Hannah Arendt (2000 [1964]), 'Labor, Work, Action', _The Portable Hannah Arendt_, New York: Penguin, pp. 167-181.
Hannah Arendt (1998 [1958]) _The Human Condition_, Chicago: University of Chicago Press

In making the distinction between work 'vita contemplativa' and 'vita activa' - contemplation and action - it is clear to Hannah Arendt that active life simply cannot be avoided (2000: 167). Rather than simply think that all action ends in contemplation or that contemplation leads to action, it is not possible to go through life without acting in it, whereas contemplation is unfortunately optional. In describing the human condition, the centrality of labour, work and action seems indisputable to Arendt. The problem for Arendt is that in the history of philosophy, labour is always placed at the bottom of the hierarchy, and action - that which involves the political sphere - is under-acknowledged. In the work of Marx, she maintains labour is tied too firmly to work at the expense of action. She points out that in the pre-philosophical hierarchy, action took the highest position. 

Broadly describing the same activity, the distinction between work and labour is hard to fathom: she quotes Locke 'the labor of our body and the work of our hands' (1998: 80); _homo faber_ who makes and works upon, or fabricates,  as distinguished from _animal laborans_ which labours and mixes with (1998: 136), and produces 'labour power' and surplus when more than that which is required for its own 'reproduction' (labour produces life itself). Arendt points out that most European languages make similar distinctions: 'arbeiten' and 'werken' in German; 'laborare' and 'fabricari' in Latin; 'ponein' and 'ergazesthai' in Greek. It seems that the human body is given over to labour, the reproductive process, the biological and the link to the human organism (even the pains of birth are associated of course). Thus labouring is tied closely to the cycles of life itself, and consumption not least, it 'corresponds to the condition of life itself' and lasting happiness and contentment lies in 'painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration' (2000: 172). To Arendt, the labour of bodies produces consumer objects whereas the work of hands produces use-objects, a more discrete activity associated with the making of objects and things. 

The fabricated thing (as a result of work) is an end product as a result of a production process entirely separate from its possible uses - what Arendt calls 'determined by the category of means and end' (2000: 175). This is different from labour where production and consumption are part of the same process (as both production and consumption are labour activities), like life itself. Repetition is necessary for work only in as far as the worker needs to earn a living - or to put it differently in as much as labour is embedded in work. Hence, the work involved in making software necessarily involves a labouring component both in terms of making a living through making an object, and as an object that labours in itself - it is both made and makes (this is a complex argument that relates to the relationship of worker and machine, or living and dead labour). Revolution in Marx's terms, is not simply the emancipation of the labouring/working classes but the emancipation of labour from the labourers or work from the workers - something that technology might indeed enable. This is especially possible when the worker is not merely a 'tool-maker' but a labourer wherein the tools become part of the labouring process in itself, in tune with the body or replicating the body's movements and rhythms (Arendt's example is the deployment of labour-saving gadgets in the kitchen, 2000: 175). Replacing the labour of the body can be seen to be potentially emancipatory in this sense. However, Arendt thinks that the brain power and logical processes of giant computers are as 'worldless as the compulsory processes of life, labor, and consumption' (1998 172); in other words they stop short of thought.

In Arendt's thinking, the work of art does not fit into the 'means-end' chain. The work of art is both the most enduring and useless fabricated object human hands can produce; the same hands that build the useful but less durable objects: 'the proper intercourse with a work of art is certainly not "using" it; on the contrary, it must be removed carefully from the whole context of ordinary use objects to attain its proper place in the world' (1998: 167). Although present in all forms, the performative arts (her examples are music and poetry) are particularly resistant to reification as the least 'materialistic' of the arts (1998: 169). For instance, the durability and permanence of poetry is enhanced by its rhythms, its ability to be transformed into memory an its closeness to thought. Whereas cognition pursues an aim and once achieved cognition comes to an end, thought has neither an end nor an aim outside itself. According to Arendt, it is entirely useless: 'as useless, indeed, as the works of art it inspires' (1998: 170). Thought inspires the highest human productivity, and if thought can be said to have a beginning and end it stands for the human life process itself. Activities close to thought, such as speech and action, are necessary to demonstrate separation from the 'utilitarian instrumentalism of fabrication and usage' and 'the driving necessity of biological life' (1998: 174).

Human plurality, for Arendt, is evident in speech and action in that it both represents the capacity for equality and distinctiveness: 'human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings [...] with word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world' (1998: 176). neither is necessitated by labour nor work, but is an impulse to begin something new on one's own impulse (1998: 177). Arendt reminds the reader that to 'act' means to 'begin', then to 'lead' (_archein_ in Greek), to set something in motion (the Latin _agere_). To Arendt, this capability of action is bound with the expectation of the unexpected that results from the sameness and uniqueness of human plurality. Each unique individual is revealed through word and deed. Action relates to speech in this primordial sense to Arendt, disclosing who someone is at a fundamental level. The agent is disclosed in the act without which action loses it specific character (1998: 180).         
The political realm arises out of acting together, as a plurality of unique individuals, in 'the sharing of words and deeds' (1998: 198). In this way, power is actualised, for, 'Power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence.' (1998: 200). Power is a collective activity, and like action, holds no bounds.  
  
Arendt's understanding of action is a critique of the Platonic separation of knowing and doing, as far as she is concerned that which lies at the root of domination and the 'will to power'. Knowledge is identified with command, and action with execution. These ideas are evident in fabrication: 'first perceiving the image or shape (_eidos_) of the produce-to-be, and then organizing the means and starting the execution' (1998: 225). To Arendt, this makes the mistake of substituting making for acting (praxis in this Platonic sense as the outcome of action - is that right?). Ideas are simply executed. The mistake of substituting making for action is persistent in philosophy and political theory, according to Arendt, and this leads to a line of thought where any means appear justifiable to pursue a recognised end; the logic of 'you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs' as she puts it (1998: 229). We are overpowered by persuasive analogies and ethics are suspended. Whereas human action, lies in the realm of uncertainty, as something that cannot be fully known but that is crucially bound up with regeneration and the principle of freedom. Action is the ability to begin something new and as such the highest human achievement.