Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographical note
- A note on the text
- News from Nowhere
- 1 Discussion and bed
- 2 A morning bath
- 3 The guest house and breakfast therein
- 4 A market by the way
- 5 Children on the road
- 6 A little shopping
- 7 Trafalgar Square
- 8 An old friend
- 9 Concerning love
- 10 Questions and answers
- 11 Concerning government
- 12 Concerning the arrangement of life
- 13 Concerning politics
- 14 How matters are managed
- 15 On the lack of incentive to labour in a communist society
- 16 Dinner in the hall of the Bloomsbury Market
- 17 How the change came
- 18 The beginning of the new life
- 19 The drive back to Hammersmith
- 20 The Hammersmith guest house again
- 21 Going up the river
- 22 Hampton Court, and a praiser of past times
- 23 An early morning by Runnymede
- 24 Up the Thames
- 25 The third day on the Thames
- 26 The Obstinate Refusers
- 27 The upper waters
- 28 The little river
- 29 A resting-place on the upper Thames
- 30 The journey's end
- 31 An old house amongst new folk
- 32 The feast's beginning – the end
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
15 - On the lack of incentive to labour in a communist society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographical note
- A note on the text
- News from Nowhere
- 1 Discussion and bed
- 2 A morning bath
- 3 The guest house and breakfast therein
- 4 A market by the way
- 5 Children on the road
- 6 A little shopping
- 7 Trafalgar Square
- 8 An old friend
- 9 Concerning love
- 10 Questions and answers
- 11 Concerning government
- 12 Concerning the arrangement of life
- 13 Concerning politics
- 14 How matters are managed
- 15 On the lack of incentive to labour in a communist society
- 16 Dinner in the hall of the Bloomsbury Market
- 17 How the change came
- 18 The beginning of the new life
- 19 The drive back to Hammersmith
- 20 The Hammersmith guest house again
- 21 Going up the river
- 22 Hampton Court, and a praiser of past times
- 23 An early morning by Runnymede
- 24 Up the Thames
- 25 The third day on the Thames
- 26 The Obstinate Refusers
- 27 The upper waters
- 28 The little river
- 29 A resting-place on the upper Thames
- 30 The journey's end
- 31 An old house amongst new folk
- 32 The feast's beginning – the end
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Summary
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘I was expecting Dick and Clara to make their appearance any moment: but is there time to ask just one or two questions before they come?’
‘Try it, dear neighbour – try it,’ said old Hammond. ‘For the more you ask me the better I am pleased; and at any rate if they do come and find me in the middle of an answer, they must sit quiet and pretend to listen till I come to an end. It won't hurt them; they will find it quite amusing enough to sit side by side, conscious of their proximity to each other.’
I smiled, as I was bound to, and said: ‘Good; I will go on talking without noticing them when they come in. Now, this is what I want to ask you about – to wit, how you get people to work when there is no reward of labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously?’
‘No reward of labour?’ said Hammond, gravely. ‘The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?’
‘But no reward for especially good work,’ quoth I.
‘Plenty of reward,’ said he – ‘the reward of creation. The wages which God gets, as people might have said time agone. If you are going to ask to be paid for the pleasure of creation, which is what excellence in work means, the next thing we shall hear of will be a bill sent in for the begetting of children.’
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- Information
- Morris: News from Nowhere , pp. 94 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995