Occupational Specialization and the Tyranny of Full Time Labor

“In early communities, labor itself is a part-time activity, impossible to segregate completely from other functions of life, like religion, play, communal intercourse, even sexuality. In the city specialized work became for the first time an all-day, year round occupation. As a result, the specialized worker, a magnified hand, or arm, or eye, achieved excellence and efficiency in the part, to a degree impossible to reach except by such specialization; but he lost his grip on life as a whole. This sacrifice was one of the chronic miscarriages of civilization: so universal that it has become ‘second nature’ to urban man. The blessing of a varied, fully humanized life, released from occupational constraints, was monopolized by the ruling classes.” (emphasis added)

 ---------Lewis Mumford, The City in History, p. 103

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