of living by illuminating the structural, often economic, hindrances to the creation of a just society.

Liberation theologians seek to read the Christian Bible from the point of view of the poor. The poor hear their own situation being articulated when the prophets say that poverty is the result of oppression. The prophets' cry for reform becomes their own cry for a world in which they may work and may see their children live to work and die in peace after a full life.

There are two forms of sin according to liberation theology: the personal sins of greed, envy, and sloth, together with the structural sins of oppression, exploitation, inequality, and injustice. "Sin" in this context is "...seeing what's wrong with the world, how the supervisors treat the field workers, how the children are ignored when they are sick--and then not doing anything about it" (Cox: 100).

Liberation theology interprets the idea of biblical salvation as very much a here and now experience. Salvation is concerned with the experience of justice and liberation in one's everyday life; the workplace, the home, and the community. Groups of Christians gather together in what are called primary or base communities to orient themselves within a "saving" political, social and religious network.

This interpretation of salvation stands in direct contradiction to much modern American religion that reduces it to a privatized inward experience. This latter interpretation tends to create persons who claim to be "saved" but claim no "vocation" as agents of Christian justice and freedom.

Work from a liberation theology perspective reclaims a biblical promise of social justice in Christianity while it reaffirms the essential human vocation as commitment to it. Implications for structural change are profound in those countries where multinational corporations and dictatorships seek increasing profits at the cost of human misery and wherein the teachings of Jesus and Marx resonate with the lived experience of the working poor

One way to understand Buddhism is to see it as a religious philosophy about compassionate action. As we shall see, compassion is an essential component from which a more complex Buddhist spirituality evolves. The first Buddha (enlightened one) was a member of a privileged Hindu caste and, in reflecting upon his privilege, came to an egalitarian social philosophy which privileged only those who sanctify nature and society by their temperate embodiment of the 'eightfold path.' Buddhism is a social and personal philosophy that has generated social cohesiveness without an oppressive apparatus of reward and punishment for 25 centuries. It is difficult to do the kind of work which harms others directly or indirectly inside the Buddhist world-vied.

A casual glance from a Western perspective might conclude that its central tenets are the basis for a pessimistic devaluing of all persons and things in the world. To the Buddhist, however, when one begins to realize the truths of these "marks" one has begun to be released from their bondage and to travel the road to "enlightened" living. Buddhist thought, with its differing assumptions of no-self, impermanence, and change, will be hard to hear in a Western cultural backdrop of the reality of an individual self, the idea of a natural reality "out there" established for all time by an omnipotent god, or the general idea of inevitable progress.

From many possible concepts, only two are explored here as they can be applied to a qualitative philosophy of work, along with some traditional Buddhist methods for their achievement.The core of ideas that constitute Buddhist religious philosophy today are based upon insights from Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana and Zen schools of thought. Each school reflects its own unique experience and interpretation of the tradition as it emphasizes the value, welfare, and radical transformation of all living beings. All schools agree on the basic "Marks of Existence" in which all persons live. They have to do with the general facts of existence: that which exists is without a substantial eternal form, soul or self (anatma), is transitory and impermanent (anicca), and is out of joint, ill-at-ease, full of suffering (dukkha).

Suffering (dukkha) is a central concern to the Buddhist. Legend has it that in the Buddha's first public sermon, he presented four "facts" about ordinary life in the world: first, that suffering, a certain sorrow or angst, lay at the heart of life; second, that the cause of such sorrow was located in the ceaseless desires of human beings; third, that the possibility exists for ending such sorrow; and fourth, a presentation of the Way, a methodology for ending sorrow, called the Eight-fold Path.

One fundamental component to the whole Path is an understanding of compassion as the underlying human vocation. This understanding, sometimes called Right Knowledge, allows us to locate and study the moral strength and direction a Buddhist philosophy of work. Compassion is the enlightened human response to the realization that the whole world consists of interdependent matrices of events.

The common belief that the world is full of separate and isolated selves, uninformed and unshaped by their cultural circumstances or living out their lives alone, is judged by Buddhists to be a basic misperception. The "self", as unchanging, separate, and independent from others, is not even acknowledged to exist, ontologically or practically. In thoughtful analysis of Buddhists, nothing is separate from all else; the world flows as a river, all is in all. Buddhists perceive this ever-changing matrix of life the true state of affairs in the world. From this perception radiate all acts of compassion.

To not realize the social character of reality is a common basis for suffering. Buddhist scholar Nolan Jacobson writes,

In the section that follows, we will discuss the vital practical relationship between Buddhist concepts and their daily application in the lives and work of Buddhists. Please remember that there are a wide variety of buddhisms which mediate these concepts and that there are a wide variety of social institutions in each country which transform the understanding of Buddhism as it concerns the world of work.

The Bodhisattva. In societies influenced by the truths of no- self, impermanence, and suffering, the Bodhisattva is a consummate model of social behavior. A "bodhisattva" (bodhi = wisdom + sat = being) means one whose character has awakened to the ontological togetherness of life, or simply "one whose essence is compassion." A guiding symbol on both popular and learned levels, it informs basic Buddhist values of practical wisdom (prajna) and love (karuna), central factors in the development of the most noble human character to which a Buddhist can aspire.

A bodhisattva is one who has chosen a life-vocation of beneficial action toward all beings in order that their suffering, whether physical or mental, be ended. Their lives, in turn, are free for similarly attentive contributions in their own situations. A bodhisattva can be anyone, layperson or monk, who begins to postpone individual satisfaction in order to work for the welfare of others in the world. Practically, it is the actual embodiment of compassion and truthfulness, wisdom and joy. As an ideal, it is said that the bodhisattva, in infinite wisdom, sees the reality of suffering and, in infinite compassion, seeks to help relieve it.

In the nearly 2000 years of classical Buddhist stories, there is a richness in the portrayal of bodhisattva careers. Magic, morals, social stability and change are woven together in remarkable mutuality. It was a bodhisattva-kind of concern that brought the words of Buddha from India into China. The influence of bodhisattva compassion established free hospitals in ancient India and China. Stories about bodhisattva figures continue to inform listeners about how to live lives in an appropriate balance of concerns for self and society.

A parallel concept in a Buddhist schema of human vocation is the notion of the noble friend, a kalyana-mitta, a special sort of mediating friend. The kalyana-mitta is one who integrates the bodhisattva's vision of wisdom and compassion into ordinary life experiences with others. This is a person who offers an underlying sincerity, confidence, enthusiasm, and integrity to daily personal encounters. A friend, one of good counsel and sympathetic understanding, the kalyana-mitta is a trusted and generous advocate who encourages and enjoins others toward moral and aesthetic goodness, and truthful resolve in all domains of life not excluding work or commerce.

Many Buddhist texts describe the delightful and reciprocal nature of love and loving action found in the kalyana-mitta as the realization of truth in the world. The Buddha is said to have remarked to his disciples about such a life-sustaining relationship:

Such a person reflects the mindset that is the truly human vocation and goal.

THE PATH FOR GOOD WORK
The Eight-fold Path is the core of Buddhist discipline and the means by which an adherent may pattern her or his personal life to be a kalyana-mitta, in order to live oriented toward the bodhisattva ideal. After acknowledging the value of such ideals as the bodhi- sattva and kalyana-mitta as part of the "good" life or Dharma (from whence our word, drama), one seeks the means by which one's own life could incorporate them. Thus the first steps have been taken on the lifelong Eight-fold Path, namely Right Understanding. In turn and interrelated, the Path calls for ethical conduct (sila) which is the major interest in this essay, together with meditation and right concentration.

Most germane to our task in developing a philosophy of work from the Buddhist tradition is that part of the Path referring to sila, ethical conduct, i.e., "Right Action", "Right Speech", and "Right Livelihood." Again, practical activities are based on an abiding compassion. Right Action strives to create an environment of peaceful and honorable conduct. It bars followers from stealing and from participating in dishonest transactions or illicit sexual intercourse, and encourages helping others toward a peaceful life.

Right Speech prohibits the telling of lies and slander, both of which cause hatred and fear; and from abusive, careless, or foolish babbling. One is encouraged to respect language and its power by using it honestly, benevolently and meaningfully.

Right Livelihood is directed to the prohibition of specific careers that necessarily bring harm to others. Reflecting the practical nature of life, they include a vow not to take life, generally interpreted as encouraging a vegetarian diet but also as forbidding warfare, building of lethal weapons, and sentencing criminals to death. There is also a vow not to take what is not given, which includes abstention not only from theft but also unfair business practices; and vows not to make one's living by prostitution, cheating, and lying, or by trading in intoxicating beverages.

The broader consequences of such a perspective are many; for example, there is no tradition as in Christianity of a "just war"; such an idea is very confusing to a Buddhist. These concomitant aspects of the Eight-Fold Path act as the means to evoke a particular vision of vocation as compassion. Holders of this vision seek to transform a world saddened by overlays of ignorance, fear, and hatred into a world of moderation and mutual responsibility.

Right Livelihood not only addresses individual careers. It is constitutive of the larger world in that, within its practice, one assumes a social universe of interconnected events. When the Buddhist concept of virtue (sila) functions as an ideal, human work takes its place as an activity that adds to the wholeness and multiplicity of life.

An ancient text entitled "Address to Sigala" sums up the intention of such a Buddhist view of human vocation. It advocates the dynamic development of the individual and community. Six particular relationships of value in Buddhist society are addressed:

One's activities or "works" of compassion in these six relationships are the practical consequences of sila. Individual responsibility, skill, enthusiasm, a respect and generosity of spirit and goods, are valued components of truly human work.

The text calls for employers to provide decent food and wages for employees, care for them in times of sickness, free time for them on holidays and bonuses in times of prosperity. One cannot discharge or lay off workers to avoid these costs. To employees, it advises honest and thorough service; it suggests they work to maintain the good reputation of their employer and that they be satisfied with a just wage. (Rahula: 1974: 124).

Aging endows one with a special status from the perspective of sila. An older person's talent and attitude unites with the product or service rendered to create a human world in right relation to itself. Much like a fine artwork created over time, an older person can integrate many dimensions of ethical conduct with useful skills. Factual "how-to" knowledge (skill-in-means), flourishes as it becomes part of the skills of discernment, prudence, tolerance, and practical wisdom. They in turn, become the defining characteristics of a fully human product, person and culture. This aspect of Buddhist tradition contrasts dramatically with the capitalist system which tends to discard the aged and to degrade the work process.

Western philosophers and sociologists have much to learn about an alternative view of work found, for instance, in Japanese "family" businesses that entails a commitment to employees for life, that requires managers to study the discipline of Zen, that see management and production work as equally contributing to the whole, and that takes personally the responsibility to eliminate overly competitive attitudes and harmful products.

BUDDHIST ECONOMICS
In a widely circulated essay, E. F. Schumacher wrote of the implications of Buddhism for work and wisdom in the world (1973). He said that the Buddhist point of view promotes three benefits from work:

Schumacher chided capitalist economists for failing to put quality of life above quantity. Buddhist ethics, indeed all religions would put economy in the service of society rather than vice versa. The Buddhist view of nature is not that of 'natural resources' to be extracted and used proliferously but rather as the centerfold of life. One who has been to Ryong ji temple in Kyoto or to any Japanese garden can appreciate that the point of labor in the world is to beautify the world; not to despoil it.

Contrast Buddhist farming with the farming of the land in the Midwest of America. In the former, labor intensive organic farming is the standard. In the later, giant machines plow up hill and down; across streams and filled-in watercourses; hedgerows and windbreaks are removed to free the way for these machines. In the later, the land is saturated with pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and fertilizers. The biomes become little more than chemistry plants destroying all organic life in the soil and all small animals on the land. The wind sweeps the top soil while the multinational corporation reaps the short term profits. And the land slowly degrades.

Contrast Buddhist values of consumption with capitalism compulsions to have and to own. In the Buddhist world-view, material things are to be arranged in such a way as to simply and to amplify the elegance of life. In the capitalist world-view, material things are to be stored in warehouses until profits can be made; to pile up in closets on the chance they might be used; to be displayed as evidence of personal worth; to be counted as the final judgement of worldly success at income tax time.

Contrast the Buddhist values of scale with those of capitalism or of socialism in its Soviet incarnation. Schumacher makes it clear that small is beautiful in his beautifully small book. Small houses; small farms; small tools; small energy plants; small workplaces; small classes; small communities and small but elegant selves all make social life livable on a human scale. Contrast small in its most positive modalities with large in the Western mode. Large cities; large factories; large nuclear plants; large garbage dumps; large military bases; large housing units for the poor; large agribusiness plants; large prisons; large classes; large universities; large hospitals; large corporations and large automobiles. One of the lessons of postmodern architecture is that, to be fully human, buildings must be made on human scale. The lesson remains for those who would learn and apply it to other domains of life.

Western scholarship is now at the very beginning of meaningful dialogue with Eastern traditions. The important work of mastering the intricacies of Buddhist thought with its manifold cultural interpretations and overlays has begun in earnest. To venture important criticisms before the groundwork of such scholarship has been laid is to offer a critique that imposes Western assumptions as universal of all human experience. Yet such a critique is valuable as a catalyst first, to reveal the more subtle and involved insights and implications, and second, to encourage honest and thoughtful exploration of cross-cultural human wisdom.

We acknowledge that the very atmosphere of discourse in such analysis calls into question assumptions on many levels of human experience and expression. To initiate the beginnings of such a dialogue in the arena of a Buddhist philosophy of work, a few Western questions--rather than criticisms--are listed.

With Buddhist concepts informing ordinary life and values, work as compassionate action is both a vision and a practice. Such a vocation results in a realized freedom to the Buddhist; it saves her/him not from "sins" in a Western sense, but from a life of self-centered deception, ennui, and ignorance of one's true nature.

The word, Islam, means submission to Allah. It also means commitment to the ideas of the teacher, Mohammed. For purposes of this essay, Islam means community and the work essential to reproduce the ethos of that community. In its history, Islam fostered both justice and knowledge in its centers at Baghdad, Alexandria, Timbuctoo and Toledo. Today, the influence of Islam reaches from the Philippines in the East to Morocco in the West and shapes the daily life of some 850 millions people. It provides an unambiguous vantage point from which to make judgements of reason and purpose; of action and deed. It serves as a basis for the sanctification of nature and society amenable to the drama of the Holy for those millions of people now alive and those still to be born.

As with Buddhism, few Westerners can give Islam a respectful reading. Most Americans hear only of its brutal repression of crime without knowing of the larger social context in which that repression is so seldom necessary since submission to Allah forfends against crime. Most Americans focus upon the status of women using western standards of individuality and gender equality for evaluating that status. In a more careful reading of the status of women generally, one would see that such status is higher and more secure than is the status of women generally in the West. One does not find a growing underclass composed of discarded women and their children in Islamic society. One does not find the feminization of poverty as in the West.

Islam is founded on four texts; the torah of Moses, the Zabur (psalms) of David, the Injil (gospel) of Jesus, and the Koran (verses) of Mohammed. The social philosophy of the Koran speaks more to the needs of the community in a hostile environment than to the needs of the individual in a mass, democratic society. Islam spread quickly; at first by force of arms and then, after the 15th century by Sufi saints and preachers (Parrinder: 481).

The foundational concepts of Islam include Shariah, an enduring plan for social life which is the pathway one should walk in order to please Allah. Where Shariah gives general guidance, more direct guidance is found in fiqh, the jurisprudence which interprets Shariah and sets for the rules of everyday life. There are five 'pillars' of faith demanded by Islam (understood as obedience to the Will of Allah). The first pillar is shahadah, (confession of faith), the second is salat, (devotion and prayer), Zakat, (contributions to community needs and to social justice in the form of a percentage of certain kinds of property), Sawm, (the fast during Ramadan) and the fifth pillar of embodied faith is the Haji, a trip to the Kaaba in Mecca.

While the duties owed to Allah are set forth in the Idabat, duties owed to people have equal standing and are encompassed in the foundational concept of Maumalat. No occupation, no activity, no pursuit or goal lays outside of this part of Shariah. One cannot engage in an occupation which offends Allah or departs from Shariah. There are gradations of that which is required, that which is meritorious, that which is permitted and that which is merely shameful (makruh). What is not permitted, haram, is absolutely forbidden and is subject to immediate and severe punishment. Again, most people would find it incredible that they or another would do such a thing.

Together, these foundational concepts produce a moral order which sanctifies children, women, neighbors, customers, employers and the community of believers who live in Islam. The emancipatory impulse in Islam is located primarily among Ismailis, a group of Shia'ites who have overthrown rulers who, they believe, have dishonored Shariah. Among recent theologians, Sayyid Qutb has spoken of radical social change and has made social justice a centerpoint of his teaching, In the Shade of the Qu'ran.

Again, it is presumptuous of any Westerner to try to critique either Buddhist or Islamic thought but, in the interests of a dialogue, we can raise some questions for the faithful to ponder:

Much of the renewed interest in Islam in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon come from the fact that, in pursuit of Shar'ia, Islamic doctors, nurses, teachers, builders and lawyers work with the poor, the ill and the afflicted as their religion requires. Between rapacious and violent capitalism on the one side and a deadening bureaucratic socialism on the other side, there is not much to chose. Faced with the peace and justice of Allah among the faithful, there is much to chose. Yet the faith of Islam has not fit it well with those societies which do not follow Shariah. It is not likely that in either a modern or postmodern world, Islam as it is will survive without much conflict and resistance. In as much as a fifth of the world now lives in Islam and its demographics project still a larger share of the world's population, it becomes ever more important to find a way to fit this grand narrative into the new world order.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
One of the more important areas of human life is work. We have presented four quite different ways of organizing work in the effort to help create a wide ranging philosophy of work out of which to transform present practices. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. In this essay, we emphasize the positivities of each in order to leave the reader with the beginnings of an emancipatory philosophy of work. The first one we present comes from the marxian tradition.

We started with Marx since his work was analytic and descriptive and ended with those grand narratives which are synthetic and prescriptive. Marx's work is useful in its focus on the material bases of human beingness while that of Moses, Christ, Mohammed and Gautama are useful for their concern with things of the spirit. In their exposition of the god concept, Moses, Christ, and Allah provide a vantage point from which to judge both truth and right. In their command to worship their god, they also command that one help constitute a 'universal we' which, as an ontology in and of itself ratifies and validates the prescriptive obligations which sanctify nature and society.

Each of those who write grand narratives have much of value to add to the drama of the Holy, understood here as distinctly human activity. Other narratives, equally grand also stand as pillars to the human project. Without the five discussed here, the world would still be suffused with dramas of the Holy adequate to most human purpose. Over the next two hundred, five hundred or two thousand years, still more grand narratives will inspire the human imagination and the human need for renewal. None will neglect the ways in which waged and unwaged labor will speak to human dignity and human need.

Marx Work is the central organizing concept in the writings of Marx. Marxian humanists think of the labor process as the process by which, under the right conditions, work could constitute the individual as a human and humane being. In marxian theory, one is born as an animal; learns the language as well as the ways of life of a society and, in the practice of that language and of those ways, becomes a human being in concert with other human beings. Praxis is always collective work...one cannot become a human being by oneself, use language by oneself, or create social relations, social roles, social institutions or social formations by oneself.

Marx located the sources of alienation in existing social relations. In particular, he emphasized the two parts of a mode of production as the sources of misery and oppression: one's social relations to the productive process and the kind of technology available determined, in large part, the degree to which one could become and remain a distinctly human being.

His solution to alienated modes of production was theoretically informed resistance and revolution to more enabling, more ennobling forms of work. His critique of the tendencies of capitalism: to disemploy people, to concentrate wealth, to uncontrollable economic cycles, and to socialize the costs of production while privatizing the benefits of production as well as its tendency toward economic imperialism...all these are useful ideas to an emancipatory policy of work.

The elements of a capitalist social philosophy of work: discipline, competition, creativity, innovation, flexibility and productivity together with an emphasis on frugality, caring stewardship, and prudent investment oriented to private accumulation, has produced one of the most remarkable eras in human history. Its impact on history is not less than any other grand narrative still it will change as it has changed the world in its image.

Capitalism has created a new world with new rules, different from all previous modes of production. It has emancipated a significant part of the human race from the squalor, misery, pain and degradation of earlier modes of production. It has given all of humanity the possibility of meaningful control over their own private lives, and mayhap, over the social institutions in which each must live out that life. Capitalism has moved humans out of prehistory, as Marx has said, and into the beginnings of history.

The capitalist philosophy of work has lifted much of Europe, most of North America and parts of the rest of the world out of the idiocy of subsistence agriculture, out of the degradation of feudality, out of the brutality of predatory warfare, out of the misery of slavery and is beginning to destroy the oldest of oppressions, that of patriarchy.

Judeo-Christian The Christian tradition, based firmly upon its Judaic heritage, offers a view of work as liturgy...as a sacred expression of one's commitment to the Christian God. One must speak to people in the language and from the worldview out of which they seek justice. While there is a danger to those millions that the established Church will appropriate these words to celebrate the established order of power and privilege as has happened so often in history, liberation theology now is a powerful ally in its quest for a just and decent society. Absent bureaucratic communism as its chief enemy, the Catholic church will, in all good time, turn its face toward the more serious problems of capitalism.

Buddhism Such major Buddhist concepts as the bodhisattva and the kalyana-mitta inform practical methods found in the Eight-fold Path for reducing human suffering and defining "good" work. The Buddhist philosophy of work is an important topic for convergence in cross-cultural studies. As an ancient religious tradition, it seeks nothing less than transformation of delusions of separate self-interest into an emphasis on the unity of life by advocating a true human vocation of daily compassionate action.

It denies specific career choices; professional soldiers and cigarette advertisers to name two, that are seen to bring alienation or long-term harm to individuals and communities. In appropriate service to others as a kalyana-mitta, the debt for individual well being is gratefully repaid. By the personal appropriation of the bodhisattva ideal, human beings act so as to extend compassion to all inhabitants sharing the earth. In as much as these various concepts inform ideals within Buddhist societies, they also offer a responsible vision of humanity for us all.

Islam.
With allegiance from a fifth of the world, informed by the concepts of Shariah, Mauamalat, Zakat, and haram, Islam will continue to envelop reason and technology inside a religious shell. Armed with faith and the powerful tool of reason taken from Greek philosophy, faced with the growing iniquities of modern life; confronted by great powers which will not defer to their god process, one can expect new prophets to join the 20,000 or more who have already risen to speak out against injustice and tyranny in Islam.

There is one grand narrative not included in this work but which may be a great influence in the future. Varieties of democratic socialism ranging from that of Sweden to that of Canada, New Zealand, and Kerala state in India serve as exemplars for the drama of the Holy in postmodern times. John Roemer, Lane Kenworthy and others are hard at work trying to map out a market socialism which leaves most economic decisions in the hands of individual firms and customers but envelops them in a concern for the common good.

Cuba will host an international conference entitled, Reinventing Socialism in June, 1992, which might be a historic turning point now that socialism is not automatically preempted by what was organized and instituted in the Soviet Union. I will watch its proceedings with considerable interest.

Together with the positivities of capitalist, marxist, Christian and, especially liberation theology, those interested in building a transforming philosophy will find much in democratic socialism with which to contribute to the larger drama of life.

A most interesting and promising form of democratic socialism is Market Socialism. A treatise on the elements of market socialism is beyond the scope of this paper but there are two works in the Red Feather Domain which will help one think about the wisdom of work in this political economy.

The second is a very fine and somewhat technical piece on Market Socialism by two excellent economists from Britain:

No. 194 Value, Markets and Socialism by W. Paul Cockshott and Allin F. Cottrell

CONCLUSION: The Globalization of Capital--of private control over the means of production and systems of distribution--has created many social problems for peoples around the world. Solutions to these problems--to date--has been more capitalism, more fundamentalist religion, more racism and the politics of exclusion--more national chauvinism along with the attempt to restrict home markets to home capitalists and very little else.

In Flint, Michigan, perhaps the center point of the dis-investment in work in the United States, many good efforts have been made to cope with the effects of globalization of jobs yet these are all low-level, local, state and national efforts and cannot touch the larger economic processes which wrack and ruin the world today. Such efforts have to be complementary to the larger efforts to build a transnational metaphysic of the sort embodied democratic socialism else a most unhappy future awaits whole regions of the world.

For the Rich Capitalist Countries in Europe and North America, one need not worry too much; they will survive as indeed former Centers of Wealth and Power have survived over the centuries as the center of wealth has moved across the globe---from Venice in the 13th Century to Brussels in the 15th Century to London in the 17th Century to New York in the 19th and now Japan and the Pacific Rim in the 20th Century...one need not worry too much if the fate of Venice, Brussels and London are any guide.

It is the great dis-locations which beset the 3rd world for which one might well save one's pity and compassion; it is the workers, families, firms and religions there which will be torn asunder by the pitiless pursuit of profit in the 21st Century.

For the Rich Capitalist Countries left behind as this Great Beast lumbers toward Bethlehem, I have lain out five futures. These futures presume the failure of progressive scholars and progressive politicians to work toward Democratic Socialism of the sort mentioned above:

In all this, formation of economic Blocs encompassing whole nations and regions may will replace the Nation-State as the architect of social policy...and thus move the five solutions above up one level of organization in the World Capitalist System.

My own preferred solution is, of course, the kind of Democratic Socialism with some Market features of the sort envisioned by Schweikart, Cockshott, Cottrell and a hundred others still unborn.

The work of progressive scholars demands the wisdom of a transcendent praxis. There is much wisdom in the work of those who built the ancient religions we have inherited; indeed this is perhaps the richest legacy we have; richer by far than all the technology and all the scholarship of modern science. As we have that legacy and as we have the luxury of time and resources as well as the technology, let us to the task.

Who is the Wise man?
And who knows the Interpretation of a Thing?
A man's Wisdom makes his face to shine,
And the hardness of his Countenance is Changed.

...Words of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.

¹ What constitutes useful work varies with the means of production; with hydraulic agriculture, most people can be freed to do other kinds of work including such scribbles as are found in this work. Much of modern science is given over to the development of labor saving technology. All this is helpful to the human project provided that other work congenial to human dignity and human delight is developed in the same instant. Disengagement from the labor process disenchants those surplus to the labor process and those upon whose labor others survive and thrive. Return

² We regret that we do not have the depth of understanding with which to include the Islamic tradition in this essay. Today, more than ever, informed citizens need to know and to value the many positivities of Islam. There are over 800,000,000 Muslims faithful in the world today and their numbers are growing. If that many people give their rare genius and their rare capacity for faith, belief, and trust to any religious tradition, those outside it should try to know, honor and respect it. Return

³ Most of the wars since 1588 have been wars between capitalist powers to ensure access to markets, raw material and labor for domestic capitalism. Such warfare benefits both owner and worker in the short run. As capital is internationalized, such wars are inimical to industry, finance and commerce. WWII was, arguably, the last such battle. Since 1775, wars of colonial liberations appeared and, in 1917, wars of socialist 'liberation.' The Gulf war can be seen as the first of its kind; one in which the big Seven capitalist powers joined to ensure the flow of raw materials, oil in this case, to the new Global World Order. Return