It might at first seem strange to consider Bertrand Russell and Islamic coffee culture together, even more so in the context of Socialist Idleness. However, upon analysing Russell’s In Praise of Idleness (1932) and The Case for Socialism (1935) alongside Rooms 42-3 of the British Museum, a common problem emerges along with a compelling solution.
Pictured above, items 14-23 in The Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic world are seemingly innocuous and skilfully crafted pieces of gold jewellery belonging to the women of Fatimid Egypt, Byzantium, Syria and Palestine. Yet these beautiful earrings, as dowries, made up part of the ‘bride package’ men received upon marriage, cementing women’s place as exchangeable objects and securing the economic power of rich families.
Gold has remained a mainstay of patriarchal power and class hierarchy across the centuries. Russell attacks this vehicle for inequality in The Case for Socialism, suggesting that private investment be prohibited such that, ‘since no one will be in receipt of interest, private wealth will gradually melt away except as regards a reasonable modicum of personal possessions’. If gold were excluded from the market, shares could not be bought and would thus dissipate, undermining the foundations of economic strongholds and ultimately bringing economic equality.
With the mainstays of ‘old money’ gone, working life would progress within fairer parameters. In Praise of Idleness deplores current working conditions, stating that ‘we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense with their labour by making the others overwork’.
Yet ‘modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labour required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone’. Thus, Russell proposes a four-hour work day, enabling universal employment and increased leisure. ‘Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid’ and will lead scientific and cultural innovation, ‘their […] originality […] unhampered’ by work-related exhaustion.
Whilst this may sound like unachievable utopia, the British Museum’s ‘Life in a cup: coffee culture in the Islamic world’ suggests otherwise, centring coffee-drinking as a vital socio-cultural phenomenon.
Leisure sparks innovative ideas and prompts us into realms as yet unexplored
Western travellers ‘underestimated […] the importance attached locally to coffee drinking as a time spent enhancing social interactions, sharing information, conducting business and resolving conflicts’.
Coffee-drinking even functioned as a form of resistance, revealing the equalising potential of leisure. ‘Coffee houses emerged as places where people of different backgrounds could socialise on an equal footing […] facilitated interactions that challenged traditional boundaries and often attracted the disapproval of the authorities’.
This is perhaps unsurprising, since from the late fourteenth century onwards, coffee was utilised by the Shadhiliyya Sufi orders to transcend worldly powers and enhance mystical experience. Later, it was in the coffeehouse that culture and the arts flourished and people ‘could socialise, discuss current affairs and listen to poetry and music’ irrespective of the powers that be.
Bertrand Russell may not have been an Arabica-drinking Muslim, yet there are striking similarities between his blueprints for change and the anti-hierarchical coffee-houses of the Islamic world.
Where gold brings economic dominance and oppression, coffee levels out. Where hereditary money harks back to traditional structures of power, leisure sparks innovative ideas and prompts us into realms as yet unexplored.
Perhaps what we need in the twenty-first century is not more ‘productivity’ or a better ‘work ethic’ (as myriad podcasts, blogs and self-help books would have us believe), but time to think, drink coffee and dream…