The Emergence of Labour as a Positive Value
The main step towards modern freedom or freedom for all lies with the recognition of economic activity by political philosophers. This recognition comes along with that of labour and of the workers.
Hence, if the workers are no longer considered as “outsiders”, if they are allowed to take an active part in society, they acquire the status of full citizens and their political rights could no longer be ignored. Some major political philosophers participated in this movement, exemplified here by the two prominent figures of John Locke and Max Weber: although they are ages apart from one another, they correspond respectively to a rehabilitation of labour through the law of nature, or in reference to the emergence of a new spirituality in Europe. You cannot ignore the role played by Christianity in such a process of emergence.