TRADITION AND THE MODERN AGE
55
the modern age, those who labored were not citizens and those who
were citizens were first of all those who did not labor or who pos–
sessed more than their labor power. This similarity becomes even
more striking when we look into the actual content of Marx's ideal
society. Leisure time is seen to exist under the condition of state–
lessness, or under conditions where, in Lenin's famous phrase which
renders Marx's thought very precisely, the administration of society
has become so simplified that every cook is qualified to take over
its machinery. Obviously, under such circumstances the whole busi–
ness of politics, which is now the simplified "administration of things"
(Engels), could be of interest only to a cook. This, to be sure, is
very different from actual conditions in antiquity, where, on the
contrary, political duties were considered so difficult and time-con–
suming that those engaged in them could not be permitted to under–
take any tiring activity. (Thus, for instance, the shepherd could
qualify for citizenship but the peasant could not, or the painter,
but not the sculptor, was still recognized as something more than a
banausos,
the distinction being drawn in either case simply by apply–
ing the criterion of effort and fatigue. ) It is against the time-con–
suming political life of an average full-fledged citizen of the Greek
polis
that the philosophers, especially Aristotle, established their ideal
of
schoU,
of leisure time, which in antiquity never meant freedom
from ordinary labor, a matter of course anyhow, but time free from
political activity and the business of the state.
In Marx's ideal society these two different concepts are inex–
tricably combined: the classless and state-less society somehow realizes
the general ancient conditions of leisure from labor and, at the same
time, leisure from politics. This is supposed to come about when the
"administration of things" has taken the place of government and
political action. This twofold leisure from labor as well as politics
had been for the philosophers the condition of a
bios theoretikos,
a
life devoted to philosophy and knowledge in the widest sense of
the word. Lenin's cook, in other words, lives in a society providing
her with as much leisure from labor as the free ancient citizens en–
joyed in order to devote their time to
politeuesthai,
as well as as much
leisure from politics as the Greek philosophers had demanded for the
few who wanted to devote all their time to
philosophein.
The combin–
ation of a state-less (apolitical) and almost labor-less society loomed
