Nietzsche's attitude to the laborer, whether we agree with it or not, cannot be called unsympathetic. We today, in contrast with the ancient world, like to exalt labor, but he does not think that we treat the laborer much better, and he raises the question whether our talk has not some cynicism in it, or at least tartuferie.[1] c He prefers plain speaking, and uses such terms as slavery, and in particular factory-slavery, much as the socialists do.[2] He has a sense of the unhappy effect of the modern machine upon the workers. It depersonalizes labor, strips it of its bit of humanity, turns men into machines. Although it liberates a vast amount of energy, it gives no impulse to higher development, to doing better work, to becoming more artistic; it shows how masses may co-operate by each one doing one thing, and so becomes a pattern for party organization and the conduct of war—its most general effect is to teach the uses of centralization.[3] Once he suggests certain remedies against what is injurious in machine-labor—first, frequent interchange of labor among those working at a machine or at different machines; second, getting a comprehension of the total structure of the machine, including knowledge of its defects and the possibilities of improving it; he finds suggestive the example of a democratic state, which changes its officials often.[4] As to the deserts of labor, he gives up the attempt to estimate them—indeed, desert in general is for him an illusory conception, as we have already seen; all the same he finds considerations of utility in order, and believes that justice as a highly refined utility may well come into play. By this he means a long-range view of consequences, one which takes account not of a momentary situation merely, but of the future as well, hence of the well-being of the laborer, his contentment in body and mind, so that he and his children may work well for coming generations. From this point of view the exploitation of the laborer is a stupidity, a robbery at the expense of the future, an imperiling of society. Nietzsche thinks that we have now almost
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