Labor

Labor is necessary but servile: those whose lives are consumed by work lack the leisure for virtue, political participation, and the life well lived.

Labor is both a natural obligation and a penitential discipline: it is owed to the community, sanctified by its connection to the divine order, and made dignified by craft.

Labor is the source of all value and the foundation of all rightful property: what a man works on becomes his own.

Labor and property inequality corrupted natural freedom: the social contract is a fraud perpetrated by the rich on the poor.

Labor is both the source of national wealth and the real price of all things; the division of labor enriches society but tends to impoverish the spirit of the individual laborer.

Labor creates all value, but capitalism alienates workers from their product, their activity, and each other; emancipation requires abolishing wage labor altogether.

Economic justice for labor requires fair wages, worker participation in management, and the political recognition that labor and capital have opposed interests that democracy must mediate.