What was going on? There were reports of puzzling random acts of vandalism from all over the country. In St. John’s, Newfoundland, page 157 was torn out of 150 books in the public library; in Halifax, the locks in the ladies’ dressing room in the Royal Golf Club were tampered with; in Quebec City, the oil painting of Governor Frontenac in the lobby of the Château Frontenac was stolen; in Montreal, violin G-strings disappeared from all the music stores; in Toronto somebody put airplane cement in the Steinway in the rehearsal hall at the National Ballet School; in Ottawa, somebody wrote the F-word on the top of every totem pole in the Museum of Civilization; in Iqaluit, Nunavut, all the carving tools for making Inuit art suddenly disappeared; in Brandon, Manitoba, there was suddenly a big hole in the screen of the local cinema; in Winnipeg, somebody put garlic in the crêpes Suzette served in the dining room of the Fort Garry Hotel; in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, vandals pinched the instructions for making lamps out of chianti bottles; in Lethbridge, Alberta, travel posters to the Fiji Islands were defaced by unspeakable profanities; in Vancouver, B.C., somebody took a piece out of 2,000 jigsaw puzzles; and in Victoria, they smashed the windows of the Berlitz School.
You will remember that the police made hundreds of arrests but that no charges were laid. The Internet was bubbling over with conspiracy theories. The American media speculated that a plot to throw off the yoke of the Queen of England was behind it all. Public-spirited editorials warned their readers from jumping to conclusions and from blaming recent arrivals whose first name was Mohammed. And we all remember that for once the Prime Minister yielded to the urgent demand of the Leader of the Opposition to appoint a Commission of Inquiry and named Rex Murphy of the CBC to head it.
There is no need to bore you once again with details of the Murphy Commission’s proceedings – they were carried on CPAC and amply covered in the press. All that needs to be said is that even Rex Murphy and his panel of six wise men and six wise women failed to find the answer.
Nobody did until, as you know, THIS BLOG came up with it. The common denominator in the acts of vandalism that ravaged this county was that they all had a connection with leisure activities. The vandals were work addicts who grasped the danger to work posed by the charms of leisure. The only way to stop the vandalism and deal with work addiction, THIS BLOG asserted, was to curb and ultimately cure the millions in our world afflicted with The Protestant Work Ethic. A society, THIS BLOG argued, that had demonstrated its prowess in social engineering by practically eliminating smoking, also a deeply ingrained addiction, should be able to achieve this objective with ease.
If successful, such an achievement would be a far more beneficial giant step for humankind than reaching the moon, THIS BLOG said. The matter was of crucial importance not merely because of the wave of vandalism. There was a real possibility that the economies of industrial societies could function perfectly well with a mere fraction of the workforce employed before the present economic crisis struck. Much of the present unemployment was in fact structural and chronic, and the jobs for millions had disappeared for good. The only way to prevent a revolutionary situation from exploding was to condition the millions who will no longer be able to work in the traditional sense to become volunteers and find meaning in life in the arts and sciences and in leisure activities. Financial arrangements had to be devised to make sure that the standard of living of the millions no longer needed would be no lower than it had been before the crisis.
Other industrial countries were going to have the same experience. Canada was first. We would show them the way.
Eric Koch’s new book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
Eric, your thesis reminds me of the 1986 Couchiching Conference on The Future of Work at which my old friend Stafford Beer (RIP), as opening keynoter, predicted, as I recall, that “work” — that is PAID work — would have to be redefined to mean something like “whatever we do with our time when machines will no longer need human help to produce all the goods and services people want.” As with most predictions, the trick is less in the what than in the when. By when will the new norm — and the life-skills that go with it — need to be adopted? What mechanism for the appropriate distribution of wealth could be devised and imposed or otherwise introduced — and how much social strife will accompany its introduction?
Of course, the privileged classes, i.e., the filthy rich, have already faced one half of this challenge but without the handicap of serious resource constraints. The superannuated face the complete challenge: how to occupy oneself in a fulfilling way (within one’s means) while terminally unemployed.
You yourself seem to have figured it out long ago. The rest of us would do well to find our own way to emulate you.
But members of the workforce must grasp the nettle long before the likes of us needed to — by the time they retire (or are permanently laid off)? graduate from college? high school? kindergarten?
Thank you, Alan. I remember the late Stafford Beer, your friendship with him, and the conference, very well, of course. By then I had already grappled with the problem of work-leisure. My novel, The Leisure Riots, which I brought up-to-date in today’s blog, came out in 1973.
Despite the respect we have for Max Weber and R.H. Tawney, is it still permissible to call it the PROTESTANT work ethic? By the way what is wrong with garlic in crepes Suzette?
B. Re garlic, etc. That is not the way mother made them.
A. Weber zoomed in on Calvinism and especially on its application in the 13 American colonies. I assume he found women-wine- and sun-loving Catholic Bavarians and Italians and French LAZY. Don’t remember what Tawney said.
Still – the Industrial Revolution started in England. France came next – and Germany and the US later, not until after 1870 or so. But I suppose there is no direct connection between it and the Judeo-Christian work ethic.
Exactly! I remember that in the fifties and early sixties a family could live comfortably on one income. Work hours were from 9 to 5. A student could work during the summer and make enough money to live for the rest of the year. Of course universities were affordable. Productivity has gone up since, but not wages adjusted for inflation. We have created jobs which don’t really produce anything useful. If we had a decent pension, all the so-called financial planners could be eliminated not to speak of the brightest who think up the virtual reality investment instruments which got us into all the trouble. Tele-marketers could go too! The measure of success should not be the growth or the GDP, but an index of the quality of life. We are now a nation of gerbils on treadmills, going round and round.
You are right, of course.
The only measure of success should be the quality of responses (yours is very high) to the world’s greatest blogs!
Eric implied a question: “Financial arrangements [such as? =A] had to be devised to make sure that the standard of living of the millions no longer needed would be no lower than it had been before the crisis.” Alan asked: B. “By when will the new norm — and the life-skills that go with it — need to be adopted? C=A. What mechanism for the appropriate distribution of wealth could be devised, and imposed or otherwise introduced — and D. how much social strife will accompany its introduction?”
Step one is to ask questions in a sustainably solvable form & we’d maintain that splitting the population into workers and drones is unstable & unsustainable. So the first solvable formulation is, What arrangements would ensure that living standards would be maintained even though everyone was working shorter work weeks?
A: When the workweek is shortened macro-economically (whole city, province, nation) rather than micro, it squeezes out the market-demanded work on more people like toothpaste & reduces the wage-depressing labor surplus, so market forces raise wages (higher pay for fewer hours as happened 1840-1940 as the workweek was cut from 80 hrs to 40) as employers bid against one another for good (or any) help.
B. It needed to be adopted in 1933 when the US passed a 30hr workweek thru the Senate but FDR blocked it in the House, realized his error by 1935 (no sharework necessitates artificial makework & drags gov’t in as employer & charity of last>first resort) & brought out a 44hr wkwk in 1938 to be cut 2hrs/yr for 2yrs, ergo the 40hr wkwk, frozen ever since with increasing distortions in every area of human life as labor surplus diminishes respect & raises job insecurity, desperation & ecodamage.
C>A. Capitalism has always worked better under a chronic shortage of labor to deconcentrate the national income & wealth than a labor surplus that lets $$ coagulate. The dumb ways to achieve labor shortage = plague & war. The smart way = wkwk decrease & vacation increase (worklife reduction via prolonged “education” & early retirement is wasteful & unsustainable as medicine lengthens human life).
D. Social strife can be reduced by gating & pacing the transition with regular public referendums & allowing people who love their jobs to work as long as they like (love defined by willingness to reinvest overtime-overwork earnings in OT-targeted training & hiring). It’s all on Timesizing.com. Canada federally & 17 states have temporary worksharing programs that just need to be converted to permanent funding. Bills in House & Senate to strengthen & spread to other 33 states (bills already in MO, PA, Ill.) & John Conyers pushing for federal worksharing.
Thanks to Gail Stewart for alerting me to this blog/posting. PS. Are you guys in Ottawa &/or CACOR (Canad. Assoc. for Club of Rome)?
PPS. Since this area involves the time dimension which quantifies every activity & inactivity on this planet, it actually IS the closest we can come to the top title “The answer to all our problems” – mess up the time dimension & you mess up your entire society, as we’re experiencing.
No, I am not in Ottawa, nor in the Club of Rome. The only club I belong to is the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto.
You, sir, live in a universe far loftier than mine. I suspect it is THE REAL WORLD.
All I did in yesterday’s posting was to say “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get rid of the Protestant Work Ethic so that everybody could be a member of the Arts and Letters Club and find total fulfilment there.”
I was of course hoping that OTHERS would figure out the financial arrangements to make it possible.
You, for example.
Kudos to Our Fearless Leader Steve Harpoon for showing the way: his modest experiment at declaring Parliament redundant, if only temporarily, might challenge our elected representatives, who would “no longer be able to work in the traditional sense” if prorogation extended indefinitely, to think about becoming volunteers and finding “meaning in life in the arts and sciences and in leisure activities.” And I too see nothing objectionable about garlic in crepes Suzette.
I agree. ALL rogues should prorogue.
The phrase ‘Protestant work ethic’ has always annoyed me, maybe it’s because I found that whenever I had to do really hard work that the percentage of Protestants, working with me, fell drastically. I think the Protestant work ethic only applies to people who continue to work when they don’t have to. It’s an apology or explanation for not being able to give up the perks conferred on the fortunate. As far as the promise for more leisure time, it’s a 70′s notion that has proven to be illusory since the level of consumer desire continues to rise. And one other problem the crimes you describe would not attract any attention from the media unless they were accompanied by a dead body, preferably nude.
You are right: the idea originated in the seventies. The posting was based on a novel I published in Montreal in 1973.
It was called The Leisure Riots. Publisher: Tundra Press. Abe Books has a few copies.