The reason many of us in the West feel such intense pressure around productivity, why we bring our phones with us everywhere, why we eat at our desks, and push all our personal needs (including housework, yardwork, and other work) to the “weekend” is a product of Mercantilism.   Before Britain invented the mercantile system in the 15th century, time was on a much more personal.  The agrarian cycle allowed productivity to ebb and flow according to a natural rhythm and needs of the farm.  Mercantilism equated how a person spent his or her time directly with the wealth of the entire country and declared that any form of waking idleness lost a country money.  Time spent doing anything that was not work, was considered a waste.

Mercantilism is a form of economic imperialism, a means of maximizing a nation’s wealth and power in relation to that of other nations.  A nation with a large population continuously employed in the manufacture and production of goods has the greatest economic, military, and political power.  This system depends upon a large population of poor laborers in service of a small population of elite masters. In mercantilism, unlike capitalism, upward mobility was not an option as such upward mobility upsets the political and social strata of the country and ultimately reduces the overall prowess of the nation.

The theory of mercantilism was that if the poor are allowed to grow in numbers but wages are kept low, they would produce much more than they can consume creating material wealth the wealthy. The mercantile system justified its approach with moralistic arguments that the poor, if not constantly employed, would devolve into laziness and sloth.  It was assumed that higher wages would lead to vice, drunkenness, and impropriety. 

Then the church got involved by creating intense anxiety nonproductive time.  Now, not only were laborers contending with the demands of a relentless work week, they also experienced spiritual guilt and fear about their fate in the afterlife.  Merchants and the clergy banded together to urge that “no idle person…be allowed or tolerated.” This made its way into public charity in the form of “poor laws” which sought to vilify idleness and unproductive activities (except by the elite).  These laws placed the poor into two categories: the worthy (orphans, widows, the elderly, the disabled, etc.) and the unworthy (lazy drunkards, for instance). The law vilified poor people who were unwilling or unable to work.

Families were made economically accountable for their relations (even distant relations) and the church promoted legislation requiring the poor to prove that no other family or kin was available to care for them before they were eligible for even basic charity like food and shelter.  Those who were homeless or unable to care for a household anymore, were expected to be boarded with their families. If no one would take them in, pauper auctions placed the poor with guardians who took a stipend in exchange for providing room and board but these hosts were expected to work their boarders to offset the costs of room and board.  It was just another a form of indentured servitude.

While we have progressed from actually selling the poor into bonded slavery, mercantilism continues to be part of our modern political reality.  The gig economy disproportionately lures the cash-strapped people (typically poorest population) to fill their time with productive side hustles and there is a huge stigma that comes with idleness.  The moneyed powerful continue to exploit the poor. We close our borders for fear of taking in people unable to support themselves.  We demand protectionist taxation to curb “globalism.” We view those needing charity as “pitiful” and “lazy.”  We hamstring the capitalist economy by protecting some businesses and powerful people from harm and we vilify the poor.  The distribution of power today is virtually identical to mercantilism and while we may not overtly auction the poor into forced labor, we allow predatory loans and regressive taxes to keep them in their place.  So long as the poor stay poor, the rich, irrespective of merit, continue to enjoy a privileged life.  For the poor, the absence of work is “wasted time” or “unemployment.” For the rich, it’s a “vacation.”  “Leisure in a poor man is thought quite a different thing from what it is to a rich man, and goes by a different name,” said British economist Charles Hall in 1805, apparently without irony. “In the poor it is called idleness, the cause of all mischief.”

“It may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. After all, with Your help, I’m starving to death. Oh, dear Lord. You made many many poor people. I realize, of course, it’s no shame to be poor… but it’s no great honor either…”

– Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof (by Sholom Aleichem, 1894)

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