Following that pitiful conception of labour as a curse, comes the very old and androcentric (i.e. male-centred) habit of despising it as belonging to women and then to slaves … for long ages men performed no productive industry at all, being merely hunters and fighters. Our current teachings in the infant science of political economy are naively masculine. They assume as unquestionable that “the economic man” will never do anything unless he has to; will only do it to escape pain or attain pleasure; and will, inevitably, take all he can get and do all he can to outwit, overcome, and if
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