ABSTRACT
Work is undoubtedly central to the human existence, but the meaning and the practice of work vary greatly among different cultures and epochs. Referring to some of the major directions of development, in early modern Europe the activity of work began to be associated with the human endeavour of intervening in nature with the aim of eventually conquering it. This tradition lived on into the second half of the twentieth century. In his classic work, Max Weber argued that the reformation facilitated the revaluation of work in European culture, even if this process had started to unfold in earlier centuries. This increasing appreciation of work gained a further impulse when seventeenth-century classical political economy explicitly connected the idea of work to the idea of value. Thus, work was more and more associated with those activities that were either salaried jobs or professions, or yielded some kind of income. Consequently, the status of work improved to a great extent in the modern age: work (more exactly paid work) became the basis of social recognition and political activities. However, the representatives of classic political economy, including Adam Smith, already emphasized the potentially negative effects of the division of labour, and Karl Marx elaborated on the alienation that the new capitalist production system created. The ambivalence of approaches to and attitudes towards work have persisted in the twentieth century as well. 1
