The Man‐Made World
It is this lack of natural instinct for labor in the male of our species, together with the ideas and opinions based on that lack, and voiced by him in his many writings, religious and other, which have given
to the world its false estimate of this great function, human work.
That which is our very life, our greatest joy, our road to all advancement, we have scorned and oppressed; so that “working people,” the “working classes,” “having to work,” etc., are to this day spoken of with contempt. Perhaps drones speak so among themselves of the “working bees!”
Normally, widening out from the mother‘s careful and generous service in the family, to careful, generous service in the world, we should find labor freely given, with love and pride.
Abnormally, crushed under the burden of androcentric scorn and prejudice, we have labor grudgingly produced under pressure of necessity; labor of slaves under fear of the whip, or of wage‐slaves, one step higher, under fear of want. Long ages wherein hunting and
fighting were the only manly occupations, have left their heavy impress. The predacious instinct and the combative instinct weigh down and disfigure our economic development. What Veblen calls
“the instinct of workmanship” grows on, slowly and irresistably; but the malign features of our industrial life are distinctively androcentric: the desire to get, of the hunter; interfering with the desire to give, of the mother; the desire to overcome an antagonist—
originally masculine, interfering with the desire to serve and benefit—originally feminine.
Let the reader keep in mind that as human beings, men are able to over‐live their masculine natures and do noble service to the world; also that as human beings they are today far more highly developed
than women, and doing far more for the world. The point here brought out is that as males their unchecked supremacy has resulted in the abnormal predominance of masculine impulses in our human
processes; and that this predominance has been largely injurious.
As it happens, the distinctly feminine or maternal impulses are far more nearly in line with human progress than are those of the male; which makes her exclusion from human functions the more
mischievous.
Our current teachings in the infant science of Political Economy are naively masculine. They assume as unquestionable that “the