BORDE BISELADO

For an in-depth understanding of what leisure, conspicuous leisure and leisure consumption mean and for gendered representations of these, it is necessary to outline the development of leisure and class through modernity. This understanding has enabled me to create the platform for my study within the Maltese context.

Leisure is given different interpretations but generally it is loosely considered to be time outside work. It emerges in the context of the division of labour and developed further in capitalism through development of the concept of class. In order to better understand leisure, we will look into the history of work from two perspectives, which will take us as far back as Marx and Veblen’s theoretical concepts regarding leisure and work in society.

According to Veblen (1899), a leisure class was absent in the savage groups in so- called primitive populations. Although the lower stages of barbarism had no developed form of leisure class, it shows usages, motives and circumstances out of which the leisure

class developed. For instance, in Nomadic hunting tribes such as those in North America there was no defined leisure class, but there was still a distinction between classes on the basis of difference of function. One such differentiation was between the gendered occupations of men and women. Women through custom were responsible for the domestic domain and were held to those employments out of which industrial occupation developed at the next advance. The men were exempt from these occupations and were reserved for the public domain undertaking war, hunting, sports (which was not synonymous with leisure) and religious observances. In such communities the man did not view himself as a labourer and was not to be classed with the women’s labour or industry. In such communities there was a profound sense of disparity between men’s and women’s work. The man’s work maintained the group through excellence and efficacy and could not be compared with the uneventful diligence of the woman’s work. Veblen (1899) argued that the sexes differed not only in stature and muscular force but also in temperament and this had given rise to a corresponding division of labour. Veblen suggested that men are stouter, more massive and better capable of sudden violent strain, are more inclined to self- assertion, active emulation and aggression. Especially in predatory groups of hunters, in habitats which called for sturdier virtues, for instance the pursuit of large game requiring massiveness, agility and ferocity, would be done by the able-bodied males and the women together with members who were unfit for the men’s jobs did what other work there was to do. The differentiation of functions between sexes is thus hastened and widened as early as the ages of barbarism. At this stage in history, therefore, the distinction between industrial and non-industrial employment is already evident. This distinction is the early foundation of class shaped through type of employment, even though at the time, it was as yet unpaid employment.

According to Veblen (pp.2-3), the leisure class developed mostly in the higher barbarian culture and reached full development in feudal Europe and Japan. The most striking economic difference between classes was the distinction between the type of employment people had, according to their class. In the barbarian culture, the upper classes did not have what Veblen (p.1) called ‘industrial’ occupations but had employment in areas where honour was attached to the job such as warfare, priestly services and other less labour-intensive work, making them the elementary leisure class. The exclusion of upper classes from industrial jobs and practical economic production expressed their economically superior rank. Subsidiary employments to the upper leisure class jobs were

reserved for the lower grades of the leisure class. Such ‘occupations’ as Veblen (p.1) called them, included the manufacture and care of arms and war canoes, preparation of sacred apparatus and so on. Although they performed useful work and contributed to the well- being of the tribe, their work was less productive and reliable than were farming and animal domestication which were occupations done by the lower class. The nature of their occupation signified the emergence of the leisure class. The type of occupation reflected their class. Those occupations that were not productive and that the tribe did not rely on for everyday subsistence were considered as higher in class.

Marx’s philosophy of history differs from that of Veblen. Marx (1967) assumed that the story of humankind represents a threefold process: an ascent in which man gains more and more control over nature and its resources through science and technological development; a descent in which man grows more and more alienated from himself and his fellow man; and a synthesis in which man and history participate in an upward movement of consciousness evolving towards a predetermined end. Where Marx saw meaning and purpose in history, Veblen saw movement and process. In Marx the present is a prelude to the future while in Veblen the present is burdened by the past (Diggins, 1999, pp.59-76).

According to Marx (1967), the stages in history start with the primitive, the communal, the slave modes of production and then feudalism, out of which develops capitalism. The end of feudalism is linked to mercantile activity and free labour which was no longer tied to the land. This was the period between the 12th and the 14th centuries where the start of capitalism can be identified and with it increasing alienation of the small producer from the control of his products, and the new status of the semi-independent peasant who increasingly depends on the market for the sale of his labour. An important element in the development from feudalism to capitalism was the development of primary accumulation of capitalist investment. According to Marx’s labour theory of value, this could only occur when the owners of money and means of production meet masses of workers who, because they were dispossessed of their instruments of production, were forced to sell their labour power in exchange of wages. Marx (1967, p.642) looked at the case of England at the end of the 15th century as the ‘classic form’ where the nobility, impoverished by the feudal wars, disband their castle retainers and uproot the peasants in order to turn arable land into grazing pastures which can be managed by only a few herdsmen. Thus large numbers of independent peasants were in ruin and thrown into the labour market as the first ‘mass of free proletarians’. The Reformation contributed to this

process through distribution of land to royal favourites. This process freed people from serfdom only to enslave them in a wage system at which stage the seed of capitalism was planted.

At this point a new class which was ready to exploit labour was formed through manufacturers’ accumulated capital facilitated by overseas discoveries. According to Diggins (1999) organised production spread to rural areas after the 16th century where weavers and spinners were introduced to collective labour with little training. The capitalist era is therefore introduced through manufacture, meaning hand labour as Marx (1967) believed, not through technical inventions as Veblen (1899) believed. This era lasted more than 200 years from the mid-16th century to the end of the 18th century. In this period a division of labour emerges as the emergence of a class which controlled more and more the means of production, a class which Marx (1967) in ‘The Communist Manifesto’, called the bourgeoisie. This class represents the movement of capital away from trade itself. The Industrial Revolution in England brought into power appropriators of surplus value, the bourgeois capitalists promoting free trade extending their domain of modern agriculture on large farm systems.

Marx (1967) believed that the upper class and the bourgeoisie, were at logger heads with one another and that the lower class, the proletariat, would inevitably overthrow the upper class. On the other hand, Veblen (1899) believed that rather than the lower classes overthrowing the upper class, they would strive to climb up to the upper class setting the example of trying to have a better lifestyle and gave the working class purpose.