hardcover, 333 pages
English language
Published Oct. 7, 2018 by Allen Lane.
Be honest: if your job didn't exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered why not? Up to 40% of us secretly believe our jobs probably aren't necessary. In other words: they are bullshit jobs. This book shows why, and what we can do about it.
In the early twentieth century, people prophesied that technology would see us all working fifteen-hour weeks and driving flying cars. Instead, something curious happened. Not only have the flying cars not materialised, but average working hours have increased rather than decreased. And now, across the developed world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services, finance or admin: jobs that don't seem to contribute anything to society. In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber explores how this phenomenon - one more associated with the Soviet Union, but which capitalism was supposed to eliminate - has happened. In doing so, he looks at how, rather than …
Be honest: if your job didn't exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered why not? Up to 40% of us secretly believe our jobs probably aren't necessary. In other words: they are bullshit jobs. This book shows why, and what we can do about it.
In the early twentieth century, people prophesied that technology would see us all working fifteen-hour weeks and driving flying cars. Instead, something curious happened. Not only have the flying cars not materialised, but average working hours have increased rather than decreased. And now, across the developed world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services, finance or admin: jobs that don't seem to contribute anything to society. In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber explores how this phenomenon - one more associated with the Soviet Union, but which capitalism was supposed to eliminate - has happened. In doing so, he looks at how, rather than producing anything, work has become an end in itself; the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and, finally, how we can get out of it.
This book is for anyone whose heart has sunk at the sight of a whiteboard, who believes 'workshops' should only be for making things, or who just suspects that there might be a better way to run our world.
Interesting book, but way too long. I had to fight with boredom to complete the book, but eventually after 6 weeks I'm done.
Interesting book, but way too long. I had to fight with boredom to complete the book, but eventually after 6 weeks I'm done.
A very interesting book. The last chapter is an argument for UBI that gets done better in other books, in my opinion.
The rest of the book is a really interesting description of what a bullshit job is, how they proliferate, and why we suffer them. I definitely saw aspects of these descriptions in jobs friends or I have held, so the arguments stand up.
Graeber always has a good way of weaving together argument and example. That alone makes this worth reading!
Bring on the revolution.
David Graeber’s adventure with Bullshit Jobs began when he was asked to write an essay for the radical magazine Strike. His essay, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, which was published in 2013, was read over a million times and translated into seventeen different languages. His book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, expands on this concept and outlines how meaningless work has become. Meaningless jobs were more associated with the Soviet system where they’re making up jobs to keep everybody looking like they’re working. Capitalism is supposed to be the opposite. Markets were supposed to fix the inefficiencies created by the socialist states. Still, somehow, it happens,all over the place.
So, what’s going on? Graeber argues that is has to do with the ideology of work. It is based in the puritan idea that work is valuable in itself; it doesn't have to produce anything. Work, even if it is totally …
David Graeber’s adventure with Bullshit Jobs began when he was asked to write an essay for the radical magazine Strike. His essay, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, which was published in 2013, was read over a million times and translated into seventeen different languages. His book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, expands on this concept and outlines how meaningless work has become. Meaningless jobs were more associated with the Soviet system where they’re making up jobs to keep everybody looking like they’re working. Capitalism is supposed to be the opposite. Markets were supposed to fix the inefficiencies created by the socialist states. Still, somehow, it happens,all over the place.
So, what’s going on? Graeber argues that is has to do with the ideology of work. It is based in the puritan idea that work is valuable in itself; it doesn't have to produce anything. Work, even if it is totally pointless, became a virtue. If you are working in something that you don’t like, the problem is you, never the work. You are lazy or just a bad person.
Graeber thinks that is a strange thing that this very subject is not considered a social problem. He argues, that we need to reconsider what is valuable in labour. Most of the people that emailed him after the publication of his article or those he interviewed about their work, said that they want to do a job where they care of other people or benefit them in some way. He, therefore, suggests, that we need to think about a new theory of value at labour, a reformulation of what work is valuable, and he suggests that a good point to start is with women’s work,or what is called ‘caring work’. Also to think about production and what production even is.
What I admire in David Graeber is that he says things that,normally, people do not say, even if they think about them. I am totally convinced with his argument about this new theory of value of work, but I get behind about Basic Income. Although it might seem to many like it is another expansion of the state power, it is,in fact, exactly the reverse. Millions of governmental official and workers would be thrown out of their current jobs, but they will receive basic income and therefore many of them will come up with something genuinely important to do, something that they are good at and they are enjoying doing. By offering a reasonable standard of living to all, it’s up to each individual to decide what to do with their life, whether they want to pursue wealth, or devote themselves in studying ancient philosophers or do gardening. A Universal Basic Income program could provide a profound transformation to our societies.
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Sooooo disappointed in this book after Graeber's excellent Debt: The First 5000 Years.
While I do believe there are bullshit jobs, and those that harm or subtract value from society, I found his analysis fuzzy, arguable, and to be honest, sloppy and way too tied to Marxist and elitist arguments as to value, labour, and capitalism. I felt the subjective definition of a BS job to be way too fuzzy, though ultimately I think he's on to something about the fact we should all be working less, there are many roles that adds little value (if not harming society), and there needs to be recognition of this, I felt this was shoddy. His assertion that work of value in undervalued compared to work that he says provides none lacks deeper analysis (imho).
However, I do think he is onto something in our need to decouple livelihood from work. While he …
Sooooo disappointed in this book after Graeber's excellent Debt: The First 5000 Years.
While I do believe there are bullshit jobs, and those that harm or subtract value from society, I found his analysis fuzzy, arguable, and to be honest, sloppy and way too tied to Marxist and elitist arguments as to value, labour, and capitalism. I felt the subjective definition of a BS job to be way too fuzzy, though ultimately I think he's on to something about the fact we should all be working less, there are many roles that adds little value (if not harming society), and there needs to be recognition of this, I felt this was shoddy. His assertion that work of value in undervalued compared to work that he says provides none lacks deeper analysis (imho).
However, I do think he is onto something in our need to decouple livelihood from work. While he says he is avoiding making policy recommendations, I do think he makes very good points about first order reasoning on Universal Basic Income (though,I feel everyone really need to do more second order effects thinking on this or some really larger experiments to understand how it might work in practice (which I am very supportive of).
There are moments when I felt like the book was being stretched a bit, but it doesn't matter because the main point is an essential one. Our society is completely upside down. We need to decouple surviving and thriving from wage labor. And we need to do it fast. Also good to read this in combination with the Nancy Frasier interview about the Crisis of Care www.dissentmagazine.org/article/nancy-fraser-interview-capitalism-crisis-of-care
Just drop copies of both in strategic locations until our collective sense starts to come back.
There are moments when I felt like the book was being stretched a bit, but it doesn't matter because the main point is an essential one. Our society is completely upside down. We need to decouple surviving and thriving from wage labor. And we need to do it fast. Also good to read this in combination with the Nancy Frasier interview about the Crisis of Care www.dissentmagazine.org/article/nancy-fraser-interview-capitalism-crisis-of-care
Just drop copies of both in strategic locations until our collective sense starts to come back.
