54 Business The EconomistSeptember 5th 2020
2Bartleby After the fall
T
he studyof working life tends to be
dominated by economists, manage-
ment consultants and business-school
professors. So it is nice to get a new per-
spective. James Suzman, an anthropol-
ogist, provides that fresh appraisal in an
ambitious new book called “Work: A
History of How We Spend Our Time”.
Mr Suzman’s interpretation has a
quasi-Biblical feel in which hunter-
gatherers, like the Ju/’hoansi tribesmen
of southern Africa whom he has studied,
lived in the garden of Eden. They worked
only 15 hours a week and shared their
provisions equally. Then came “the fall”
and the arrival of agriculture, which
brought with it hierarchical societies,
inequality, harder work and poorer diets.
Farming’s only, but crucial, advantage
was that the pastoralists were able to
outbreed the hunter-gatherers and even-
tually displace them from the land.
Farming also brought a change of
mentality. Hunter-gatherers may occa-
sionally go short of food but they are
rarely short of time. Agriculture is more
driven by the calendar: a time to plant
and a time to harvest. It also requires
regular maintenance: weeding of plants,
milking of cows and mending of fences.
Human life became more regimented.
The seasonal nature of agriculture
also had implications. Grain needed to be
stored and those who controlled the
stores became the elite. This led to the
development of writing, as the surplus
was traded and rations allocated. As well
as grain silos, some agricultural societies
built monumental edifices like the pyr-
amids. That, too, required new profes-
sions like stonemasons and carpenters.
In time, humans gathered in towns and
cities, which also created specialist
occupations like shopkeepers.
Perhaps the development of sophisti-cated societies was inevitable. As Mr Suz-
man notes, humans’ complex brains ex-
pend a lot of energy processing
information. When you are awake you
constantly seek out stimulation and en-
gagement, and when you are deprived of
information you suffer from boredom.
This analysis helps explain modern
habits. The efficiency of agriculture and
the exploitation of energy sources such as
coal and oil has allowed people in the
developed world to meet their basic needs
of food and warmth. But human brains
need to be kept active. People created tasks
for themselves. First there was the Indus-
trial Revolution, which sent workers into
factories. Automation subsequently made
manufacturing more efficient, at the cost
of many jobs.
The rise of the service sector, Mr Suz-
man suggests, is a way for people to keep
themselves busy, even though many indi-
viduals are dissatisfied with work they feel
is meaningless. Another sign of the human
need for activity is that people now un-
dertake what was once considered work
(fishing, gardening, baking) as hobbies.The result of this process, he argues,
is an unsatisfactory relationship be-
tween humans and their jobs. “The work
we do also defines who we are; deter-
mines our future prospects, dictates
where and with whom we spend most of
our time; mediates our sense of self-
worth; moulds many of our values and
orients our political loyalties,” he writes.
Humans have come to view idleness
as a sin and industriousness as a virtue,
and teach children that hard work will
pay off. In today’s developed economies,
though, there is little correspondence
between time worked and monetary
reward. Indeed, Mr Suzman questions
“why we are content to let our markets
reward those in often pointless or para-
sitic roles so much more than those we
recognise as essential”.
This familiar criticism may strike a
chord with many readers. However, Mr
Suzman’s view of modern society gives
little credit to economic growth. Thanks
to prosperity, fewer mothers die in child-
birth or infants in their early years. Peo-
ple in general are taller and live longer;
they have a higher level of education and
more choices than before.
Economic growth also brings in-
novation. Bartleby’s mother was particu-
larly grateful for the invention of the
washing machine, which saved her a day
a week of scrubbing and wringing wet
clothes through the mangle.
If humankind had stuck to hunting
and gathering, there would be a lot fewer
humans. Even if Mr Suzman had been
alive in such a world, he would have been
unable to study anthropology or write
books. Modern work can indeed be bor-
ing—and so, as the pandemic has shown,
can sitting at home. Not many people
would want to live their lives back in the
year 1020, or even 102000 bc.An anthropologist examines the world of workHaving business in China was not a pre-
condition for the handouts; many compa-
nies, especially small and medium-sized
ones that made up the bulk of applicants,
had little or none. An executive at Novel
Crystal Technology, a producer of materials
for semiconductors, says his firm applied
for the subsidy to reduce overconcentra-
tion—in the American market. The sums
on offer are far too small to spur all-out de-
coupling, says Onishi Yasuo, a former offi-
cial at the Japan External Trade Organisa-
tion, an independent government agency.
Most Japanese firms with lots of expo-sure to China are in “wait and see” mode,
says Mr Ke. America may have a new gov-
ernment soon. The scope and enforcement
of American sanctions is vague. Even if
tensions keep rising, Japan Inc is unlikely
to behave as a monolith. Makers of niche
products for export may decamp from Chi-
na. Firms with a large Chinese business,
such as carmakers, will be loth to leave.
In the long run the risk for corporate Ja-
pan is less geopolitics than competition.
China already transformed once, from a
land of cheap labour into a booming con-
sumer market; more than 70% of what Jap-anese companies’ affiliates produce in Chi-
na is sold there. Now a second shift is under
way, from consumer market to rival in so-
phisticated technology.
The latest annual survey of 74 technol-
ogy products and services by Nikkei, a Japa-
nese business newspaper, found that last
year Chinese companies overtook Japan in
market share for liquid-crystal displays in-
stalled in smartphones and insulators for
lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehi-
cles. As an adviser to a large Japanese bank
observes, that is what really makes Japa-
nese firms nervous. 7