According to the socialists the workers are more productive than the business executives, the proprietors of businesses and the capitalists. The members of the latter three categories are even totally unproductive according to the socialists. They are even parasites on the workers!
 
But nothing could be further from the truth than this – the socialist´s beloved delusion. The business executives, the proprietors of businesses and not least the capitalists (i.e. those individuals who finance other people´s businesses) are among the most productive members of society.
 
This is, in essence, because they perform some of the most substantial intellectual labour in every modern society. They lead and organize the production – which requires much hard thinking on their part. Their intellectual labour is both more important and more difficult than the workers´ manual labour. Reason is namely man´s basic tool of survival.
 
All the diverse material values which keep us humans alive – food, houses, medicines, computers, etc. – must be produced/created. And this creation is primarily an issue of thinking. It took a lot of thinking – i.e. of intellectual labour, by for example Jonas Salk to invent the polio vaccine – which vaccine has saved the lives of, probably, millions of people. It took a lot of intellectual labour by James Watt to invent the, up until then, most efficient steam engine during the 1700s, the engine which laid the foundation for the 19th century´s Industrial Revolution. It took a lot of intellectual labour by Thomas Edison to invent the first practical incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the first electric power production and distribution system – and so forth.
 
Likewise, it takes a lot of intellectual labour nowadays to lead a business to success – and to make money by means of successful investments in businesses and stocks.
 
To identify the most suitable research projects for a company to invest in, to identify the most suitable products for a company to produce or distribute, to identify the most suitable markets for a company to sell into, to identify the most suitable individual people for a company to hire and so forth – all that requires a lot of thinking on the part of the business executive who is the operational leader of that business. There are so many, many factors which a business executive must take into consideration when he makes his operative decisions.
 
And, to identify the most suitable stocks or companies to invest his finite money in requires a lot of thinking on the part of the capitalist. For, there are so many, many factors which the capitalist must take into consideration when he makes his investment decisions. A company´s profitability, its assets, its financial strength, its market position, its technology IP, its brand name, the quality of its management and so forth.
 
The undersigned knows from his own personal experience that intellectual labour is much more difficult than manual labour. I worked all my working years (45 of them) in factories. Roughly three of those years I produced margarine. Roughly 40 years I worked with machines called excentre presses and hydraulic presses to produce small metal components contained in measuring instruments which were my employer´s end production. My manual labour in the margarine factory and in the instrument factory both required less exertion on my part than the intellectual labour which I had to perform in school when I was young. I am me and I know, because I experienced it personally, that it took much more concentration and effort on my part to write an essay, or to solve an algebraic equation in school than was required of me to operate the machines in the factories in which I worked as an adult.
 
And I know, because I am honest, that the intellectual labour which my bosses performed as I was working with my machines was likewise more difficult than my manual labour. That fact is, but of course, the reason for which far fewer people prove able to become successful business executives than prove able to become blue-collar factory workers like me! And, furthermore, the intellectual labour of the business executives played a more decisive role for whether the entire company succeeded of failed than my manual labour ever did. If the chief executive had made an error and invested the company´s finite money in an unsuitable product or market or strategy or if he had made a bad decision in some other respect – it could have caused the company to have lost many millions of Swedish Crowns. However, if I had made an error (which I sometimes did) it caused the firm a loss of at most a few thousand Swedish Crowns for a damaged tool which had to be repaired, or for a batch of faulty components which had to be discarded.
 
And conversely, it benefited the firm´s profits and success to the tune of millions of Crowns per year if the chief did his job well – and reached wise decisions concerning which products, markets, research projects etc. the firm should invest in. If I, as a worker on the factory floor did my job well – and produced good components efficiently – that good work could possibly have contributed a few extra thousand Crowns per year in profits. So - the enormous difference in the import of the quality of the work done by the boss compared to the import of the quality of my work must in reason be clear to any honest observer.
 
My bosses therefore deserved to receive much higher salaries than I received! For my employers were highly profitable companies during the years I worked for them. The chief executive of those two companies should probably have received a salary of ten or twenty times my wage – after tax! They almost certainly were not permitted to keep ten or twenty times the earnings, after tax, which I kept. In the egalitarian Sweden which I and my bosses were both trapped in there was no economic justice for us!
 
I have already submitted two strong arguments in favour of the premise that intellectual labour is more difficult – and still more crucial – than manual labour. One argument was the circumstance that far fewer individuals prove themselves able to become business executives, capitalists, scientists and so forth than prove able to become factory workers, shopkeepers, truck drivers and so forth. My second argument was the one that each, and every worker in a modern society must in reason know from personal experience that the intellectual labour he was obliged to perform in school was significantly more effort-requiring than the manual labour he performed in adulthood for the sake of making a living.
 
Still another argument/piece of evidence is the evident fact that it takes many years to learn the art of functioning as a successful business executive or scientist or wealthy capitalist. Compared to the modest number of years it takes for an individual to qualify for a blue-collar job. One must usually study at a university for many years before he can become a scientist – or one must pass through a period of many years as a salaried white collar employee before he stands a chance of being promoted to a corner office, or one must go through a period of many years as an investor with relatively modest-scale capital accumulation before he finds himself having become a wealthy capitalist.
 
Still another argument/piece of evidence that intellectual labour is more difficult than manual labour is the fact that business executives, scientists and wealthy capitalists as a rule have significantly longer work weeks than manual workers do. Many business executives, scientists and wealthy capitalists work sixty or seventy hours a week, or even more. Few workers put in more than fifty hours of work in one week – even if, and when they work overtime.
 
Still further argument/piece of evidence for the greater difficulty of intellectual labour over manual labour is the obvious fact that it is primarily the hardest working students in schools who go further in education and become educated to become business executives, scientists and wealthy capitalists. Those individuals who while in school accustom themselves to work only moderately hard must, for the most part, content themselves with becoming workers when they finish schools, if even that. Evidently, a moderate will and ability to work is sufficient for an individual to become a worker, but not to become a business executive, a scientist or a wealthy capitalist.
 
The socialists and their philosophers have caused a great deal of harm by dint of spreading the idea that manual labour is more difficult – and more important – than intellectual labour is. The worst harm caused by the socialists and their philosophers is the grave injustices which the productive thinkers have been subjected to for many, many past decades. The business executives, scientists and wealthy capitalists have had to toil for less money, especially after tax, than their labour morally entitled them to.
 
Even the rest of us have been harmed by the evil of the socialists/egalitarians. Since the productive thinkers have not been equitably rewarded during recent decades, they have become less inclined to think and to produce than they otherwise would have been. The extent of production in the modern world has therefore become smaller than it otherwise would have become. For all of us – including the workers. (Which, of course, serves many - and even perhaps most - of the workers right!)
 
If we wish to maximize the justice and the welfare of humanity - then we must learn to place the degree of value on intellectual labour which it deserves. We must work to bring about a philosophical enlightenment which makes our fellow men realize that reason is man´s basic tool of survival – and that intellectual labour therefore is the most important form of labour – and not “merely” the most difficult form. And, that intellectual labour must be rewarded accordingly.
 
We must, in other words, promote the philosophy which Ayn Rand presented in such books as Atlas Shrugged. (“Och världen skälvde” is the title of the Swedish translation, published by Timbro Förlag.)