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‘Labour is external to the worker, ie it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home His labour is therefore not voluntary but coerced; it is forced labour It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification’— Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844   Observing the Progress of Time (1950)   Maximilian Sacheverell Hollingsworth wondered if he could dictate the entire course of his life on a single day After some deliberation, a process lasting the length of a Wednesday morning, he concluded that it was possible Suddenly, with no prior warning, it seemed to him a matter of some urgency to plan all of the details of his adulthood whilst he was still a young man Brimming with optimism, he hoped that it was simply necessary to decide what he most wanted to do and in which order Immediately he set to work upon the drafting of a plan   At noon he sat inside a public house in Bloomsbury This was a place populated only by solitary male drinkers, isolated men wearing ruffled coats and smoking pipes emitting circles of smoke that hovered and drifted in an unfurling cloud above their heads Grey sunlight dissolved into the dingy huddles of shadows thrown from the battered furnishings In studied silence the barmaid washed empty glasses and placed them in long neat rows along the dark mahogany shelves Maximilian