Full Description
Humans evolved to experience work as pleasurable and continued to find it pleasurable for the first 98% of our history, often likening it to play. The negative associations we see now with "work" stem from the extreme inequality and exploitation accompanying the rise of the state 5,500 years ago. Consequently, today many people view work negatively, seeing it as a means to gain income to enable consumption as opposed to serving as a means for creativity, community, and self-fulfillment.
In Why We Must Work, Jon D. Wisman draws upon economics, philosophy, evolutionary psychology, social anthropology, and history to explore how work has been experienced and understood over the course of history. In addressing current conditions, he notes the absurdity that, while we live with unparalleled abundance, some workers suffer unemployment and most are not free in their workplaces, often being bossed about. Equally absurd, given our abundance, is the extreme inequality that results in pervasive insecurity, stress, and pessimism. Laissez-faire ideology legitimates the public policies that generate this inequality and these work conditions while depicting ever greater consumption as opposed to meaningful work as the means to greater happiness.
Wisman offers an attractive alternative vision of our future, grounded in two reforms to make work again fulfilling: guaranteed employment and workplace democracy. Guaranteed employment would provide security and eliminate poverty while providing everyone with the social and self-respect of being a productive member of society. Measures to bring about worker ownership and control of their firms would bring freedom and democracy to the workplace. Both reforms conform to cherished values while preserving capitalism's two principal institutions of private property and markets.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction We All Must Work.- Chapter 2: Work In a State of Nature.- Chapter 3: Eden Lost The Rise of The State and Work Degraded.- Chapter 4: Victory Over Scarcity.- Chapter 5: What Abundance Promised Got Crushed.- Chapter 6: The Urgent Need to Humanize Work and Recover Community.- Chapter 7: Creative Destruction and Security with Guaranteed Employment.- Chapter 8: Creating Democracy Freedom and Community in the Workplace.- Chapter 9: Final Reflections.
