"For centuries on end it has been precisely vitally necessary work that the political ideology of the ruling but nonworking classes has depreciated. On the other hand, it has represented non-work as a sign of noble blood. All socialist ideologies reacted to this appraisal with a mechanistic and rigid reversal of valuations. The socialists conceived of ‘work’ as relating solely to those activities that had been looked down upon in feudalism, i.e., essentially to manual labour; whereas the activity of the ruling classes was represented as non-work. To be sure, this mechanical reversal of ideologic valuations was wholly in keeping with the political concept of the two economically and personally sharply demarcated social classes, the ruling and the ruled. From a purely economic point of view, society could indeed be divided into ‘those who possessed capital’ and ‘those who possessed the commodity, working power’ . From the point of view of bio-sociology, however, there could be no clear-cut division between one class and another, neither ideologically nor psychologically, and certainly not on the basis of work. The discovery of the fact that the ideology of a group of people does not necessarily have to coincide with its economic situation, indeed, that economic and ideologic situation are often sharply opposed to one another, enabled us to understand the fascist movement, which had remained uncomprehended until then. In 1930 it became dear that there is a ‘cleavage’ between ideology and economy, and that the ideology of a certain class can develop into a social force, a social force that is not confined to that one class."
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Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, (1933), ch. 11, p. 383
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Work
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