Labour

‘By Labour,’ Marshall stated, ‘is meant the economic work of man, whether with the hand or the head.’1 Man is the input and yet also the output: ‘Man himself is the chief means of the production of that wealth of which he is the ultimate aim.’2 Without the contribution of human beings the national income would not only not be rising but would not even exist: ‘In a sense there are only two agents of production, nature and man. Capital and organization are the result of the work of man aided by nature.’3 Yet as a result of that contribution, both man’s taste and man’s character are transformed and upgraded to such an extent that it would be no exaggeration to identify the chief product of labour as man himself. Besides that, activity is an important source of utility in its own right, and independent of the changes in standard of life and standard of comfort to which it leads: it is only the ‘more ignorant and phlegmatic of races and of individualsi’4 which regard it as the curse of Adam rather than, more correctly, as much-to-be-welcomed outlet for creative impulses and the instict of workmanship.