Productive & unproductive work: Views of Adam Smith & William Morris

Economics, like Politics, makes strange bed fellows. It is surprising that opinions about the title of this essay have been propounded by both Adam Smith, who may be called the "Father of Capitalism" & William Morris, the committed Communist.

Adam Smith

William Morris

Adam Smith, the Scottish Economist, in his magnum opus "The Wealth of Nations", Book 2, Chapter 3, defines agriculture & industrial manufacture as productive work & most others as unproductive work. He, with his famous example of manufacture of pins, glorified division of Labour & mass manufacture. He also defined domestic service as socially un-productive labour, as it adds nothing to the wealth of either individuals or nations.

William Morris, Designer & Craftsman Extra ordinary, who learnt 13 extinct crafts, was a committed Communist & wrote an Utopian book called "News from Nowhere" depicting a pastoral, Communist England with a non industrial society. He, in his essay "Useful Work versus Useless Toil" also defines useful work as agriculture (& here comes the difference), handicrafts. He was against both  division of Labour & mass production, as he felt that those reduced a happy usefully  working human being into a soul-less slave.

We, at present separated by centuries from both these savants, can draw our own conclusions, as we have observed the effect of both these ideologies.