Almost two years after his death, American anthropologist David Graeber – hailed by colleagues as the best theorist in his field – is sorely missed. If only because he could have fought Elon Musk. Last week, Tesla’s CEO ordered his administrative staff to immediately return to the office from which they had been partially or completely expelled by corona. Musk wants to put an end to that state of exception. “Everyone at Tesla is required to spend at least 40 hours a week in the office,” he told employees. “That should be the place where your real colleagues stay, not some remote pseudo-office.” As if that hadn’t already put enough pressure on the staff: ‘If you don’t show up, we’ll assume you’ve resigned. The longer you work for the company, the more visible you have to be present.’ Apparently that’s how things go in Silicon Valley, the sanctum of autocratic entrepreneurs.
Graeber (1961-2020) would no doubt have denounced Musk’s injunction as illustrating the bondage under which many, if not most, people are weighed down on payroll. Their employer buys time from them – in the case of Tesla 40 hours a week – and derives from this the right to determine where and what they spend that time on. Made the norm during the Industrial Revolution, this system profoundly influenced our understanding of time, Graeber wrote. It created a razor-sharp division between working time and rest time – also known as leisure time, a concept that did not exist at all before the Industrial Revolution. Related to this, time evolved from a natural wave in life to something you spend, just like money. That word combination – spending time – is also a relatively new concept, says Graeber.
That man must work since his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and that the work must be organized, is up to that point. But we work longer than necessary to support ourselves. In 1930 the British economist John Maynard Keynes still expected that the average working week in the industrialized world at the turn of the century would be only about 15 hours due to productivity growth. But this scenario—an enticement for some, a specter for others—has not materialized. Not because technological development has stagnated (on the contrary), but because working people have not converted the growth of their productivity into ‘leisure time’, but into wealth growth. The cruel irony is that they had less and less time for the recreational use of the money they earned. That is why they began to consume compulsively: as much as possible in as little time as possible.
More and more bullshit jobs
According to Graeber, who considered himself more of an activist than an academic, the choice for more consumption was not made entirely freely: it is inextricably linked to a system in which work and consumption are at the core. And it is difficult for the individual – including the individual with conscientious objection – to withdraw from this. This can be deduced from the large, and increasing, percentage of bullshit jobs (as Graeber called them): activities that are perceived by those who do them as completely useless, and sometimes even harmful to society. At the same time, the bullshit content of intrinsically useful jobs – for example, in healthcare and education – is increasing. Workers in these industries are spending more and more time in meetings and administrative tasks that undermine the joy of the profession they once chose.
On the authority of workers who can best judge the usefulness—or lack thereof—of their work, Graeber found that more than 30 percent of all jobs in this part of the world serve no other purpose than keeping people off the streets. Bullshit jobs are an end in themselves, as are the jobs that suggested full employment in the former Soviet Union.
The percentage of bullshit jobs at Tesla is only one trick, but the arguments Musk uses to whip his employees back into the office point to an idea poverty that may be consistent with the bullshit content of the office work at his company. He ignores research (from Stanford University, among others) showing that the productivity of companies has not suffered from working from home, that home workers are less stressed and more satisfied than office workers, and that two-thirds of so-called knowledge workers (who work at a company like Tesla will be well represented) would like to work from home for part of the week – in a “pseudo office,” as Musk mockingly called it.
But Musk does not care about the preferences or the well-being of his employees. For him, it is simply a given that the office is the natural habitat of the average employee. In the fact that some industry peers (still) allow working from home, he sees only confirmation of his own right: ‘When was the last time they delivered a great product?’ The Financial Times it. ‘It has been a while.’
‘There’s nothing to do, boss’
The bullshit job is an attack on the well-being of those who (have to) earn their living with it. Not so much because of its uselessness, Graeber argued, but because employees who know they are doing useless work must keep up the appearance of relevance. Stand-up comedian Bill Hicks (1961-1994) referred to this with a dialogue with which he parodied office life. Boss: How come you’re not at work? Employee: ‘There is nothing to do.’ Boss: ‘Well, you’re supposed to pretend you’re working.’ Employee: ‘I have a better idea. Why don’t you act like you think I’m working? After all, you’re paid better than me.’
According to experience expert Fyodor Dostoevsky, forced laborers were not so much to be pitied because they had to work hard – the average free peasant worked much harder – but because their work often served no purpose whatsoever. They were the 19th-century companions of the office worker Robin, quoted by Graeber. ‘My main task was to contribute to the decorum of the office by remaining seated in a chair.’
But even work whose usefulness is not doubted is surrounded by paradoxes and incongruities. In the Christian world, work – in the sense of toil – was inextricably linked with the Fall. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve lived in harmony with nature, after their rejection they and all their descendants had to eat their bread ‘in the sweat of their brow’. Opinions differ about whether the relevant passage in the Bible book of Genesis should be regarded as a universal obligation to work. But in parlance, labor was a regular part of “the struggle of life.” The woman had to give birth, the man had to work. Work was the opposite of play. It contained an element of servitude and sacrifice, and it was not thought to be pleasant. According to the Scottish writer (and historian) Thomas Carlyle, the dignity of work lay precisely in the fact that people did it grudgingly. To man, labor was not a crown of laurels but a crown of thorns.
Carlyle’s (puritan) views date back to the 19th century, but that doesn’t mean they were renounced afterwards. The primacy of work over other human activities is not seriously under discussion – given the mere fact that in times of crisis the arts are regarded as a austerity item rather than work- and money-creating activities. And like Carlyle, Elon Musk assumes that man will fall into idleness if work ceases to be compulsive. That view is shared by more CEOs. According to David Solomon (Goldman Sachs), working from home is ‘an aberration’. James Gorman (Morgan Stanley) scoffed that most of his employees spend their workdays in Manhattan’s hospitality industry. They show themselves to be followers of the so-called Taylorism, named after the American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), who touted standardized business operations with time clocks and shifts as a panacea against the ‘natural laziness’ – or playfulness – of humans.
Busy busy busy
Meanwhile, employees as a rule do not boast that they are not throwing a punch, nor do they express their desire for a quiet evening among themselves. They prefer to pretend to each other, and themselves, that they are busy, busy, busy, and that their job is a challenge or – worse – a passion. Work is surrounded by taboos and feints. Many workers inhabit a potemkin village whose buildings consist of little more than facades. With a pose of activity and job satisfaction, they not only mislead each other and their bosses, but also themselves. They play the game in all degrees of inspiration. Simply because they think it is in their interest.
The organization of work rests on the tacit, collective agreement that we make work important enough to keep doing it. Comparing the importance of our work undermines our motivation for work. So we don’t put things into perspective – or only in moderation. It takes little imagination or mental effort to realize the relativity of everything we do. A glance at the newspaper, famines, a tragic death in our environment, the realization that we ourselves will die one day, the incomprehensible existence of black holes, history as the slaughter of humanity: everything is enough to make us move from the insignificance of our concerns on the workplace awareness.
On the authority of death counselors, we should know that when death approaches, people evoke the beautiful moments with their loved ones, but never their maneuvers in the workplace. On the contrary, many dying regret that they have worked too hard, or that they have been guided too much by what others expected of them. But workers do not allow these purifying thoughts to themselves for fear of not getting out of bed anymore, and of not being able to play the role assigned to them. On the contrary, they make the things they do bigger and more important than they are to motivate themselves. Viewed in this way, a labor organization is somewhat like a student body: the members unitedly maintain the pose of importance.
‘Am I replaceable?’
After their studies, Corps members come to the sometimes embarrassing realization that they may have taken this pose a little too seriously. Workers allow such a thought to themselves after retirement. If it’s good. The survival strategy of workers – leaving no doubt about the importance of their work – must be reversed in time. Thoughts that were previously inadmissible (‘Would I be expendable anyway’, ‘Haven’t I made the work too absolute?’, ‘Do my former colleagues still talk about me after I’ve left?), retirees tend to stands to reconcile with their fate, or to be happy with it. They have detached themselves not only from the tentacles of work, but also from the need to deceive themselves. What was once important must suddenly be made small. That tournure may also be accompanied by some self-deception. For example, paid work – even if we have stopped doing it – remains about the most important point of orientation in a person’s life. Until death do us part from it for good.