Politicians often contrast their parents menial jobs with their own successes. John Churchill wonders about this:
Are we to say that [work] has value only in so far as it transcends itself, in a generation or two? Is there no intrinsic value ─ no good in itself ─ in the work of a life that does not rise, in its own span, above the level of the mop and the apron?
This is where I balk. Call me a Calvinist. I believe in the redemptive power of work. I believe that well-directed work, work well done, has about it an intrinsic dignity and intrinsic nobility, that stands no matter what happens further in the life of the worker, or his or her progeny. We are, I think, so chastened by the truths in Marx’s concept of the alienation of labor, and so rightly horrified by the exploitation of labor in our own national history ─ enslaved and wage-earning ─ that we are apt to think of the condition of work itself as an evil to be overcome.
Loosely related, Gary Gutting contemplates the utility of work. Previous Dish on the virtue of industriousness here.
The Dish 