ABSTRACT
Can a wage labourer be described as ‘free’? The very concept of ‘labour’ implies at least some degree of compulsion. As Womack (1979: 739) pointed out, for about 2500 years Western cultures distinguished between ‘labour’ and ‘work’. The Greeks separated ponein from ergazesthai, the Romans distinguished laborare from facere while the Germans contrasted arbeiten with werken. In every European language, he writes: ‘labour meant pain, effort, pangs, penalty, strain, drudgery, struggle, battle, suffering, grief, distress, poverty, loneliness, abandonment, ordeal, adversity, trouble. Work meant making, building, providing, causing, accomplishment, completion, satisfaction.’ The secular distinction was paralleled by a religious viewpoint. For the Benedictines, ‘labour’ was not seen as noble or rewarding, but as a penance designed to avoid the spiritual dangers of idleness.
