— and the Vicar on work and leisure

1. The original fundamental right of man was to get some sort of a living for himself through free access to all the resources of nature about him.
2. Getting a living by hiring himself out to work for another was a sound thing as long at it was better than doing it by direct action in the surrounding nature, upon which one could always fall back.
3. The situation in which man cannot fall back on free access to natural resources and can ONLY live if his labour happens to be necessary to someone else is a state of degradation that is to be condemned.
4. It is clear that continuous "improvement in method", roughly equalling "invention" and "machinery", tends towards getting all the world's necessary work done easily in little time.
5. We are already far advanced in the position where all men's full time labour cannot be "necessary to someone else" who is obliged to "pay" for it. Wherefore, according to the usual social and economic thinking, an increasing number of persons are becoming redundant and will have no "wage value" upon which to claim existence.
6. It is urgent NOW to get people to-face up to the principles:

(a) that man has a right to exist for his own sake and not only if he is an economic necessity to somebody else;

(b) that the near future necessarily involves only small-time "Labour at the world's work", which can no longer be the basis on which people are "paid";

(c) that there must be a frank recognition of lots of leisure and its profitable use.

(The Rev. A. R. Listell in the Voice — Feb. 25, 1956)