Humanity itself, together with the beauty of humanity, was produced in and through the labor process. As Engels pointed out, when the humans produced, they produced themselves as humans. They cast off their apelike appearance and became more and more beautiful. When the capitalist social disfigurement of exploited labor is removed, the true beauty of labor and of the laborers will stand forth in their true dimensions.

It is only in class society that the myth has grown up that labor is identical with exploited labor. This myth serves the needs of the ruling class which maintains itself as a parasitic excrescence on the backs of the workers. Through the identity they make between labor and exploited labor, they perpetuate a split between producers and consumers, glorifying the latter at the expense of the former. The less you produce and the more you consume, the higher you rise in the world of the snobs and the idle rich. Not labor but the conspicuous waste of the products of labor is the mark of capitalist social distinction.

But this did not always exist, despite their propaganda to the contrary. In primitive society, where exploited labor was unknown, there was no split between producers and consumers. Every member of society produced, according to his age and ability, and every member of society shared in consuming their productions and in the enjoyment of them in common. Social value and distinction were registered in the realm of production, and that is why the women of primitive society were so valuable and regarded so highly. They labored and taught the arts of labor and carried on the traditions of labor and advanced labor to ever higher levels of production.

To cover up their empty, vapid, parasitic existence, the idle rich of capitalist society propagate the notion that the idle life is the "good life" and the "beautiful life." As evidence, they hold up their flabby, lily-white hands with long red fingernails as tokens of "beauty," and the "good life."

What a mockery this is of the gift of labor--the primary creative force of humanity. The truth is, the idle life is the most corrosive and corrupting of all influences upon the mental, moral, physical, and psychological fiber of human beings. Without labor, whether of hand or brain--and these are interdependent--humans rot away. Without labor, the human is less than the potato in the ground and does not deserve the gift of humanity.

One of our tasks is to overthrow this bourgeois lie that labor is identical with exploited labor. Another is to restore labor to its rightful place as the most honorable, the most necessary, the most useful and beautiful of all human attributes.  
 
 
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