Bullshit Jobs

by David Graeber

  Finally, the concept of unconditional universal support is directly relevant to two issues that have come up repeatedly over the course of this book. The first is the sadomasochistic dynamic of hierarchical work arrangements—a dynamic that tends to be sharply exacerbated when everyone knows the work to be pointless. A lot of the day-to-day misery in working people’s lives springs directly from this source. In chapter 4, I cited Lynn Chancer’s notion of sadomasochism in everyday life, and particularly the point that, unlike actual BDSM play, where there’s always a safe-word, when “normal” people fall into the same dynamic, there’s never such an easy way out.

  “You can’t say ‘orange’ to your boss.”

  It’s always occurred to me this insight is important and could even become the basis for a theory of social liberation. I like to think that Michel Foucault, the French social philosopher, was moving in this direction before his tragic death in 1984. Foucault, according to people who knew him, underwent a remarkable personal transformation on discovering BDSM, turning from a notoriously cagey and standoffish personality to one suddenly warm, open, and friendly23—but his theoretical ideas also entered into a period of transformation that he was never able to fully bring to fruit. Foucault, of course, is famous mainly as a theorist of power, which he saw as flowing through all human relationships, even as the basic substance of human sociality, since he once defined it as simply a matter of “acting on another’s actions.”24 This always created a peculiar paradox because while he wrote in such a way as to suggest he was an antiauthoritarian opposed to power, he defined power in such a way that social life would impossible without it. At the very end of his career, he seems to have aimed to resolve the dilemma by introducing a distinction between what he called power and domination. The first, he said, was just a matter of “strategic games.” Everyone is playing power games all the time, we can hardly help it, but neither is there anything objectionable about our doing so. So in this, his very last interview:

  Power is not an evil. Power is strategic games. We know very well that power is not an evil. Take for example, sexual relationship or love relationships. To exercise power over another, in a sort of open strategic game, where things could be reversed, that is not evil. That is part of love, passion, of sexual pleasure . . .

  It seems to me we must distinguish the relations of power as strategic games between liberties—strategic games that result from the fact that some people try to determine the conduct of others—and the states of domination, which are what we ordinarily call “power.”25

  Foucault isn’t quite explicit on how we are to distinguish one from the other, other than to say that in domination, things are not open and cannot be reversed—otherwise fluid relations of power become rigid and “congealed.” He gives the example of the mutual manipulation of teacher and student (power-good), versus the tyranny of the authoritarian pedant (domination-bad). I think Foucault is circling around something here, and never quite gets to the promised land: a safe-word theory of social liberation. Because this would be the obvious solution. It’s not so much that certain games are fixed—some people like fixed games, for whatever reasons—but that sometimes, you can’t get out of them. The question then does indeed become: What would be the equivalent of saying “orange” to one’s boss? Or to an insufferable bureaucrat, obnoxious academic advisor, or abusive boyfriend? How do we create only games that we actually feel like playing, because we can opt out at any time? In the economic field, at least, the answer is obvious. All of the gratuitous sadism of workplace politics depends on one’s inability to say “I quit” and feel no economic consequences. If Annie’s boss knew Annie’s income would be unaffected even if she did walk off in disgust at being called out yet again for a problem she’d fixed months ago, she would know better than to call her into the office to begin with. Basic Income in this sense would, indeed, give workers the power to say “orange” to their boss.

  Which leads to the second theme: it’s not just that Annie’s boss would have to treat her with at least a small degree of dignity and respect in a world of guaranteed incomes. If Universal Basic Income was instituted, it’s very hard to imagine jobs like Annie’s long continue to exist. One could well imagine people who didn’t have to work to survive still choosing to become dental assistants, or toymakers, or movie ushers, or tugboat operators, or even sewage treatment plant inspectors. It’s even easier to imagine them choosing to become some combination of several of these. It’s extremely difficult to imagine someone living without financial constraints choosing to spend any significant amount of their time highlighting forms for a Medical Care Cost Management company—let alone in an office where underlings were not allowed to speak. In such a world, Annie would have no reason to give up on being a preschool teacher, unless she actually decided she was no longer interested in being a preschool teacher, and if Medical Care Cost Management companies continued to exist, they would have to figure out another way to highlight their forms.

  It’s unlikely Medical Care Cost Management companies would exist for long. The need for such firms (if you can even call it a “need”) is a direct result of a bizarre and labyrinthine US health care system which overwhelming majorities of Americans see as idiotic and unjust, and which they wish to see replaced by some kind of public insurance or public health provider. As we have seen, one of the main reasons this system has not been replaced—at least, if President Obama’s own account is to be believed—is precisely because its inefficiency creates jobs like Annie’s. If nothing else, Universal Basic Income would mean millions of people who recognize the absurdity of this situation will have the time to engage in political organizing to change it, since they will no longer be forced to highlight forms for eight hours a day, or (if they insist on doing something useful with their lives) scramble around for an equivalent amount of time trying to figure out a way to pay the bills.

  It’s hard to escape the impression that for many of those who, like Obama, defend the existence of bullshit jobs, that’s one of the most appealing things about such arrangements. As Orwell noted, a population busy working, even at completely useless occupations, doesn’t have time to do much else. At the very least, this is further incentive not to do anything about the situation.

  Be this as it may, however, it opens the way to my second and final point. The first objection typically raised when someone suggests guaranteeing everyone a livelihood regardless of work is that if you do so, people simply won’t work. This is just obviously false and at this point I think we can dismiss it out of hand. The second, more serious objection is that most will work, but many will choose work that’s of interest only to themselves. The streets would fill up with bad poets, annoying street mimes, and promoters of crank scientific theories, and nothing would get done. What the phenomenon of bullshit jobs really brings home is the foolishness of such assumptions. No doubt a certain proportion of the population of a free society would spend their lives on projects most others would consider to be silly or pointless; but it’s hard to imagine how it would go much over 10 or 20 percent. But already right now, 37 to 40 percent of workers in rich countries already feel their jobs are pointless. Roughly half the economy consists of, or exists in support of, bullshit. And it’s not even particularly interesting bullshit! If we let everyone decide for themselves how they were best fit to benefit humanity, with no restrictions at all, how could they possibly end up with a distribution of labor more inefficient than the one we already have?

  This is a powerful argument for human freedom. Most of us like to talk about freedom in the abstract, even claim that it’s the most important thing for anyone to fight or die for, but we don’t think a lot about what being free or practicing freedom might actually mean. The main point of this book was not to propose concrete policy prescriptions, but to start us thinking and arguing about what a genuine free society might actually be like.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the hundreds of people who shared th
eir stories of workplace woe, but cannot be named. You know who you are.

  I would like to thank Vyvian Raoul at Strike! for commissioning the original essay and everyone else at Strike! (especially The Special Patrol Group) for making all this possible.

  This book wouldn’t exist without the hard work of my team at Simon & Schuster: editor Ben Loehnen, Erin Reback, Jonathan Karp, and Amar Deol, and without the encouragement of my agent, Melissa Flashman at Janklow & Nesbit.

  And, of course, much gratitude to my friends who put up with me and my colleagues at LSE, for their patience and support, and particularly to the administrative staff: Yanina and Tom Hinrichsen, Renata Todd, Camilla Kennedy Harper, and Andrea Elsik. Sophie Carapetian and Rebecca Coles provided excellent research assistance and support.

  I think I should also thank Megan Laws, the indefatigable LSE anthropology graduate student whose entire job is to monitor my “impact.” I can only hope this book will facilitate her efforts.

  About the Author

  © MARI JAN MURAT

  David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of DEBT: The First 5,000 Years, and a contributor to Harper’s, The Guardian, and The Baffler. He lives in London.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/David-Graeber

  @simonbooks

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  ALSO BY DAVID GRAEBER

  Debt: The First 5,000 Years

  The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

  Notes

  Preface: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

  1. I’ve got a lot of push-back about the actuaries, and now think I was being unfair to them. Some actuarial work does make a difference. I’m still convinced the rest could disappear with no negative consequences.

  2. David Graeber, “The Modern Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs,” Canberra (Australia) Times online, last modified September 3, 2013, www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/the-modern-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-20130831-2sy3j.html.

  3. To my knowledge, only one book has ever been written on the subject of bullshit jobs, Boulots de Merde!, by Paris-based journalists Julien Brygo and Olivier Cyran (2015)—and the authors told me it was directly inspired by my article. It’s a good book but covers a rather different range of questions than my own.

  Chapter 1: What Is a Bullshit Job?

  1. “Bullshit Jobs,” LiquidLegends, www.liquidlegends.net/forum/general/460469-bullshit-jobs?page=3, last modified October 1, 2014.

  2. “Spanish Civil Servant Skips Work for 6 Years to Study Spinoza,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), last modified February 26, 2016, www.jta.org/2016/02/26/news-opinion/world/spanish-civil-servant-skips-work-for-6-years-to-study-spinoza.

  3. Jon Henley, “Long Lunch: Spanish Civil Servant Skips Work for Years Without Anyone Noticing,” Guardian (US), last modified February 26, 2016, www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/12/long-lunch-spanish-civil-servant-skips-work-for-years-without-anyone-noticing. Perhaps he was inspired by Spinoza’s argument that all beings strive to maximize their power, but that power consists equally of the ability to have effects on other beings, but also, to be affected by them. From a Spinozan perspective, having a job where you affect and are affected by no one would be the worst possible employment situation.

  4. Post carriers are clearly not bullshit jobs but the implication of the story seems to be that since 99 percent of the mail they chose not to deliver was junk mail, they might as well have been. This seems unlikely to have actually been the case but the story reflects on public attitudes. For shifting attitudes toward postal workers, see my Utopia of Rules (2015), 153–163.

  5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3410547.stm?a, accessed April 7, 2017.

  6. “Vier op tien werknemers noemt werk zinloos,” http://overhetnieuwewerken.nl/vier-op-tien-werknemers-noemt-werk-zinloos/, accessed July 10, 2017.

  7. Typical remark, from Rufus: “I’d love to tell you that my most worthless job was making lattes for very particular and peculiar people, but in retrospect, I understand I played a vital role in helping them through their day.”

  8. I should observe that the following is drawn mainly from pop culture representations of hit men, rather than any ethnographic or sociological analysis of real ones.

  9. Interestingly enough, “bull” is not an abbreviation for “bullshit,” but “bullshit” is an early-twentieth-century elaboration on “bull.” The term is ultimately derived from the French bole, meaning “fraud or deceit.” The term “bullshit” is first attested in an unpublished poem by T. S. Eliot. “Bollocks” is another derivation from “bole.”

  10. I would have said “lying” but the philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005) famously argued that bullshitting is not the same as lying. The difference between them is analogous to the difference between murder and manslaughter; one is intentional deception, the other, reckless disregard for the truth. I’m not sure the distinction entirely works in this context but I didn’t think entering a debate on the subject would be particularly helpful.

  11. To fully appreciate the feudal connection, the reader might consider the name “Corleone.” This was the name of the fictional Mafia family in Mario Puzo’s novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather but, in fact, it’s the name of a town in Sicily that is notorious for being the home of many famous mafiosi. In Italian it means “lion-heart.” The reason for this appears to be that the Normans who conquered England in 1066 had also conquered previously Arab-held Sicily, and imported many features of Arabic administration. Readers will recall in most Robin Hood stories, the archvillain is the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the distant king away at the crusades is “Richard the Lion-Hearted.” The word “sheriff” is just an anglicization of the Arabic sharif and was one of those positions inspired by the administration of Sicily. The exact connection between Corleone and the British king is debated, but some connection definitely exists. So however indirectly, the Marlon Brando character in The Godfather is named after Richard the Lion-Hearted.

  12. Many burgle in their spare time. An apartment complex in which I once lived was once plagued by a series of burglaries, that always took place on a Monday. It was eventually determined that the burglar was a hairdresser, who generally get Mondays off.

  13. Many thieves, ranging from art thieves to ordinary shoplifters, will hire out their services, but as such they are still just independent contractors, hence, self-employed. The case of the hit man is more ambiguous. Some might argue that if one is a long-standing but subordinate member of a criminal organization that does qualify as a “job,” but it’s not my impression (I don’t really know, of course) that most people in such positions see it quite that way.

  14. I do not say such a job is “a form of paid employment that feels so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence,” I say it’s “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence.” In other words, I am not just saying that the employee believes his work to be bullshit, but that his belief is both valid and correct.

  15. Let me take my own situation as an example. I am currently employed as a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. There are people who consider anthropology to be the very definition of a bullshit subject. In 2011 Governor Rick Scott of Florida even singled out th
e discipline as his prime example of one his state’s universities would be better off without (Scott Jaschik, “Florida GOP Vs. Social Science,” Inside Higher Education, last modified October 12, 2011, www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/12/florida_governor_challenges_idea_of_non_stem_degrees).

  16. I’ve been told that inside Countrywide Financial, one of the key players in the subprime mortgage scandals of 2008, there were basically two ranks in the company—the lowly “nerds,” and the insiders—the insiders being those who had been told about the scams. I encountered an even more extreme example in my own research: one woman wrote to me that she had worked for almost a year selling advertising for an in-flight magazine that she gradually realized did not exist. She became suspicious when she realized she had never once seen a copy of the magazine in the office, or on an airplane, despite the fact she was a fairly frequent flyer. Eventually her coworkers quietly confirmed that the entire operation was a fraud.

  17. There are exceptions to this as to all rules. In many large organizations like banks, as we will see, top-level managers will hire consultants or internal auditors to figure out what it is that people actually do; one bank analyst told me about 80 percent of bank workers are engaged in unnecessary tasks and most he felt were unaware of it, since they were kept in the dark about their role in the larger organization. Still, he said, their supervisors didn’t know much better, and his suggestions for reform were invariably rejected. It’s important to emphasize here, too, it’s not that people mistakenly believed their jobs to be bullshit, but quite the other way around.

  18. Even here one can imagine objections. What about Scientologists? Most of those who provide e-meter sessions to allow people to discover traumas in their past lives seem to be convinced their work has enormous social value, even as the great majority of the population is convinced they are delusional, or frauds. But again this isn’t really relevant as no one is really saying “faith-healer” is a bullshit job.