[crusso]

I love Bertrand Russell. Such brilliant quotes. I especially love his thoughts on religion.

Unfortunately, he was no futurist. His view of the manual laborer doing all the work vs the bosses telling the worker what to do was hopelessly mired in the past and plagued with his thinking that the industrial revolution's growing pains were permanent or even worsening.

Given that Peter Drucker was around and writing at the same time, it's not like the idea that we were heading somewhere better as a society was unknowable.

This passage in the link you provided stood out to me:

  The small surplus above bare necessaries was not left to those who produced it, 
  but was appropriated by warriors and priests. In times of famine there was no 
  surplus; the warriors and priests, however, still secured as much as at other 
  times, with the result that many of the workers died of hunger.

These days, our warrior/priest caste is actually the government and the elite corporatists that collude with it. Economy goes up, government spending goes up. Economy goes down, government spending goes up... strange that.

[lfborjas]

Interesting, does this essay convey to you that the manual labourer is doomed and Russell's being a pessimist? I got quite the contrary from it (advocating some sort of socialist state), on par with wilde's [the soul of man under socialism](http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-m...)

Or are you referring to other writings by Russell? I have to confess that besides this essay and "proposed roads to freedom" I've read little of his own stances.

[heretohelp]

Funny you mention that you love Bertrand Russell since he was a massive fan of idleness and against the cult of overwork.

[crusso]

Your mistake would be in assuming that I would commit the fallacy of ad hominem, I guess.

Religion was pretty well-trodden ground in his time and his thoughts on it were really insightful. The future of the knowledge-based economic world didn't seem to be his forte. Regardless, the guy put some thought into his writings that's worth respecting and he certainly knew how to craft a phrase that would be quotable for centuries to come.