Directly seeing our well-being increase in proportion to our work is a better motivator to work than a wage
Well-being has always been the most powerful stimulant to work. And where a worker hardly succeeds to produce the bare necessities with difficulty, a free worker, who sees ease and luxury increasing for them and for others in proportion to their efforts, spends infinitely more energy and intelligence, and obtains first-class products in a far greater abundance. One feels riveted to misery, the other hopes for ease and luxury in the future. In this lies the whole secret. Therefore a society aiming at the well-being of all, and at the possibility of all enjoying life in all its manifestations, will give voluntary work, which will be infinitely superior and yield far more than work has produced up till now under slavery, serfdom, or wagedom.
References
- Kropotkin, Peter. (1892). The Conquest of Bread Chapter 12. Objections (p. ).