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Author | David Graeber |
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Subject | Organizational culture, cultural anthropology, critique of work, White-collar worker |
Published | May 2018 (Simon & Schuster) |
Pages | 368 |
ISBN | 978-1-5011-4331-1 |
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history and proposes unions and universal basic income as a potential solution.
The book is an extension of a popular essay Graeber published in 2013, [1] which was later translated into 12 languages and whose underlying premise became the subject of a YouGov poll. Graeber solicited hundreds of testimonials from workers with meaningless jobs and revised his essay's case into book form; Simon & Schuster published the book in May 2018.
The productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to "bullshit jobs": "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case". [2] Many people who are working these bullshit or pointless jobs know that they are working jobs that do not contribute to society in a thoughtful way. A review of the book notes: "Technology has advanced to the point where most of the difficult, labor-intensive jobs can be performed by machines." [3] Instead of producing more jobs that are fulfilling for our environment, they create meaningless jobs to provide everyone with an opportunity to work. [3] While these jobs can offer good compensation and ample free time, the pointlessness of the work grates at their humanity and creates a "profound psychological violence". [2]
More than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and five types of entirely pointless jobs:
These jobs are largely in the private sector despite the idea that market competition would root out such inefficiencies. In companies, the rise of service sector jobs owes less to economic need than to "managerial feudalism", in which employers need underlings in order to feel important and maintain competitive status and power. [2] [4] In society, the Puritan-capitalist work ethic is to be credited for making the labor of capitalism into religious duty: that workers did not reap advances in productivity as a reduced workday because, as a societal norm, they believe that work determines their self-worth, even as they find that work pointless. This cycle is a "profound psychological violence" [4] and "a scar across our collective soul". [5] One of the challenges to confronting our feelings about bullshit jobs is a lack of a behavioral script, in much the same way that people are unsure of how to feel if they are the object of unrequited love. In turn, rather than correcting this system, individuals attack those whose jobs are innately fulfilling. [5]
Work as a source of virtue is a recent idea. In fact, work was disdained by the aristocracy in classical times but inverted as virtuous through then-radical philosophers like John Locke. The Puritan idea of virtue through suffering justified the toil of the working classes as noble. [4] And so, one could argue that bullshit jobs justify contemporary patterns of living: that the pains of dull work are suitable justification for the ability to fulfill consumer desires, and that fulfilling those desires could be considered as the reward for suffering through pointless work in contemporary society. Accordingly, over time, the prosperity extracted from technological advances has been reinvested into industry and consumer growth for its own sake rather than the purchase of additional leisure time from work. [2] Bullshit jobs also serve political ends, in which political parties are more concerned about having jobs than whether the jobs are fulfilling. In addition, populations occupied with busy work have less time to revolt. [5]
One solution that is offered by many is the idea of a universal basic income, which would consist of a livable benefit paid to all people regardless of their status so that they may work at their leisure. [4] The common trends within society today point people towards a very uneven work cycle that consists of sprints followed by low periods of unproductive work. Jobs such as farmers, fishers, soldiers, and novelists vary the intensity of their work based on the urgency to produce and the natural cycles of productivity, not arbitrary standard working hours. Universal basic income offers the notion that this time pursuing pointless work could instead be spent pursuing creative activities. [2]
In his 2018 interview with Suzi Weissman for the Jacobin Radio, [6] Graeber compares the idea of Bullshit Jobs to Neo-Feudalism, or Corporate Feudalism. He talks about big corporate meetings being the equivalent of "feudal jousts". Entire teams prepare for presentations of data and reports that no one will read. Here you will have various team members that are just there to say "I do the illustrations" and "I do the graphs" without doing anything physically productive. Graeber goes on to compare the people hiring these teams as "feudal lords". These corporate managers serve to inflate their own position by populating the ones below them without incentive for downsizing due to unproductivity.
Some early works relating to Feudalism making a comeback within corporate America highlight this idea as well. In his 1967 article for the Foundation for Economic Education, Clarence Carson makes much of the same points in the section on "Corporatism". [7] He talks about this idea that the power of these positions lies within the members looking down from the top of the ladder, and the people lying below have no general power but their identity with what's above them.
This can go hand-in-hand with the essay Eric Armstrong wrote for Treelight in 2017, [8] where he compares these large corporations to cancer cells growing uncontrollably. He explains that as these corporations continue to grow without check they are largely contributing to the "global scarcity of resources". This sapping of resources and concentration of wealth is what he defines as "Corporate Feudalism".
As a counterpoint to this notion Graeber also discusses the rise of non-bullshit jobs that coincides with his initial viewpoint during his interview for the Jacobin Radio, [6] which he calls the "caring" or "care-giving" jobs. That is to say, a caring job is loosely defined as someone providing an essential task for others to thrive. He gives the viewpoint that our usual notion of a "caregiving" job lies within fields such as nursing, whereas in actuality it can extend all the way to the blue-collar working-class people. These people provide the every-day essentials for the world to run, thus taking care of those around them. It does not happen in the direct nurturing sense that is usually thought of, but nonetheless it still pertains to society's well-being.
In 2013, Graeber published an essay in the radical magazine Strike!, "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs", which argued the pointlessness of many contemporary jobs, particularly those in fields of finance, law, human resources, public relations, and consultancy. [4] Its popularity, with over one million hits, [5] crashed the website of the essay's publisher. The essay was subsequently translated into 12 languages.
YouGov undertook a related poll, [9] in which 37% of some surveyed Britons thought that their jobs did not contribute 'meaningfully' to the world.
Graeber subsequently solicited hundreds of testimonials of bullshit jobs and revised his case into a book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. [4] [2]
By the end of 2018, the book was translated into French, [10] German, [11] [12] [13] Italian, [14] Spanish, [15] Polish, [16] and Chinese. [17]
A review in The Times praises the book's academic rigor and humor, especially in some job examples, but altogether felt that Graeber's argument was "enjoyably overstated". [4] The reviewer found Graeber's historical work ethic argument convincing, but offered counterarguments on other points: that the average British workweek has decreased in the last century, that Graeber's argument for the overall proportion of pointless work is over reliant on the YouGov survey, and that the same survey does not hold that "most people hate their jobs". The reviewer maintains that while "managerial feudalism" can explain the existence of flunkies, Graeber's other types of bullshit jobs owe their existence to competition, government regulation, long supply chains, and the withering of inefficient companies—the same ingredients responsible for luxuries of advanced capitalism such as smartphones and year-round produce. [4]
An article in Philosophy Now pointed to the initial definition of "bullshit" in philosophy. In his 1986 essay, Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt turned the word "bullshit" into an official philosophical term when defining bullshit as the deceptive misrepresentation of reality that remains different from lying because contrary to the liar, the "bullshitter" does not aim specifically to deceive (p. 6–7). Along these lines, administrators attempt to establish a work culture whose achievements are not factually false, but merely fake and phony. [18]
A 2021 study empirically tested several of Graeber's claims, such as that bullshit jobs were increasing over time and that they accounted for much of the workforce. Using data from the EU-conducted European Working Conditions Survey, the study found that a low and declining proportion of employees considered their jobs to be "rarely" or "never" useful. [19] The study also found that while there was some correlation between occupation and feelings of uselessness, they did not correspond neatly with Graeber's analysis; bullshit "taskmasters" and "goons" such as hedge-fund managers or lobbyists reported that they were vastly satisfied with their work, while essential workers like refuse collectors and cleaners often felt their jobs were useless. However, the study did confirm that feeling useless in one's job was correlated to poor psychological health and with higher rates of depression and anxiety. To account for the serious effects of working a bullshit job and why someone might feel their job is bullshit, the authors instead draw on the Marxist concept of alienation. The authors suggest that toxic management and work culture may lead individuals to feel that they are not realizing their true potential, regardless of whether or not their job is actually useful.
A 2023 study, using data from the American Working Conditions Survey showed that 19% of respondents consider their jobs "rarely" or "never" useful to society. In addition, the survey shows that the occupations pointed out by Graeber are in fact most strongly perceived as socially useless, after controlling for working conditions. However this is still significantly below Graeber’s claim that over 50% of all jobs are useless. It also does not show that the jobs are objectively useless, merely that the respondents feel this. [20]
Bullshit is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism B.S. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive. It is mostly a slang term and a profanity which means "nonsense", especially as a rebuke in response to communication or actions viewed as deceptive, misleading, disingenuous, unfair or false. As with many expletives, the term can be used as an interjection, or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings. A person who excels at communicating nonsense on a given subject is sometimes referred to as a "bullshit artist" instead of a "liar".
The Conquest of Bread is an 1892 book by the Russian anarchist communist Peter Kropotkin. Originally written in French, it first appeared as a series of articles in the anarchist journal Le Révolté. It was first published in Paris with a preface by Élisée Reclus, who also suggested the title. Between 1892 and 1894, it was serialized in part in the London journal Freedom, of which Kropotkin was a co-founder.
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement of people from aspects of their human nature as a consequence of the division of labour and living in a society of stratified social classes. The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity.
"The Abolition of Work" is an essay written by Bob Black in 1985. It was part of Black's first book, an anthology of essays entitled The Abolition of Work and Other Essays published by Loompanics Unlimited. It is an exposition of Black's "type 3 anarchism" – a blend of post-Situationist theory and individualist anarchism – focusing on a critique of the work ethic. Black draws upon certain ideas of Marshall Sahlins, Richard Borshay Lee, Charles Fourier, William Morris, and Paul Goodman.
In social behavior, downshifting is a trend where individuals adopt simpler lives from what critics call the "rat race".
Busy work is an activity that is undertaken to pass time and stay busy but in and of itself has little or no actual value. Busy work occurs in business, military and other settings, in situations where people may be required to be present but may lack the opportunities, skills or need to do something more productive. People may engage in busy work to maintain an appearance of activity, in order to avoid criticism of being inactive or idle.
Neo-feudalism or new feudalism is a theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy, and public life, reminiscent of those which were present in many feudal societies. Such aspects include, but are not limited to: Unequal rights and legal protections for common people and for nobility, dominance of societies by a small and powerful elite, a lack of social mobility, and relations of lordship and serfdom between the elite and the people, where the former are rich and the latter poor.
Work ethic is a belief that work and diligence have a moral benefit and an inherent ability, virtue or value to strengthen character and individual abilities. Desire or determination to work serves as the foundation for values centered on the importance of work or industrious work. Social ingrainment of this value is considered to enhance character through hard work that is respective to an individual's field of work.
David Rolfe Graeber was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.
Wage labour, usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labour market where wages or salaries are market-determined.
On Bullshit is a 2005 book by the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false. Frankfurt's philosophical analysis of bullshit has been analyzed, criticized and adopted by academics since its publication.
Bonjour paresse is the title of an international bestseller by Corinne Maier, a French writer, psychoanalyst, and economist. The book is a highly cynical and humorous critique of work and contemporary French corporate culture that advocates various ways of undermining the system. Maier advocates that it is in the reader's best interest to work as little as possible. The title is a reference to Françoise Sagan's novel Bonjour Tristesse. It is variously subtitled Jumping Off the Corporate Ladder, or Why Hard Work Doesn’t Pay depending on the edition. Because of their similar attitudes towards the workplace, Maier has been frequently compared to Dilbert creator Scott Adams.
A make-work job is a job that is created and maintained at a cost not offset by the job’s fulfilment. Usually having little or no immediate financial benefit such roles can be said to exist for other economic or social-political reasons, for example simply to provide work-experience or maintain a ceremonial function.
Boredom boreout syndrome is a psychological disorder that causes physical illness, mainly caused by mental underload at the workplace due to lack of either adequate quantitative or qualitative workload. One reason for boreout could be that the initial job description does not match the actual work.
Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no objective meaning or purpose. The inherent meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism, where one can potentially create their own subjective "meaning" or "purpose". The supposed conflict between our desire for meaning and the reality of a meaningless world is explored in the philosophical school of absurdism. Of all types of nihilism, existential nihilism has received the most literary and philosophical attention.
Ambivalent prejudice is a social psychological theory that states that, when people become aware that they have conflicting beliefs about an outgroup, they experience an unpleasant mental feeling generally referred to as cognitive dissonance. These feelings are brought about because the individual on one hand believes in humanitarian virtues such as helping those in need, but on the other hand also believes in individualistic virtues such as working hard to improve one's life.
Self-estrangement is the idea conceived by Karl Marx in Marx's theory of alienation and Melvin Seeman in his five logically distinct psychological states that encompasses alienation. As spoken by Marx, self-estrangement is "the alienation of man's essence, man's loss of objectivity and his loss of realness as self-discovery, manifestation of his nature, objectification and realization". Self-estrangement is when a person feels alienated from others and society as a whole. A person may feel alienated by his work by not feeling like he has meaning to his work, therefore losing their sense of self at the work place. Self-estrangement contributes to burnout at work and a lot of psychological stress.
David Graeber was an American anthropologist and social theorist. Unless otherwise noted, all works are authored solely by David Graeber.
A bullshit job or pseudowork is meaningless or unnecessary wage labour which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose. Polling in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands indicates that around 40% of workers consider their job to fit this description.
Critique of work or critique of labour is the critique of, and/or wish to abolish, work as such, and to critique what the critics of works deem wage slavery.