Russell says “Subjectively, there is no common purpose. The uniting purpose exists only in owners and managers, and may be completely absent in most of those who do the work. Some may be proud of the excellence of the cars produced, but most, through their unions, are mainly concerned with wages and hours of work. “
This quote represents the main point of the lecture, which is that people don’t care about the things they are producing with their own hands if they are paid to do so. Instead they only care about the money they will make by creating the product. This causes the product to be worse off than if the person making it didn’t care about money. Russell points out that this was different in the past, before money and mass production, because people did things for themselves rather than to be paid and things that were produced were valued based on what they are rather then how much they will buy. This assertion is similar to others that he makes in other lectures because many times he points out that things are much different now than they were in the past and often makes the assertion that in the past, things were much simpler and therefore better for mankind then today. This is shown by his example of the roles people play in society where now people can’t have as much effect in their roles as in the past.