ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4864-4
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021941123
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Dedication
For Deborah, Polly and Florence
Acknowledgements
This book has benefitted from the inputs of a number of people. I would like to thank the following who contributed to the ideas in the book with conversations, comments and advice: Andrew Brown, John Budd, Felix Fitzroy, Robert Skidelsky and Gary Slater.
I have gained from working with Matt Cole, Chris Forde, Simon Joyce, Chris McLachlan, Mark Stuart and Xanthe Whittaker on different research projects and from participating in the ESRC Digital Futures at Work Research Centre.
I wrote this book while Head of the Economics Division at Leeds University Business School. Thanks to colleagues in the Division and School for their support.
I would also like to thank the students I have taught. Those on my third-year undergraduate module ‘The Political Economy of Work’ have proved a particular source of insight and inspiration. I am grateful to be in a position where I can teach ideas that derive from my own research and for the opportunity to engage with such great students.
George Owers at Polity provided important encouragement and constructive criticism throughout all stages of the book. The comments of three anonymous reviewers were also helpful in improving the contents of the book. Fiona Sewell provided valuable copy-editing.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Deborah, and my daughters, Polly and Florence. The book has meant long periods of self-isolation and some personal struggle. Thank you, Deborah, Polly and Florence, for always being there and for lightening my life.
1 Introduction
I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)
Work, work, work
Work is an obligation that very few of us can avoid. Work is what we do to earn wages. It provides the means for us to live. In modern society, we cannot escape work without facing some material hardship. The lack of work is associated with distress mainly because it is linked to the loss of income. Most of us work, in this respect, because we have to, not because we necessarily want to.
But work is also an activity that means something to us. We value certain aspects of the work we do and sometimes work longer than we need to. While many of us lament the time work takes and the restrictions it places on our lives, we also find reasons to keep working that are independent of the income that work brings. Work has a hold over us, even while it remains something we have to perform.
Various examples confirm this fact. Lottery winners keep on working when they can afford to stop. John Doherty, from Renfrewshire, Scotland, won a £14m lottery jackpot in 2016, but decided to continue his job as a plumber. Asked why he wanted to continue working despite having the money not to, he replied that he would be bored staying at home and did not want to let down his loyal customers.1
Those nearing retirement worry about the prospect of not working. Indeed, many retired people miss their former jobs and often seek a return to paid work. In addition, many people volunteer to work in their communities – tasks that attract payment in the formal economy are undertaken for free. Finally, the unemployed strive to work for reasons beyond the need for income.
The positive features of work encompass not just the opportunity to interact socially but also the scope to develop and use valued skills and to gain self-esteem. Work matters because it offers the potential for activity that enables us to be and do things in our lives that we value. We work for pay, but we also seek other things in work that add to our well-being.
Of course, in reality, work often falls short of our expectations and needs. Work can be – and frequently is – a burden and source of pain in itself. Its costs extend not just to the lack of opportunity for progress in work but also to the exposure to mind-numbing work activities. We rightly deplore sweatshops not only because they are linked to chronic low pay but also because they are associated with harsh and life-limiting work conditions. The deprivations of work, in this case, challenge our views about what work should be like.
Money matters, again, to the extent that it can buy us freedom from bad work. The richer a person is, the less likely she is to work in a sweatshop. The benefit of a lottery win is that it buys us the freedom to quit our present jobs if we dislike or hate them. But winning the lottery also creates the potential to undertake different and more pleasurable work – it appeals to the idea of working better, not quitting work altogether.2 For some retired people, with the safety net of a pension, there is the option to choose work that is satisfying – perhaps to a greater extent than the kinds that were undertaken before retirement.
Nonetheless, beyond money, all of us have a craving and need for work that matches with our potential and meets our innermost desires. Our participation in voluntary work indicates how we desire work for intrinsic reasons. Indeed, voluntary work may offer compensation for the lack of enjoyment we derive from paid work. Unemployment, too, for all its material costs, is harmful partly because it deprives us of the opportunity to gain the direct benefits of work. Some of the fear associated with unemployment derives from a concern about the negative experience of a life without work.
Work, in short, has meaning in itself. In the present, it might be undertaken to pay the bills and service outstanding debt. But it is also an activity that shapes us – for good and for ill – and it remains an activity that we care about, even when it does not necessarily allow us to live well.
This book is concerned with the different roles that work can, does and should play in human life. In the book, I reflect on how modern work, in its myriad forms, prevents well-being. I am clear that work is a problem in contemporary society. I support the argument that work is harmful to the lives of many people. I also actively support the view that work exerts a too dominant influence in human life and that we should strive, as a society, to work less. I back, for example, the case for a shorter working week – the reduction of work time should be a key demand of a progressive society. Yet, at the same time, I argue that work should be changed. The possibility of changing work – of lightening it, in a quantitative and qualitative sense – lies at the heart of this book and inspires the critical arguments made in support of reform in society.
The book engages with ideas from past and present literatures on work. The account is not necessarily exhaustive (e.g. it largely ignores consideration of forms of unpaid work). But it is, hopefully, useful and instructive in setting out some key areas of debate and controversy