nual
work, such as not infrequently a mechanic to-day affects towards the
day-laborer, who performs work on the street, or the like. Society
demands only socially necessary work; hence all work is of equal value
to society. If work that is disagreeable and repulsive can not be
performed mechanically or chemically and by some process converted into
work that is agreeable--a prospect that may not be put in doubt, seeing
the progress made on the fields of technique and chemistry--and if the
necessary volunteer forces can not be raised, then the obligation lies
upon each, as soon as is his turn, to do his part. False ideas of shame,
absurd contempt for useful work, become obsolete conceptions. These
exist only in our society of drones, where to do nothing is regarded as
an enviable lot, and the worker is despised in proportion to the
hardness and disagreeableness of his work, and in proportion to its
social usefulness. To-day work is badly paid in proportion as it is
disagreeable. The reason is that, due to the constant revolutionizing of
the process of production, a permanent mass of superfluous labor lies on
the street, and, in order to live, sells itself for such vile work, and
at such prices that the introduction of machinery in these departments
of labor does not "pay." Stone-breaking, for instance, is proverbially
one of the worst paid and most disagreeable kinds of work. It were a
trifling matter to have the stone-breaking done by machinery, as in the
United States; but we have such a mass of cheap labor-power that the
machine would not "pay."[191] Street and sewer cleaning, the carting
away of refuse, underground work of all sorts, etc., could, with the aid
of machinery and technical contrivances, even at our present state of
development, be all done in such manner that no longer would any trace
of disagreeableness attach to the work. Carefully considered, the
workingman who cleans out a sewer and thereby protects people from
miasmas, is a very useful member of society; whereas a professor who
teaches falsified history in the interest of the ruling classes, or a
theologian who seeks to befog the mind with supernatural and
transcendental doctrines are highly injurious beings.

The learned fraternity of to-day, clad in offices and dignities, to a
large extent represents a guild intended and paid to defend and justify
the rule of the leading classes with the authority of science; to make
them appear good and necessary;