A year-old article written by anthropology professor David Graeber in Strike! Magazine stirred some controversy when Graeber began questioning the need for jobs that have been created within the last half century.
Of course, Graeber calls himself out, asking from the readers’ perspective: who are you to say which jobs matter and which don’t? He expresses that social value might never truly have objective measure.
However, Graeber makes several good points in his article that I would like to share with you as nothing more than food for thought.
It is emphasized to us from an early age that education is tantamount to receiving a well-paying career. We are taught that with a sturdy education our chances of financial success increase dramatically.
And financial success is considered so important because our country’s standard of comfortable living is quite high compared to that of other areas around the globe. But Graeber’s issue isn’t with meaningless or dead-end jobs but with the insistence that those jobs matter and whether the mental wear that such a job may impose is justifiable.
Graeber cites a prediction made by John Maynard Keynes in 1930, who said by century’s end, technology will have advanced to the point of automating away most known jobs of the day and that we would comfortably reach 15-hour workweeks. We all know this has largely come true, and that in the wake of such automation, entirely new career tracks have been developed, such as corporate law, financial services, human resources and more.
Graeber notes the irony of a capitalistic state shelling out money to keep those employed whom they don’t really need — the opposite of what is supposed to happen in a functioning capitalist marketplace.
You may have already experienced this phenomenon yourself. You may work 40-hour workweeks on paper but really only get roughly 25 or 30 hours of real work done because that’s all that was required of you.
If having a job by virtue entitles one to dignity or honor, where does honor play a role in the life of someone who truly believes their job is utterly meaningless? The mental and spiritual fatigue of such a position cannot be overstated.
Graeber ponders the question. He wonders what can be said of our society that generates, for example, such a limited demand for talented poet-musicians but apparent infinite demand for specialists in corporate law.
The way Graeber sees it, real, productive workers are relentlessly exploited — teachers, auto-workers — while the remainder are divided between the universally condemned unemployed and those who sit in positions designed to make them identify with the sensibilities of the well-off.
Money and material wealth are the indicators of success in our country — not honest and motivated labor, not peace of mind but the size of your pool.
Consider what it is you’re willing to give up to get what you want in this life. And I’m not referring to time or money.
michoman@indiana. edu
