He was the youngest in the class. Almost everyone else had university degrees or high level training in technology. They either were in a mind-numbingly boring field, or couldn’t get a job in a field where the top 5% are employable, the rest statistics. They were hoping for opportunity working with their hands.

The funniest thing I saw was when I was 2nd year apprentice in my trade. We were doing a job in a place where everyone had university degrees, very specialized work. One fellow had left his pay stub on his desk. I was making more. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to ruin his day.

There is an old joke. A lawyer had a plugged drain, calls a plumber. He shows up, fixes it, and presents the bill. The lawyer says, whew, I’m a lawyer and I can hardly afford this! The plumber says, oh yes, I understand. I felt the same way when I was a lawyer.

Derek

W. H. Auden

“The question is what kind of ideas is favoured by the intellectuals. The question is whether the intellectuals are neutral in their choice of ideas with which they are ready to deal with. Hayek argued that they are not. They do not hold or try to spread all kinds of ideas. They have very clear and, in some respect, very understandable preferences for some of them. They prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige. They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist…” President of the Czeck Republic, Václav Klaus

http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=wFYl3mgsTzI6

“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Karl Marx

“You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx

“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” Karl Marx

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property” Karl Marx

Our founding fathers declared that all men have a God-given human right to the pursuit of happiness; this could be re-stated as a God-given or sacred right to human creativity and the property that accrues from creative work. Excessive taxation of human labor, by degree, leads to slavery; and this was declared unjust and tyrannical by our founders.

“The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.” James Madison

“The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.” James Madison

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” James Madison

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.” John Adams

“Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.” John Adams

“Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?” Samuel Adams

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams

“In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.” Chief Justice John Marshall

“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have … The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” Thomas Jefferson

“The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.” Thomas Jefferson

“Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Thomas Jefferson

“The Constitution of most of our states, and of the United States, assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press.” Thomas Jefferson

“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” Abraham Lincoln

Ironically, the way Marxists think work can be given back to man is making him an employee in some vast, soulless state apparatus which will be perpetually enlarged at the cost of the entrepreneur, self-employed professional and tradesman. Yet common experience will suggest that they are achieving quite the opposite: that the Marxist world where all the means of production are owned by the state is in fact the ultimate in slavery while the world that they in fact destroy — where men are freer agents seeking out opportunity according to preference and conditions — is ironically the world of comparative freedom.

The other irony is that when modern man seeks freedom, he doesn’t seek Russell’s world of cultured leisure. Who doesn’t know the lyrics to Woodstock?

Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, tell me, where are you going
This he told me:

Said, I’m going down to Yasgur’s farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land
And set my soul free

Back to the land. Back to the garden. A return to nature. A journey back, in a word, to our animal roots, where all of the time is spent in survival activities. How strange it is that the Aqe of Aquarius should look to the Age of Stone for its vision of freedom. What beckons them to it? Work in the precise form that Russell denounced it. Maybe they won’t want it any more, once they know what it is.