Summary Elizabeth Anderson Lecture: The Work Ethic: Its Origins, Legacy and Future (Youtube) youtu.be
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Mark Pennington Welcome to this, public lecture, hosted by the Center For the Study of Governance in Society. So my name is Mark Pennington. I'm the director of the center And also the head of the Department of Political Economy, which the, the center is situated in. I'm absolutely thrilled This evening to introduce you to our speaker, professor Elizabeth Anderson. Elizabeth is John Dewey Distinguished University professor of philosophy and women's studies at the University of Michigan.
Mark Pennington And her work lies at the intersection of social science, informal, and political theory. I'm particularly excited That Elizabeth is gonna speak to the center this evening. Because 1 of the core themes of the center's work is to look at The relationship between formal and informal rules of governance. And 1 of the areas where we don't necessarily look at those, Rules of governance, whether formal or informal, is in work and employment relationships. And a great deal of Elizabeth's most recent work has been in the area of the governance of of of of employment.
Mark Pennington This afternoon, she did a really, interesting podcast, I think, with myself that, I would encourage you all to listen to if you go into the center's website. And she's also going to be doing a departmental seminar with us, tomorrow afternoon. We really are honored to have Elizabeth with us here. She's 1 of the world's leading political philosophers, and I think that has been recognized in her recent receipt of The MacArthur Foundation Genius, Award. So we have genius in our our presence, and that really is a great honor for us both in the department and the center.
Mark Pennington Elizabeth, you you're with us here today. So I'm very much looking forward to hearing you speak about the work ethic, its origins, legacy, and future. And I'm sure everybody else is, so please give a warm welcome to Elizabeth Anderson.
Elizabeth Anderson So it's a huge pleasure to be back in London, with the opportunity to address you about my latest work, which is all about the work ethic. Here, I'm going to be focusing, in my data on the American work ethic. Of course, Americans inherited the work ethic from the English who were the great inventors, so I will be going back to the origins, of the work ethic, in 17th century England. But first, let's take a look at the work ethic American style. So these are common norms, that arise, in the American context.
Elizabeth Anderson Americans think of work as central to their personal identity. We think it builds character. Many of us are on call at all hours. Certainly, myself, I'm receiving emails and sending emails at all hours. There's a huge stigma attached to being unemployed and also to receiving free stuff from the government, any kind of welfare benefits.
Elizabeth Anderson And there's a kind of culture of performative workaholism, showing up. It's showing that you're working really hard and demonstrating to other people that you're working really hard. Here you can see the United States to the far right is the only rich capitalist country in the world that has 0 days of State mandated paid vacation, 0. Now, of course, you know, the many workers do have paid vacation through their employment contract. About half of workers a little more than half of workers have paid vacation days through their employment contract.
Elizabeth Anderson However, the vast majority of workers do not take all of their contractually eligible entitled vacation days. So let's take a look at the history of the critique of the work ethic, and I'm gonna start in the present and work backwards. I was in London last weekend, having a discussion of bullshit jobs with David Graeber from LSE. And he defines bullshit jobs as paid employment so pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee can't justify its existence, although the employee must pretend that this is not the case. Graver goes on to discuss a variety of bullshit jobs, that were reported to him.
Elizabeth Anderson And he contrasts bullshit jobs with shit jobs, Which are actually socially useful jobs, socially necessary jobs, things like cleaning bedpans of patients and so forth, but which are poorly paid, get no respect and, forms of drudgery. Graver suggests that perhaps half of all work is bullshit. He does this on the basis of a sort of half (CSGS) survey. 37 to 40% of, of workers in the UK and Netherlands who were polled, suggested that they were working at bullshit jobs. Another survey.
Elizabeth Anderson This is not particularly scientific. Suggests that American office workers report half of their tasks are bullshit, or they just have to look busy or something like that. But I'm gonna tell you some cases for my students. Last semester, I I taught a course all about work, and we just did a section on bullshit jobs. And I asked them, how many of you have ever worked in a bullshit job?
Elizabeth Anderson And lo and behold, 40% of my students raising their hand. Okay. So what what what were their jobs? So I had 1 student who, had a summer job at a firm in which he was assigned to write, business analyses of, operate within the firm. And he would have to upload it into this, internal website at the firm.
Elizabeth Anderson And the website would count the number of times this report was downloaded, 0. So his job was to write reports that no 1 read. There I can discuss other cases in q and a, but I'm gonna move on. So Graver's proposal is, look, let's just eliminate bullshit jobs, and then we can cut the work week in half, share around the rest of the soul you know, the actual socially necessary task and introduce, a leisure society. In this respect, he was echoing the great economist, John Maynard Keynes, who in his 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for our grandchildren, criticize the work ethic because this gall of the endless accumulation of wealth is pathological.
Elizabeth Anderson The idea that we should be working until we're practically dead is endlessly postponing pleasure, and at leisure, and that's just preposterous. And he too argued that we should just Bring about a leisure society as soon as we achieve enough prosperity that everyone can live decently, and suggested that by sharing around the remaining work, maybe we'd only have to work 3 or 4 hours a day. And finally, we can go to the original critique of the work ethic, scholarly critique, and that is in Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber didn't do a half assed job. He did, like, a really serious job studying the original work ethic texts.
Elizabeth Anderson And in 1920, having read the Puritan ministers who invented the work ethic, he argued that the Puritans had bestowed an amazingly good conscience in the acquisition of money. And As the work ethic secularized, that good conscience about wealth accumulation continued without its theological, basis, And ultimately ended up rationalizing, capitalist exploitation of workers' internalized willingness to work. So the internalization of the Puritan work ethic by workers that carried over, even under secularization, just enhance the ability of capitalists to exploit workers. He described the situation as an iron cage and famously argued, The Puritan wanted to work in a calling, but we are forced to do so. I think it's worthwhile then to go back and actually read the Puritans who invented the work ethic.
Elizabeth Anderson The central figure that Weber, I think, properly identifies as Richard Baxter, from the 17th century. He's articulating a Puritan theology, which is essentially Calvinist. So you start off with justification by faith alone. Salvation is based on faith alone, not works. However, Baxter also argued that you can't really know whether you have faith except through your behavior.
Elizabeth Anderson So the Puritans were behaviorists. You can't know by introspection whether you really have faith. The only sure sign of faith is constant disciplined labor for the greater glory of God. Any moment of idleness and sloth as a sign of backsliding in your faith. So you know?
Elizabeth Anderson And, you know, bolt of lightning could come down and take you out at any moment. So you should be in constant terror. Right? If you're struck down in a moment of idleness, you're just headed for hell. Better Nose to the grind grindstone then.
Elizabeth Anderson Or as Baxter says, give diligence to make your calling an election sure. The citation is to his wonderful, work, Saints Everlasting Rest. So here are the principal components of the work ethic as the Puritans developed it. Duty number 1, Engage in disciplined work in a calling. God has called everyone to some specialized occupation.
Elizabeth Anderson You've got to figure out what that is and then dedicate your life to it. Secondly, don't waste any time. Don't be idle. Importantly, even the rich must work. I'm going to get back to that point.
Elizabeth Anderson Thirdly, don't waste any material goods. God has given natural resources for people to use To act to carry out God's will. It's an ascetic doctrine, So people shouldn't indulge in worldly goods and pleasures and any anything that is just tending to their vanity. 1 must not be covetous. That is and he defines covetousness, that's a sin, very, very strictly.
Elizabeth Anderson It consists in wanting more material goods than 1 strictly needs to do one's duty. Think about that. That's not very much that anyone needs. However, at the same time, he also argues that every man should frugally getteth and saveth as much as he can. Any what, essentially, that means is given a choice between a higher paid and a lower paid occupation, you actually have a duty to choose the higher paid 1.
Elizabeth Anderson I'm going to discuss later on what appears to be an evident contradiction between points 56. Baxter knew about this and he had a solution. Weber correctly argues that over time, the work ethic got secularized. And on that point, I'm in full agreement with Weber. But here's the point, the critical point where I disagree.
Elizabeth Anderson Weber only reveals 1 half of the work ethic, what I'm calling the conservative path to secularization that rationalizes Harsh discipline of workers, and their exploitation. What I'm going to be arguing, and that's the chief (CSGS) of this talk is that there was another side of the work ethic that is profoundly pro worker, And that side of the ethic work ethic had its own, history and profound influence on the subsequent history of political thought as it got secularized. But first, we'll just take a look at the conservative path. On the left hand column, we'll see the theological doctrine, and the right hand column, we'll see how that doctrine gets secularized. So theologically, the Puritans thought that, the poor stood to the rich as lazy sinners stand to the hardworking.
Elizabeth Anderson In secular terms, this amounts to the idea that, honor, Receipt of honor and esteem is conditional on achieving self sufficiency that is not depending on others, either charity or government welfare payments or something, to survive, and also a presumption that the poor are undeserving, a presumption that If 1 is poor and able-bodied, it must be that 1 is lazy. That inference is licensed by the conservative, path to secularization. Theologically, it was considered a bourgeois duty to maximize profits by disciplining workers. And that turns into the modern neoliberal doctrine of shareholder capitalism, The idea that the sole duty of the corporation is to maximize profits, and that public policy should be oriented towards facilitating that By systematically favoring capital over labor, I take that to be practically definitional of neoliberal policy. Thirdly, theologically, you know, in order to maximize profits, you gotta squeeze the workers' wages, and that's going to lead to a class of working poor.
Elizabeth Anderson The Puritan's favorite biblical phrase, quotation was, He who does not work shall not eat. And in secular terms, that turned into a public policy preference in favor either of workfare over getting free stuff. You know? If you wanna receive if you're too poor to survive on your wages alone, Rather than just getting free stuff from the state, you should work for it or rely on private charity. Theologically, the doctrine was that nobody is entitled to leisure that hasn't been earned.
Elizabeth Anderson Rest must always follow labor, said Baxter. And that turns into the American doctrine that nobody is entitled to paid vacations if they haven't earned them and secured them in their private wage contract obtained in the labor market, and also no paid leaves as well, another condition of American workers. Theologically, work was considered a kind of ascetic discipline. If your nose is to the grindstone, your mind doesn't have any time to wander to sinful thoughts of lust and sloth and so forth. And in secular terms, that turned into the tatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Elizabeth Anderson That is, it's the imposition of labor. The the the fact that 1 is working Anderson thumb of a boss who is putting 1 to this aesthetic discipline. However, I argue that there's a completely other side of the work ethic, that is pro worker, And 1 can read that in the original text. So I'm going to start with Robert Sanderson, another famous, Puritan, who wrote a, a wonderful sermon on how 1 will discover how can 1 discover What is one's calling? God has is calling each person to a distinctive occupation, a specialized occupation.
Elizabeth Anderson But how are you supposed to know that? Sanderson, like Puritans, generally tend to be dismissive of any kind of Superstitious idea that, god will just reveal his will for you in a dream. That's not how it happens. How do you find out what your calling is? Well, you consult your talents.
Elizabeth Anderson What are you good at? Your education, what skills have you managed to develop, and your personal tastes, what kind of work would you like to do? And if you absolutely loathe something, even if you're good at it, maybe you shouldn't choose that. He also suggests he recommends that people searching for their calling should consult their parents who love them and know them very well and probably have some good advice. In other words, what Sanderson did was invent Modern career counseling.
Elizabeth Anderson Now another beautiful thing that you can find in Puritan thought is the way they turn duties into individual rights. And here you can see it. If you have a duty, A god given duty to follow your calling, but your calling is fundamentally based on your personal dispositions and talents and and preferences, That duty has a corresponding right to free occupational choice, which is actually profoundly liberating. 1 must work for the duty for the greater glory of God. And what does that amount to?
Elizabeth Anderson Well, the Puritans are very earthly about this. 1 thing that they despised with was monkish activity. So they thought just praying all the time or lighting candles and rituals was just a such a nonsense. It's just rubbish. No.
Elizabeth Anderson It was not works in the religious sense that mattered. It was work in the profane sense which gets sacralized by the Puritans. Work for the greater glory of God consists in advancing human welfare. So the Puritans were the original utilitarians. Work has to have that positive social function helping other people.
Elizabeth Anderson Another Puritan, John Angier, said commanded that all must spiritualize their callings in earthly businesses. In other words, what he's saying is that what's ordinarily considered profane activity actually should be considered sacred. Working for the greater glory of God is equivalent to working to help your fellow human beings. And so the duty to God becomes a right to meaningful and respected work. Bullshit jobs don't count.
Elizabeth Anderson The only jobs that count as fulfilling your duty to a calling is jobs that actually promote human welfare. And that work has to be respected because and they're quite explicit about this. Every worker, Even the most menial is doing God's work and following God's duty. Everyone, whatever their specialization, has dignity in the fact that they are fulfilling the duty that God has assigned them. And, consequently, what we see here is the seeds of a proworker work ethic, the sign of the work ethic that I think Weber neglected, although it is there in the texts.
Elizabeth Anderson We have then the elements of a proworker work ethic, Namely, an insistence on the dignity of all workers, even the most menial That every calling must consist in meaningful work or, as Baxter put it, honest laborers profitable to the Commonwealth. The citation CSGS stands for the Christian Direct Directory, Baxter's magnificent 5 volume comprehensive guide to Christian ethics. I was working from an edition that was printed deep into the 19th century. And talking to Presbyterian ministers in America, I find, oh, they love Baxter. They know Baxter.
Elizabeth Anderson He's still read today and highly influential. Baxter also argued that workers were entitled to relief from employer abuses. Among his guides are he tells employers that They must not rule their, servants tyrannically, and that workers must be provided safe and healthful conditions. He also argues that all workers are entitled to fair and living wages, And they have a right to charity. Anyone in desperate need is entitled to charity.
Elizabeth Anderson And finally, he argued that the ultimate reward of labor was the saints' everlasting rest. It is true. It's nose to the grindstone in this world. But the reward of that is you go to heaven, and that is an eternal vacation with God. What could be more awesome than that?
Elizabeth Anderson Furthermore, Baxter was very strict about the work ethic. It imposes stern duties on the rich as well as the poor. The rich too have an obligation to engage in productive labor. God hath strictly commanded it to all. Baxter liked to quote, or or cite Adam's curse When God expelled Adam and Eve from paradise, he commanded that Adam work by the sweat of his brow to the end of his days.
Elizabeth Anderson And that is commanded to every last person, including those idle landlords and England. I think even more importantly for the present day is that he opposed activity that just consists in extracting wealth from other people. He called this a prison and constant calamity, To be tied to spend one's life in doing little good at all to others, though he should grow rich by it himself. So Baxter has some chapters in his Christian Directory, which basically amount to a guide to Christian business ethics, in which he condemns a variety of business models, which amount to mere wealth extraction, what he calls a spiritual calamity to be engaged in these kinds of businesses, all kinds of unfair and exploitative business models, which he defines as oppression. That's a quote from him.
Elizabeth Anderson He says, do not tread on your brethren as stepping stones of your own advancement. That seems to have application today. Do not injure your inferiors who are unable to resist. Don't exploit the vulnerable. He railed against monopolists, usurers, hucksters, and grocers.
Elizabeth Anderson And grocers are people who try to corner the market in some commodity and Profits that way. He also argued against unfair evictions and unfair raising of rents beyond what was customary. I think that also has contemporary application. And and also, here's a Lockean version of this. Locke, I think also, I have a reading of Locke as totally a work ethic guy.
Elizabeth Anderson And, oh, Locke argues against price discrimination against the poor and desperate. Just because you can extract a higher price from a poor and desperate person for some good. It doesn't mean you're entitled to get it even though you could get it on the market. You should be willing to Sell that good at whatever price you would sell it to be willing to sell it for somebody who isn't desperate for it. Another duty of the rich is effective altruism.
Elizabeth Anderson And, Peter Singer has, of course, famously articulated that same doctrine, but it originates in Baxter. And I want to show you that it's possible to derive The duty of effective altruism, without taking utilitarianism is a first premise. It goes back to that contradiction in the original commandments of the work ethic. So it goes like this. You have a duty to maximize your income, But you also have a duty not to waste anything that you acquire, But you are forbidden from spending that massive accumulation of wealth on yourself because that would be indulging in vain luxury and covetousness.
Elizabeth Anderson But you gotta spend your money, so what are you gonna spend it on? You have nothing else to spend it on but your needy brethren. Right? And also public works. He allowed, you know, so pay your taxes, right, because public works will arise from that, and that's helpful to the community.
Elizabeth Anderson I wrote to Peter and I I when I when I discovered these passages in Baxter and I wrote to Peter an email, and I said, Peter, are you aware that you are simply channeling the thoughts of a 17th century Puritan minister? And, he was delighted to learn that. Anyway, here here's, like, a perfect encapsulation. This is Baxter now, but it's It's incredible the parallel with Singer. He says the portions are comely as clothing of your children must rather be neglected than the poor be suffered to perish.
Elizabeth Anderson It's pretty much an abstract, Singer's famous article on famine and affluence. It's right there. Okay. So this gives us the progressive path to secularization. And again, we have the theological version on the left hand column, And then this version of the work ethic also gets secularized, and we have the secular parallels on the right.
Elizabeth Anderson So theologically, workers are honored as following a sacred calling that god has called them to. In secular terms, that amounts to the demand that All workers are entitled to dignity and meaningful work. No bullshit jobs. Both sides believe in free occupational choice. Do you have a right to that?
Elizabeth Anderson Theologically, workers are entitled to a frugal living rage. In the mid 17th century, you don't yet have the concept of, ever expanding economic growth. It's not really there. But once we get that concept in play, we get, for instance, Adam Smith's call that workers are entitled to high and rising wages. Theologically, there is both a right and a duty to charity if 1 is, destitute.
Elizabeth Anderson And that becomes, in the secular version, a right to social governance. Rather more dignified because then you don't have to beg for a particular other and accept some kind of, submission to another person's, will. Theologically, you get leisure in the next life, But in secular terms, that the goods of the work ethic get moved from the next life into this 1, so it turns into a right to, maximum hours, working hours, leisure here on earth in this life, paid vacations, paid leaves, and so forth. And finally, theologically, the idea was that you should internalize the work ethic, and that's something you can do autonomously. Everyone's capable.
Elizabeth Anderson So another feature of Baxter, he was very heterodox in 1 way. Calvinists thought only a tiny number of elect were saved. But Baxter has a sermon in which he says, salvation is open to everyone who assiduously follows the work ethic. There's a potential universality there. And in secular terms, that turns into right to worker self governance.
Elizabeth Anderson Workers are perfectly capable of disciplining selves and running their own businesses in a cooperative or perhaps as self employed. There's a legacy to this. I don't have time to spell out why I think the legacy is deeply grounded in the original Calvinist work ethic, But it turns into, in secular terms, the classical liberal defense of labor. And I want to stress the classical liberals defended labor. It wasn't just a rationalization of capitalist exploitation by any means.
Elizabeth Anderson So we see, for instance, Smith, Paine, and Abraham Lincoln, a late representative of this trend of thought, arguing against all forms of unfree labor, not just slavery, of course, with serfdom, peonage, indentured servitude, and my favorite, unpaid apprenticeships still going on today, and Smith did not approve. Secondly, the idea that property rights are founded in labor. Of course, that's the famous Lockean doctrine, and Smith takes it over. The labor theory of value, you find both in Locke And Smith, Locke originates it. Smith takes it over, and the classical economists all the way through Marx.
Elizabeth Anderson Arguments for high wages, you find that in Adam Smith. The invention of the idea of social governance. That's actually a classical liberal idea, created by Condorcet and Tom Pink. Limits the length of working day. Even though John Stuart Mill, a late representative of classical liberalism, argued by and large in favor of laissez faire.
Elizabeth Anderson He did acknowledge a pretty good argument in favor of State limits to the length of the working day, 1 of the great working class labor movement issues of his day. And finally, an ideal of universal self employment or worker governance, an ideal within free market ideology that (CSGS) from the 17th century. And in the United States, it lasted all the way up to the Civil War. The idea of universal self employment, everyone being their own boss, or at least being in a workers' cooperative, which is the collective version of the same idea of worker autonomy that you find in John Stuart Mill. But now let's consider the work ethic today and what it has become.
Elizabeth Anderson And here, I'm working from American Data. So this chart demonstrates a growing gap since about 1972 between productivity in the United States and the hourly compensation of the typical American worker. And to you know, from the post war era until around 1972, economic growth and Narrowly compensation, were hand in hand. They they rose at the same rate, and that represents an era of equitable growth where workers are sharing in economic growth at the same rate as capital owners. 1972, you get a sharp inflection point and a general stagnation of ordinary wages.
Elizabeth Anderson And that gap there is represented by an increasing share of wealth taken by capital owners, and by highly compensated, like CEOs and things like that. Here again is American Compensation has massively increased over time to spectacular levels. So a great share of that, That increasing productivity that's not going to ordinary workers is going to CEOs, and another chunk is going to capital owners. Not just CEOs, but all about most highly compensated, executives of profit making firms. And here you can see here in work poverty rates.
Elizabeth Anderson And, the United States, is right next to Greece. That's the red bar is is the United States. You could see very high rates of poverty, even for people who are working. It's quite shocking. Greece is, is is is a little bit higher, but, colleague of mine at University of Michigan economist Linda Tissar, who's an expert on Greece, told me that the mistake people make about Greece is believing that it's a developed economy.
Elizabeth Anderson And so United States is, like, not even doing I mean, it's just barely doing a little bit better than Greece when it comes to minimizing poverty even while people are working. I think Warren Buffett captures, the result here, there's class warfare, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning. Pretty accurate summation of what's happening today in America. However, there's a counterargument here which the rich make, and that is, wow, we're working really, really, really hard. Whereas those, you know, poorer workers, They're not working nearly as much, and there is some empirical evidence for this.
Elizabeth Anderson It is true that CEOs and bankers and professionals, more generally, are working crazy hours. Here you can see CSGS the right hand side, you have overtime rates for men on the left. Women do a lot less overtime. But as you could see, as as their position in the class order, increases, they're doing a lot more overtime. So low income workers, you could see that actually their rates of overtime have dropped.
Elizabeth Anderson Whereas professional managerial class, their rates of overtime work have increased quite dramatically. And so, you know, highly compensated workers justify their huge incomes by saying, well, look. We're, like, working like crazy for them. Right? Not compared to all these lower workers who have a lot more leisure than we do.
Elizabeth Anderson That's at least the rationale, that this is the deserving rich, not the idle rich anymore. We're not talking about idle landlords just collecting rents. We're talking about people who are really, really busy showing up at the office working really hard all the time. So does that argument really fly? I think not because we should not confuse being very, very busy With engaging in work that enhances the welfare of other people besides oneself and idle shareholders, passive capital investors.
Elizabeth Anderson And indeed, I think that contemporary neoliberalism, Through its successful deregulation of the economy has enabled the flourishing of zillions of business models that are dedicated to merely extracting wealth from other people without really adding Social value. And indeed, the United States, it's really gotten completely out of control. And so you can ask the following questions. Does the business model merely extract wealth? We have many cases of vulture equity, vulture capital who go in and pray on some corporations, strip all of its assets, and leave it to die with thousands of people unemployed.
Elizabeth Anderson This happens. Does it exploit the vulnerable? In the United States, it's very common for people to get surprised medical bills. They go to a hospital emergency room. Their medical Insurance says this hospital is inside their network, and, hence, they should be getting, service Health care that's covered by their insurance.
Elizabeth Anderson However, the emergency office, the emergency room is often not in network. And, consequently, they're sprung with a bill. Like, you know, they go for some ailment or some emergency, and then they're sprung with a $60,000 bill, at the end of it that they because they tried as hard as they could to stay inside network, and they didn't. Insulin costs have risen, even even though insulin is off patent, but, there are fewer manufacturers of insulins, so you just raise up the price. People are dying for lack of affordable insulin.
Elizabeth Anderson Does Leading people, we have a classic case of multilevel marketing, which is wildly popular in the United States. About 99% of People who follow the dream of self employment through multi level marketing, which is really just a pyramid scheme, lose money. We also have for profit scam schools. These have the majority of student defaults on their debt goes to these schools. Does the business model shift risks to vulnerable people?
Elizabeth Anderson There's a whole scheme that corporations have engaged in whereby they could legally raid all of the capital or a great chunk of capital from, workers' pension plans and then declare bankruptcy on them, leaving workers without, a pension. Does the business model undermine future generations? Will you say that about a huge sector of American business, namely, fossil fuels? Does the model spread hatred, propaganda, and undermine democracy and journalism? Well, just take a look at Facebook, see what doing.
Elizabeth Anderson What we're facing here is a cult of wealth maximization. In other words, the flourishing of the conservative work ethic in which all of the duties are placed on workers and all of the benefits are raked in by people at the top in capital owners. But Baxter said that was wrong. That is wrong. You should mortify your own lusts, which make you think that you need so much as tempt you to get it by oppressing others.
Elizabeth Anderson Stop doing it, he's saying to the rich. And we might ask ourselves, like, what is even the point of accumulating all this massive wealth? You know, after the first, I don't know, few million, how much more could you even spend? Is it even possible? What is the point?
Elizabeth Anderson Well, Society, some people say, I I just you know, I mean, their they don't say this, But in fact, their motive is just to select their vanity. They get more boasting points the more dollars they have in their bank account. You know, like president Trump boasting that he has $10,000,000,000 in all capital letters. Good evidence that he doesn't have that amount, but It shows you what the economy of esteem is like for some people. I think, actually, more frequently, it's not just Society, it's plutocracy.
Elizabeth Anderson That is People are converting massive, massive wealth into control, capture of the political process. That's definitely a net negative Value added, activity. And so I want us to ask whether there's any actual use of vast wealth that isn't harmful to other people. Well, the standard answer to that originated with Baxter Anderson later, Andrew Carnegie, late 19th century rich guy, steelmaker in the United States, who wrote a book called The full of wealth in which he argued that it would be shameful to die rich. Instead, you should give it all away.
Elizabeth Anderson It's the philanthropic vision which Peter Singer has taken up today. However, I think Carnegie was wrong about this Because if you look at how he made his gigantic fortunes, he ran steel mills. The workers in his steel mills had a 25% serious injury rat rate. Death, loss of limb, It's a serious disablement. I think he should have spent that money making his steel mills safe for the workers.
Elizabeth Anderson But more generally, I think individual remedies like amassing giant fortunes, only to give them away, doesn't do anything to alter structural injustices in how people manage to acquire those fortunes in the 1st place. And that returns us to the question of Graeber's bullshit jobs. I want us to revisit this thought. Graeber criticizes bullshit jobs, these worthless, meaningless jobs, as a form of spiritual violence. The workers who occupy these jobs are suffering from spiritual violence, By which he means that they're subjected to the indignity of uselessness and the fact that their agency has been undermined.
Elizabeth Anderson It's a little bit like Baxter's prison and calamity of anyone who, makes a lot of money even though they're not doing any good for other people. And, indeed, Graeber points out that bullshit jobs tend to be paid more than shit jobs. They actually tend to be respected middle middle class jobs. He also observed that people feel humiliated in being ordered To engage in worthless (CSGS), just as a power play by the boss or to slate the boss's vanity. And he also observes that prisoners are often confined to their cell and denied opportunities to work within the prison, and that's considered punishment.
Elizabeth Anderson And the prisoners feel that way too because it's horrible to be consigned to uselessness. Now what I find interesting about this critique of the spiritual violence of bullshit jobs is that it (CSGS) as if these complaints are better motivated by the progressive work ethic than by the leisure ideal. What he's really saying is people wanna be useful like you need to be. It's important And and to have an impact beyond just one's own self, doing something meaningful, helping other people, promoting social welfare. That's really the progressive work ethic.
Elizabeth Anderson It's not the leisure ideal. And here you can see Amazon workers With the same thought in mind, they want Amazon to go green. Like, that would be meaningful in instead of, sending us into climate catastrophe. They walked out of work on September 20th. And so I wanna conclude with the thought of another great Puritan work ethic guy, John Milton in Paradise Lost.
Elizabeth Anderson Examines what Adam was thinking when he was expelled from Eden and told by God that he had to work by the sweat of his brow to the end of his days. This is the thought that he puts into Adam's head. With labor, I must earn my bread. Oh, what harm is that? Idleness would have been worse.
Elizabeth Anderson Now what I what I wanna suggest here is that we should look, we should desire for society, A configuration of work such that everyone could share Adam's sentiment. And I'll leave you with that thought. Thank you.
Mark Pennington Thanks Thanks very much, Elizabeth. That's very, very engaging and provocative, talk. So, let's open up to questions from the floor. So questions, please.
Speaker 2 How can you, talk about bullshit jobs that I assume are very productive for the employer or indeed the employee? And also talk about the neoliberal elites suppressing the workers. Surely, if these jobs were not useful in some way in terms of the output that they created, these jobs would be CSGS through wanting to make money. And how can you claim that, there is exploitation of the workers on the scale that you're talking about when we have a welfare state and the taxation that is so large that surely that is the exploitation and not, you know, allowing people to do bullshit jobs.
Elizabeth Anderson Okay. So number 1, remember, a bullshit job isn't just like an empty job, But a job that is what Baxter would have called a prison and a calamity, that is a form of oppression, which is just extracting value. And I think we had I gave you some examples of of such jobs. So they're making profits for, The company and the CEO is raking off huge fortunes because the CEO's pay, is for performance, which means profits. So, yeah, it can be in the interest of capitalists to create jobs like that, but it doesn't mean that those that that activity and indeed the whole business model is actually adding on net to social welfare.
Elizabeth Anderson And as far as exploitation goes, I think we have to consider that no organization of Society could possibly be just in which the society actually has the objective capacity to eliminate poverty and fails to organize its property and social relations in such a way, to do so.
Speaker 3 Thank you. That was really, really very interesting. So I had 2 quick questions. 1 was, it seemed as if you were presenting 2 separate strands within, within liberal thought, But I wonder how separate they are because, in fact, in a sense, this dichotomy between the deserving poor and and and nondeserving poor. We see that or we see versions of that, say, in Locke himself.
Speaker 3 Right? So Locke has, a concern that you highlighted, but Locke also thought that the indigenous in Americas were not industrious enough. And so, you know, They it was okay to take over their land because they were not industrious enough with that land. Similarly, with Smith, the concerns about, masterless, masterless you know, a class of masterless men are concerns also about, about preserving a kind of a paternalistic structure. So in a sense, it seems that even within the same thinkers, these 2 strands of liberalism, the the progressive and the conservative strands, that you identify actually seem to to live within them.
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. Okay. So so I just wanna have a little refinement of your reading of Locke. And and that is you can find the conservative work ethic in his, reform of the poor law, which does have this kind of extreme suspicions of able-bodied people who are destitute. He Anderson, well, you really have to make The the receipt of charity, even though it's a duty to give it and a right to receive it, very onerous to make sure that, people aren't just trying to, you know, get away with something.
Elizabeth Anderson So that that is true. Actually, you can't find anywhere in Locke a rationale for taking land away from Native Americans. That was sort of a later you know, people are then reading Locke in this way, but Locke himself didn't go there. Right. As far as Smith goes, in in private government, I argue that, in fact, Smith was a great advocate of self employment and thought that a free market in labor would deliver that.
Elizabeth Anderson So I don't actually see him as advocating paternalism. And I in fact, his argument is that the rise of commercial society, its greatest benefit is precisely that it liberates Workers from subjection to the horrible lords.
Speaker 4 Okay.
Speaker 3 And sorry. I had a quick second question. And the second question was to go back to Weber where we started. So Weber is is using the work ethic to to explain the rise of capitalism. And I was curious about, what what we are doing going back to the Puritans now, in the sense of, you seem to want to go back to the Puritans to actually, not so much explain capitalism, but actually Prescribe a future for capitalism at this point.
Speaker 3 Is that what you see yourself as doing? Because in a sense, we are looking for solutions going back to where, you know, The the origins or the problems or, the complications. Is that what you see your project as as doing?
Elizabeth Anderson So in part, But in fact, my larger project, of which this is just a piece, is to show that the progressive work ethic, the pro worker work ethic, actually had a profound influence in the history of political thought. So the right to meaningful work, another way to put it, is unalienated labor. You can even find this in Weber I'm sorry, in Marx. I mean, Marx himself thinks that work is absolutely central to human life. Like, that's the core.
Elizabeth Anderson Like, properly configured work, is a is core human flourishing activity in itself. That's coming straight out of the work ethic. Of course, it's secularized radically secularized. But we could see these profound influences in, you know, in this book that I'm writing on the work ethic. I plan to trace out the lines of of the progressive work ethic, Through classical liberalism to Marxism, the labor movement, and social democracy, where you actually got comprehensive social insurance.
Speaker 5 My question might come out quite badly because I'm trying to still put the pieces together in my head. But I'm wondering I think I can work out from having rep your private Governance, but but I just wanna kinda check. So You mentioned the Marxist responses, and and I think very plausible to see the Marxist response as an outgrowth of of this work, I think. But what about a kind of Nietzschean response, right, which goes Both your conservative and progressive versions are are theodicies. Right?
Speaker 5 They they want to give a a meaning for why we have to work, and and and and it's an existential meaning ultimately, And that's very comforting. It's nice to have 1, and especially nice if you wanna oppress other people and you find God's on your side. Right? So that's the sort of fair. Right?
Speaker 5 If we all like you know, like, say, if we're gonna tread on people. We like to know we're allowed to tread on them. Right? And so that's powerful. But the thought is both the progressive and the conservative version can no longer be justified in their secular form if they don't have a theodicy.
Speaker 5 Or maybe they can. Right? But but but what about the Nietzschean sort of Nietzschean view that says, look, we should get beyond you know, we should go beyond good and evil beyond progressive and conservative because the the the the thought here is that the the the underlying theodysies don't make sense anymore. So what we should do is reconceptualize work entirely. Now I think I know what you you're you're gonna say informal to that position, but I thought I'd ask.
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. Right. I mean, so that that's sort of I mean, You could see Canes and Graber as moving in that direction. And, I guess So there's a couple of things I I wanna say about that. 1 is, I think Most people do want to they see the meaning in their lives as extending beyond just their personal playtime, And that contributing to the welfare of others is actually really significant, to most people.
Elizabeth Anderson But, Furthermore, if we just look at the, you know, realities of the current day, humanity on a global scale is facing the biggest crisis it's ever faced in climate change. It's gonna take an awful lot of hard work to deal with that. We're talking about a fundamental transformation of the entire energy infrastructure, land use practices, and so forth. I think we're at least a century or 2 away from confronting a realistic possibility of moving to a post work society.
Speaker 6 Building on kind of the Marxist response that this gentleman, talked about earlier, I'm I'm trying to conceptualize this work ethic that you're discussing as a new justification for the existence of a bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie in the past had the innate god given privilege of owning land and being able to exploit that land for profit or exploitation or whatever. But now, in this more egalitarian, more progressive society, The rich actually have to work to justify their social status. But how does this reconcile with the notion that the rich are often doing bullshit jobs?
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. Downright pernicious jobs. Right? I mean, that's really the curse of neoliberalism. Look.
Elizabeth Anderson Why does regulation exist in the 1st place? A lot of it is we're talking about business regulation is trying to prevent pernicious business models. And you deregulate, and that just opens up lots of opportunities for pernicious business models that are just ripping people off or oppressing people off.
Speaker 6 Quick follow-up question. As far as, like, it's kind of this whole thing has been creating, like, a hereditary kind of elite, like, at privileged universities and schools that are that serve to perpetuate this whole neoliberal idea.
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. So, look, I'm criticizing Neoliberalism. I think this is, like, all wrong. Right? I want that's that is sort of the secular version of the conservative work ethic.
Elizabeth Anderson And, you know, I I wanna ditch that, because there's another actual feature. I mean, this is why I think it's interesting to go back to 17th century. And and that there's actually a profound internal contradiction to trying to conservatism the the the work ethic, Because it is inherently going to produce a society of idle, rich, or rich who are engaged in calamitous business plans. And both of those were condemned right from the start. The point of all this hard work is to promote human welfare.
Elizabeth Anderson Okay? And, you know, our current system, has an awful lot of business models, which are richly rewarding activities that aren't doing that. So none of this speak could be considered deserved wealth.
Speaker 4 I'll ask A question starting from a different poem. So hopefully, if you don't like the question, at least like the poem. And the poem is called Adam's Anderson, And it's written by, William Butler Eats. Do you know it? And it's all about who defines what labor is.
Speaker 4 So the poem is about the condition of the poet who has to write and write. But if it looks labored, if it looks like you put a lot of work into it, that then it's a bad poem. So in order for the work of a poet to be good, it has to look like it's been written in no time. So the question based on that alternative interpretation of Adam's curse is, who defines, labor? Because when you move to the religious, to the secular understanding this is 1 of the things that get lost, that that standard for who decides what a good or productive labor, is.
Speaker 4 Because it might be that a good poem doesn't really contribute to the welfare of society as a whole. You know? It could be that just a handful of of people, appreciated, but it could still be labored even if it looked like it wasn't, and even if it if it's just 5 people who who like it. So I'm wondering what you think Right.
Elizabeth Anderson So the question is, whether the artist is doing real work? So that's really wonderful. So let me let me give you a perspective on this, which I think also applies to to the humanities more generally. It's very common in today's world. I think in the UK, as as well as the United States wonder, like, where is all this bullshit humanity stuff, right, and art and all this kind of stuff?
Elizabeth Anderson Like, what's the real utility? Let's go to, you know, science, computer science, technology, jobs. Right? Because that's real. It really, like, delivers the goods.
Elizabeth Anderson But I think that's deeply, deeply wrong. Human beings are aspirational, imaginative beings. Okay. That it life would hardly be worth living if we couldn't aspire to things which are not yet realized, and that requires the cultivation of the imagination. Art is absolutely critical to that.
Elizabeth Anderson And 1 of the things the humanities does through, is also to imagine Alternative possibilities for how we might live our lives, to research history, to show that other people have thought about The organization of society and moral norms and ideals, in in radically different terms from what we do today, that's all a matter of expanding the realm of possibilities that are open to us and enhancing our imagination. If you talk to the Economists, they think if you open up more options for people, they're better off. The humanities and the arts are absolutely vital to that because you don't have an option Shane, if that you haven't imagined, that you that you haven't conceived. That's our job. It is welfare enhancing.
Speaker 7 Hello. Great great lecture. I was trying to think of reasons for, accumulation beyond the any feasible possibilities of consumption. And I think probably 1 of the the steel man that the the rich might put forward is that they want to provide for their families and their descendants. And by accumulating so much, they can guarantee 2, 3, maybe more generations of their families to live Comfortable lives.
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. Right. It's the aspiration to dynastic wealth. And my question about that is, why would you even want to have all of your descendants be ne'er do wells? And in fact, even the rich worry about this.
Elizabeth Anderson It's true. 1 of my classmates, from college, became a sociologist. She read a wonderful book on the philanthropy of the rich in New York City, got access, and actually personally interviewed 25% Of all the people on, like, the Forbes 1000 who lived in the New York metro area, so that's a huge sample. And what she found was that the rich constantly worried that, because their kids were gonna come into all this money, that they would just be idlers and, like, just make nothing of themselves because they're everything like, immense wealth was totally guarantee to them. Now I think it's time to retire.
Elizabeth Anderson Long since past time to retire, the dynastic aspiration.
Mark Pennington I've I've got actually a a kind of follow-up question on that to think about the rich. And that's the question is really about the effect of altruism part. Yeah. I mean, isn't 1 of the reasons people don't give away money that they've accumulated because they don't think it will actually end world poverty or poverty in multiple sort of dimensions. And that's 1 of the reasons that people actually don't give it away.
Mark Pennington Now that may be often motivated reasoning, but it isn't actually easy to solve the problem of poverty, Is it? Certainly, if we if we look globally, that where is the evidence that just actually having a situation where you just give it away is the right thing to do from a sort of moral point of view if you're not convinced that practically it will actually deliver on that objective. So how how should we calibrate the conversation in that in that context? I guess it's
Elizabeth Anderson I think that's a really great point, and that's part of my skepticism about the value of philanthropy is that eradicating poverty is much more about establishing effective institutions than it is about just sort of receiving cash. Institution there's just no substitute for effective institution building, and and, you know, and philanthropy doesn't really do that because what you need to do that is a state that is responsive to the interests of its people and accountable to its people. And you don't get that through philanthropy. But there's another downside to philanthropy, and that is that, Ultimately, the standard of philanthropy is whether it follows the whims of the philanthropist. And whether or not that actually promotes social welfare or the or or the welfare of the the people who are getting The money is rather contingent, especially when the money is given away to distant places.
Elizabeth Anderson I mean, sometimes sometimes it helps people, But we have a lot of cases of failed philanthropy because people have these ideas in their heads of what would be good for other people in very different Anderson, And they want that vision realized, when in fact, it actually just is based on a false picture of what people really need.
Speaker 8 I just had a really quick question about, the relationship between this progressive work ethic and maybe equality concerns. I know a lot of what you mentioned, was about the manipulation of workers, the unequal footing that workers are on. Is there a concern here that When when you have a society where maybe some people can have the progressive work ethic or some people can find meaning through their work, but others don't, That that's a concern for equality, or are we just valuing this progressive work ethic for kind of different unrelated not not equality reasons, but just because it's Good for an intrinsic or it's intrinsically good for life.
Elizabeth Anderson Right. Okay. So I do wanna point out 1 major reservation to the standard version of the work ethic, And that is that, in the standard secular version, work has to be paid work. That is work that's marketed. And actually, though, if you go back to Baxter, he has a really interesting critique of the gentry of his day.
Elizabeth Anderson And his criticism is they fail to educate their daughters. And he thinks that's a calamity, for girls and the women they will grow up into. Because then they're kinda like just what are they gonna do? They're gonna, like, you know, hang around Tea parties, gossiping or something. They're deprived of, of opportunities for, social welfare enhancing work.
Elizabeth Anderson But he didn't imagine remember, these are the Puritans. 17th century. He doesn't imagine that they're gonna be going out working for a wage, the daughters of the gentry. No. He thinks, you know, most women they're calling is Education, namely the education of their children.
Elizabeth Anderson He's got a general division of labor, but what's important about that is the idea that, That non marketed, non wage labor still counts as a very important Society necessary calling. And, you know, in feminist terms today, what this means is that people engaged in dependent care work within their families, even though today it doesn't receive a wage, is entitled to dignity and should be socially valued. And indeed, it's some of the most socially necessary and valuable work that people do. How else do children grow up? How else does the next generation arise and develop and flourish?
Elizabeth Anderson That that work should be valued even if it isn't Marketed. Now that doesn't fully answer your question because, yeah, there are some people like Philippe Van Perij Thanks. What about those surfers who just wanna hang out on the beach, and surf? And I guess my my view is, I don't believe in a society that would force such people to work if they can, like, scrape by. In America, People can sometimes do that scraping by, collecting, disposable aluminum cans that could be returned for a deposit and things like that.
Elizabeth Anderson Okay. Fine. I I I don't believe in Society should force people, if they can find some way to get by. But I don't think it should be a chief goal of our economic and social arrangements to to enable That lifestyle because, again, we had a lot of work before us. We gotta roll up our sleeves.
Elizabeth Anderson It's gonna have to be all hands on deck to save humanity from climate catastrophe. We really need people to be working.
Speaker 9 Yes. Thank you very much for the talk. I was thinking of the most pagan anti Protestant people I could think of, and I know who it is finally. The Silicon Valley types. You know, the people who are going there and say, we have to disrupt everything, and then we'll see what happens.
Speaker 9 So I kinda think of them as the counterexample to what you're saying. And I guess My follow-up question was something related to what Mark was saying that when we when we engage in this sort of activity, we kind of have to discover what is happening or not. And maybe some of these harms can be alleviated rather than having those sorts of business models prevented. I'm thinking of this, you know, as a kind of anti precautionary principle argument because you brought up the environment. Right?
Speaker 9 Certain changes in the environment are irreversible. But what if, for example, what we have to do is simply mitigate the harm rather than simply reverse some of the elements when it comes to work. So maybe we can have this sort of techno disruption stuff, but simply mitigate the harms involved rather than just reverse the the business models involved. So maybe I guess, This is kind of my attempt at the defense in defense of paganism.
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. You know what? I just don't think that, wrecking a lot of stuff And then hiring people to clean up the mess is really, like, a great way to organize society. I think we should just expect people not to be wrecking stuff in the 1st place. Look.
Elizabeth Anderson We're in a state of almost drunken, You know, utopianism when it comes to tech. My view is is that investments in tech are just wildly overstated. A huge percentage of these business models are never gonna reach profitability, so even by capitalist Anderson, they're sort of scams. And there's a lot better uses for the money, and a lot of it is basically parasitic. So consider, for instance, Facebook has destroyed Local newspapers in the United States.
Elizabeth Anderson Without local newspapers, we actually this has been measured. When a town loses its local newspaper, the interest it has to pay on its bond issues goes up. Why? Because there's no watchdog on local politicians who might just scam, Not so much pocket the money directly, but they'll go to their friends and give them, crony contracts that wildly inflated prices, which makes everything less efficient. We need local journalism.
Elizabeth Anderson How did Facebook destroy local journalism? Through links. Right. You can you can link to, an article or even just reproduce it on your site and get all the ad revenue depriving the originators, the people who actually created the news content of access to that revenue. It's not much better business model than plagiarism, in my opinion.
Elizabeth Anderson Anderson Facebook gets billions, and everybody pays higher taxes as a result.
Speaker 10 This is going back to this notion of, redefining work, and also thinking about the sharing of it. So sort of you ended your talk on this notion of, kind of making sure that, you know, we are all sort of become part of this progressive, view of of, defining ourselves through A work that is, you know, constrained through these, these these norms. And it sounds sounds very good, but but I guess, my question is, How do you do you do you envision for example, if we if it turns out that if the goal is to maximize social welfare, for example, It turns out that it's simply very, very costly to keep everybody working or to, you know, like, you know, you you give the example of the climate crisis, and maybe that is something that does this, but but I I I remember skeptical that in the long run, there is at least not a big trade off involved in, in trying to keep everybody engaged, for example, through job guarantee programs or something like that. So if it is very, very costly to keep everybody involved rather than giving them simply money to be idle, then at what point from the public welfare point of view do actually just give up and say, okay.
Speaker 10 Maybe not everybody has to work. We'll, you know, we'll we'll we'll do with the 80% or 99 or something
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. Right. Society mean, 1 1 thing I wanna say about that is that, again, I'm not defining work in terms of paid work. I I think there's a lot of dependents within the family who need a lot of attention, who aren't currently be give giving given attention. And and, it it would enhance social utility to, encourage men and women alike, to do more of this work, which they can't do now because they're forced to work for a wage at Some job that isn't promoting nearly as much utility as spending time with the kids and the elders.
Elizabeth Anderson So I do think we have to radically reconfigure what work, you know, with the content of work because a lot of it isn't really value added, and a lot of stuff that's not paid is highly, highly valuable. But I also wanna CSGS equitable sharing of that work, which would entail men stepping up and not just handing all that unpaid dependent care labor to women to do. Thanks
Speaker 7 so much.
Speaker 11 I wanna follow-up on this question and, say that I'm very sympathetic to the progressive to the reconstruction of the progressive work ethic. But I wanna ask you to just maybe expand on its implications for public policy. And specifically, if you think that a lot of these things that you talk about that are valuable about the progressive work ethic, are mostly, all those goods, So in terms of the dignity of work or the reduction of sort of meaningless jobs are going to be mainly the result of sort of changes in public policy or if you anticipate in addition to that or in parallel to that, a change in the ethos of how we view work, as a society.
Elizabeth Anderson Right. Yeah. So I think I think both things are are involved. I mean, both changes in the laws and and changes in norms and our our ways of Viewing work. So the work ethic really has you know, if you look at the history of the work ethic, it's both an ethos, but also embodied in public policies, especially the conservative work ethic, with, you know, mean spirited means tested welfare systems, workfare, and all this kind of stuff, which is very much about forcing poor people to accept various kinds of drudgery.
Elizabeth Anderson And, you know, there's a technological issue here too. I'm not in favor of drudgery. If you could automate that, I think that would be awesome. Because denture eat just as it it it it's experienced as awful by by the workers who are currently consigned to it. But I think there's still plenty of other social welfare enhancing activity Available.
Elizabeth Anderson I I don't believe in the idea of a shortage of meaningful work. That's a matter of social arrangements, but also a matter of our Economy of esteem. Sometimes work feels bad because people despise the doing of it. And we can change that as well by readjusting the esteem we give to work, by fully appreciating its contributions to the welfare of other people.
Speaker 12 Thanks very much. I thought your talk was brilliant. I just had a question which can be encapsulated, in in the following statement. How progressive is the progressive work ethic? And the reason I ask this is because, I it's a kind of a question about how you're interpreting, the notion of a calling and and its secularization.
Speaker 12 Because it strikes me on the 1 hand that calling is something meaningful. And on and when it's secularized, it's, you know, yes. We can freely choose something. But on the other, a calling is also something that we are expected to do and follow, like, in on an indefinite period. Right?
Speaker 12 And that seems to have dropped completely away in the secularization when when does that that's been secularized. But I my question is, a, why has that happened? And, b, if that is still kind of implicit in this progressive work ethic, namely that we can choose meaningful work, but we're kind of stuck doing that thing, Then doesn't that reintroduce some of the, informal notions of, empower imbalance that you're trying to sort of rail against in introducing the progressive work ethic in the 1st place?
Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. So you could see the work ethic the progressive work ethic is saying you have You have free choice of work, but you should be working at something or other. But, you know, I think that's I do think we do have a duty to help 1 another, And that that is both a duty and a significant source of human flourishing being being being useful.
Speaker 12 I meant more so much not so much in terms of having to work, but rather having to work in 1 particular thing.
Elizabeth Anderson Oh, I see. I see. Right. Right. Right.
Elizabeth Anderson So, You know, the progressive work ethic doesn't say that You should dedicate yourself to 1 occupation for your entire life. There's no reason why you can't repurpose yourself and just take a different direction. And, indeed, the right to free occupational choice amounts to a right to change your mind about what you wanna do and Change course. That's it is a really important value.
Speaker 13 So towards the end, you mentioned self employment as a route to liberate people from the yoke of the employer. But, while I agree with the idea of, workers governance, I think Just self employment, is often actually a neoliberal idea and exposes people to more risks than they were previously exposed to. And some of the most Vulnerable workers are people in the gig economy who are supposedly self employed.
Elizabeth Anderson I agree completely with that. So 1 thing is is that In many cases, gig workers are actually misclassified as self employed. And it's just kind of a ruse to get around The legal obligations of the employment relation, because they still are working under the direction of whoever's paying them. And so they're not actually true independent contractors. And, you know, as far as of the current configuration of work is that people could be working really hard, and they're it never gets them past the system of Precarity.
Elizabeth Anderson There's a special big problem in the United States and also for even younger workers, in Europe on 0 hours contracts so forth. They can't even get their life going because they they can't there there's no security of the future. That's a matter of public policy. I mean, that it has to be solved by by by comprehensive changes in in employment law, taxation, the welfare state. A lot of things had to be done.
Elizabeth Anderson But a big thing that I think is worth doing is steeply progressive income taxes. I think Thomas Piketty is right about this, that a lot of the perverse changes we've seen in society is due to the Remove all of steeply progressive, taxes with because if you have 90% marginal tax rate, which was what we had, in the United States under the Eisenhower administration in 19 fifties. It's like the marginal taxes are so high. It didn't even make sense for the CEO to ask for $10,000,000 because almost all they'd be taxed away. And so they settled, informal about $400,000 a year in today's dollars.
Elizabeth Anderson So what is that? Like, £360,000, maybe, something like that. I actually give my students an article from, like, Forbes in 1955 that describes the lifestyle of a CEO of a substantial corporation in the state of Connecticut. What is a super rich person. What what is his life like?
Elizabeth Anderson Let's let's look at what the lives of the rich are like in 1955. Oh, he had a 2 car garage, 4 bedrooms in his house. And on vacation, he had a little boat that he took to a lake and went fishing. You can be perfectly happy with a life like that.
Speaker 14 Thanks. I was just wondering. These exchanges about, nonwaged work have made me wonder what the Value is a framing things in terms of a progressive work ethic rather than something like focusing on Try try to get rid of a work ethic and instead just thinking about something like moral education for an imperfect Kantian duty of beneficence. Because it seems like that's sort of what the work ethic the progressive work ethic ends up being once Work is just any sort of, nonidleness that promotes social welfare or may maybe there's more of a division there. So I just wondered if you could
Elizabeth Anderson Oh, I see. Yeah. So look, you know, in a way, I 1 of the faults that I that I see in Singer's work is that he kind of is working with a kind of utilitarian vision of kind of unstructured, undirected beneficence. And, you know, there's real problems with that. We actually do need an economic organization of of work for, in order to make sure that effort is directed in concerted ways to solve problems.
Elizabeth Anderson Because you're sorta like giving away money according to your whims. Sometimes what happens is certain certain certain causes get, like, mountains of money, and other even more needy causes are neglected, and they get nothing. I think I think unstructured benevolence doesn't really help us. And and markets play a legitimate role In the allocation and division of labor, I think our current markets are not well regulated and consequently don't do a great job of that. But I think with better regulations, any system for, reasonable allocation and allocation of labor effort is gonna need to use markets in in in some ways.
Elizabeth Anderson So you're gonna need then systems of reciprocity, you know, large scale organizations dedicated to delivering particular goods and services and so forth. You get an economy, and not just unstructured benevolence.
Speaker 15 Yeah. Hi. I hope I can get it right, though. I was thinking about the future of work ethics in general. For example, there's, the basic income.
Speaker 15 I guess that was the right name. Sorry. The basic income. How would you Expect the basic income if it's gonna be introduced to change the global work ethics in general. And just a second little 1, as Ellen the button, I guess, you're familiar with the name, with status anxiety.
Speaker 15 Are we valuing just labor and work and status of it. Are we personalizing work itself too much, perhaps as a civilization, throughout CSGS history, or is it just as it should be? What do you think?
Elizabeth Anderson Right. So, you know, I'm not particularly a fan of the universal basic informal. And the main reason for that is I don't think it comes in the right packages. I'm totally in favor of giving away a lot of free stuff, but how you package the welfare state, I think, could be more carefully tailored to people's needs, which vary. I have a lot of complicated views on that, but that would take me further astray.
Elizabeth Anderson As far as evaluating work, so I do wanna I do want to shed the asceticism behind the original work ethic and and the conservative work ethic. Of course, we should be taking pleasure and leisure in this life. Play is another fundamental good for human flourishing. But so is work in a sense of activity that's that that is promotes Human welfare. It's really meaningful, and we need it.
Elizabeth Anderson We need a lot of it.
Mark Pennington Okay. We've had Elizabeth on stage for about an hour and a half. So we don't wanna push the work ethic, too far. We have leisure, space which is dedicated to the room next door. We've got a reception, next door.
Mark Pennington So I'd just like to conclude by thanking Elizabeth for giving such a
Speaker 9 provocative talk.