Hijacked — the Work Ethic

By KEN WINKES

It’s no surprise that “Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back,” Elizabeth Anderson’s history of progressive and conservative ideas about work and workers has distinctly political, religious, and moral dimensions.

After all, what we have come to know as the Protestant work ethic originated with Martin Luther and his Protestant successors. Christian sects that arose during the Reformation shared one common belief. They believed that salvation was a gift of God’s grace granted to everyone individually, not through the intermediary of an organized church. In other words, though Anderson, a professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, doesn’t say it this way, the Reformation was a political as well as a religious movement that elevated the primacy of the individual over the interests of hierarchical organizations like church and state. Since their contract was now directly with God, workers were freed to work for their own benefit, and by moral extension, for the good of mankind.

If “Hijacked” were history alone, it might have been titled “From Luther to Neoliberalism,” but Anderson’s chosen title better makes her point. And its subtitle, “How Neoliberalism turned the work ethic against workers and how workers can take it back” leaves no doubt of it.

Over time, workers have sometimes benefitted from the notions people held about work and workers. When progressive thinkers were in the fore, workers gained dignity and status, but in the ebb and flow of history, conservative notions were sometimes ascendant. We live in one of those times, Anderson says, and in our Neo-liberal world, workers are again getting a bad deal.

How bad, most of us know. In the United States, unlike other countries where workers are valued, we do not have universal health care. Our working poor live at the bottom of the wage scale, often paid too little to subsist. The power of unions has diminished over the last 50 years, and the gig economy, which renders workers independent contractors, further weakens labor’s bargaining position. Venture capital, which controls an ever-increasing share of the economy, kills jobs and when its tentacles reach into healthcare, it kills people. When capital is in charge, workers suffer.

Why does all this history matter? In our western culture it matters because we’re told that since Adam ate that cursed apple, people have had to live “by the sweat of their brow.” Whether we do it on our own or at the behest of others, we devote the larger part of our waking hours to work, work which can either contribute to our sense of accomplishment or make us feel that we’re wasting a good part of our lives.

Fulfilling or not, work always holds meaning for us, and Dr. Anderson tells us why we should care. John Locke, Adam Smith and Thomas Paine believed that work and workers were naturally dignified and should be valued by society. Others, like Burke and Malthus, assumed that workers deserved their low state because they were naturally lazy and impecunious. Such apologists for the aristocracy even said that having to work at all was shameful.

If these ideas about class distinctions sound familiar, they should. Nineteenth century reforms associated with the writings of John Stuart Mill, Marx, and the European Socialists enhanced the status of workers in the western world. In the United States worker-oriented reforms gathered steam during the Great Depression, but late in the last century, as we know, workers again lost ground to the interests of capital.

Professor Anderson concludes her book with suggestions to reverse the present trend, worker ownership and strengthened unions among them. But it won’t be easy. Big money has a strong gravitational pull, and its influence is hard to overcome.

As I read “Hijacked,” Adam Smith’s frequently misunderstood line about the “Invisible Hand” often came to mind. Over the years, capitalists have taken that phrase to mean unregulated markets automatically distribute resources fairly. Of course, they do not.

“Hijacked” is not beach reading. Its pages are densely packed with fact, moral theory, and thoughtful argument. It’s crunchy and provides a lot to chew on. But the history, theory and arguments are not mere abstractions. The values we place on work and workers have practical implications far outside the pages of Professor Anderson’s fine book.

How do I know? I checked the numbers. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development makes those implication clear. Workers in the United States work more hours with less reward than in any other developed country. In countries poorer than our own, workers must work even more for even less.

If we want work to be fair and fulfilling, Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand won’t do it for us. It’s up to us.

“Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back,” by Elizabeth Anderson (Cambridge University Press, 2023, 384 pp.)

Ken Winkes is a retired teacher and high school principal living in Conway, Wash.

From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2024

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