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- [00:02]
A
Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer.
- [00:29]
B
What to make of a Life is the new book from Jim Collins, best selling author of Good to great. Based on 10 years of research, what to make of a Life offers transformative teachings on what it takes to navigate your way through periods of fog, make it past life's inevitable cliffs, and keep the inner fire burning bright long and late. Step into frame with what to make of a Life, the instant New York Times bestseller by Jim Collins, available from Harper Edge wherever books are sold. Hey, it's Sean. Today we're bringing back a conversation that feels more relevant than when we first aired it. It's with the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson about work, morality and the strange hold the Protestant work ethic has on American life that has always had on American life. And the episode really takes ideas that we all think we understand hard work, personal responsibility, earning your keep, that kind of thing, and shows how these concepts have always been contested. And if you think about what's happening right now in the labor market, burnouts, layoffs, all the upheaval caused by AI, this conversation is going to matter even more down the road. All of which is to say this is a terrific, timely episode about both the present and and the future of work. I hope you enjoy it. If you're American, when you hear the phrase work ethic, you probably think of some imaginary worker who puts her job above everything else, who doesn't complain, who does what she's told you think, in other words, of the perfect employee. That is certainly one version of the work ethic, and it's a story that serves employers much more than it serves employees. But is that the only version of the work ethic? Or to put it more directly, is it the best version of the work ethic? I'm Sean Elling and this is the Gray Area. Today's guest is Elizabeth Anderson. She's a professor of public philosophy at the University of Michigan, and for my money, one of our very best political and ethical thinkers. She has a new book out called How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back. It's an ambitious and wide ranging book and just as important, it is not a morally neutral book. Anderson tells the history of something we're all familiar with, at least vaguely, the Protestant work ethic and how it gave rise to dueling interpretations. One of those interpretations was pro worker and the other was not. And unfortunately, the anti worker version is the one that dominates our society today. But she makes the case that it didn't have to be that way. The work ethic was from the very beginning a contested ideal. And knowing the history of the work ethic and how it's been turned against workers is essential if we want to reclaim it today. Elizabeth Anderson, welcome to the Gray area.
- [03:57]
C
It's a great pleasure to talk with you.
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B
I mean, you're a bit of a political philosophy rock star, so I'm glad you're finally here. That may not be the coolest kind of rock star, but it is on this show, so it's long overdue. Glad you're here.
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C
I'm so happy to be here.
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B
The Protestant work ethic is a phrase I'm sure almost everyone knows, but I don't think most people, and I'd count myself among them, can explain it simply or clearly. So I'm going to see if you can. And so I'll just ask, where does this phrase come from and who did it come from?
- [04:29]
C
The phrase the Protestant work ethic comes from the great social theorist Max Weber, who wrote a book called the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He set the basic terms for our understanding of the work ethic on his description. The Protestant work ethic was an ethic of nose to the grindstone for the workers for the maximum profit of the capitalist. So it's a pretty dreary ethic. And he himself, despite his profession of value neutrality and social science, condemned the work ethic as consigning us to an iron cage. And he contrasted the Puritan attitude towards work as a calling that they wanted to work at, in contrast with the capitalist version of the work ethic, where we are forced to work in our calling.
- [05:19]
B
How important is the Protestant part of the Protestant work ethic? Is the religious foundation essential?
- [05:26]
C
Absolutely. This is coming right out of the Puritans. The Puritans in England were basically Calvinist in theology and obsessed with getting certainty about their salvation. Theologically, the Calvinists think we're all doomed from the start, except for a tiny number of people who are saved. The critical issue then is you're all desperate to know whether you're saved, hopefully to know that you're saved. And the Puritans said The only way to tell is if you are working really, really hard, because that shows that God has graced you and that you really have faith.
- [06:05]
B
The Puritans were not trying to promote capitalism. I mean, their concerns weren't even economic, right? It was just purely theological.
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C
I want to make a little amendment about that.
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B
Go for it.
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C
So Weber certainly described their motivation as purely theological. It's all about gaining assurance of one's salvation. However, in my reading of these work ethic theologians, they were actually quite concerned with the way we conducted our lives in this world. They were very shrewd business ethicists. They really cared about workers getting a decent deal, making sure that work was respected, no matter how menial it was, making sure that workers had fair and living wages, that they weren't being exploited by monopolists or userers or all kinds of shady characters. And they admonished not just the working poor, but the idle rich, those lazy aristocrats lying around in their estates, expecting other people to work for them.
- [07:22]
B
There's so much history in this book, we obviously can't unpack all of it. But I do want to spotlight the Industrial Revolution because it is such an important part of the story. And as you say in the book, there were contradictions built into the work ethic right from the start. You call them the repressive and uplifting dimensions. And these dimensions get teased apart during the Industrial Revolution. And out of that comes the conservative and progressive work ethics. Tell me about these competing work ethics and really what happened here.
- [07:58]
C
Probably most of us know the Puritans as the biggest killjoys in European history, right? They banned the celebration of Christmas. You're not supposed to have any fun. You're supposed to be full of sobriety and self denial and frugality and. And they definitely thought that you should be working crazy hard. You needed your rest, you know, you have the Sabbath, but then you have to go straight back to work. And they instrumentalized rest, right? The purpose of rest is to restore yourself so you can get back to work. But the important thing is they thought that workers would reap some rewards from all of this self denial, right? You get to save up. You'll be able to buy property, you'll get wealthier, you can afford some conveniences, no luxury, okay? But at least you'll have a more comfortable life. And that was because the model workers in the 17th century, when the work ethic was perfected, both had capital and engaged in manual labor. The master craftsman who owned his own shop, even merchant sailors were entitled to a share of the profits of the commercial voyage. We don't have a sharp distinction between manual workers and capitalists in the 17th century. The critical issue in the Industrial Revolution is then you get a very sharp split between wage laborers, whose only source of income is the wage they get from their employer on the one hand, and capitalists on the other hand, whose entire income comes from profit or interest or some kind of income flow from ownership of an asset.
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B
Well, it's such an important point, and I. We have these dueling versions of the work ethic, but they're not equally valid in the sense that one of them is a logical extension of the original work ethic as conceived by the Puritans, and one of them is a betrayal of it. This is the hijacking you're talking about, correct?
- [10:08]
C
Absolutely. The version that we received that ended up being neoliberalism as we know it today is the version that Max Weber described and condemned. That's the version that I claim was hijacked by the capitalists and turned against the workers. There's another separate tradition of the work ethic which is consistent because they kept to the class neutrality of the rights and duties of the work ethic. The whole idea was, yeah, you work really hard and then you're entitled to reap the fruits of your labor. And that means you need decent pay, a living wage. Right. You're entitled to have improving prospects if you fulfill the demands of the work ethic. Now, what was happening, especially in the first half of the Industrial Revolution, is that because now you have a sharp division between capitalists and workers. The workers are working harder than ever under more grueling and dangerous conditions, and their wages stagnate all the way through the mid 19th century. They're basically flat. Meanwhile, the capitalists are reaping all the gains of the Industrial Revolution. So their income is growing by leaps and bounds, even though they're actually not doing much. They're just like investing assets. There's a lot of passive income there. So you see a kind of betrayal of the idea that working hard is going to enable you to improve your life.
- [11:41]
B
Whatever he was wrong about, I always believed that Marx was basically right, that the ruling class engineers an ideology that justifies their role. And boy, the Industrial Revolution really does help him make his case.
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C
Oh, absolutely.
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B
More of my conversation with Elizabeth Anderson after a quick break.
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A
I keep seeing celebrities posts me in the 90s versus now, while the person staring at me in the mirror is definitely not the same person that could pull off boot cut jeans. Time creeps up on us so slowly you don't see it until suddenly you do. Same thing goes for your bills. A dollar here, an uptick there. It's a slow burn until one day you realize the price you're paying now is way higher than when you signed up. But AT T Mobile customers had the lowest wireless bills versus Verizon and ATT over the past five years. And with T Mobile on their experience plans you get a five year price guarantee so you know exactly what your plan price will be for the next five years. So at least that's one thing that won't change over time. I can't guarantee you'll still look good with frosted tips, but T Mobile can give you a clear guarantee on your wireless plan.
- [13:05]
B
Lower bills based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q3 21 to Q4 25 compared to average AT&T and Verizon bills. Comparison excludes discounts, credits and optional charges. Price guarantee on talk, text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. CT mobile.com support for this show comes from the Guardian Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can feel like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Social media feeds, cable news and subscription based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want the news fast, but still slow enough to actually absorb it. Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast wrestles with the big important questions about the world at your own pace. Three times a week, hosts Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their expertise together to showcase different yet engaging perspectives on the news, international affairs, climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion and wellness. Go to the guardian.com stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcast or watch on YouTube starting May 13.
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C
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A
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C
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A
That's why you rack.
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B
Okay Elizabeth, the rich have always wanted the poor to work for them. Yes, that is as old as civilization. So what is the real innovation with the conservative work ethic? Is it that we get an ideology that basically morally justifies exploitation?
- [15:12]
C
To an extent, but it's a Particular kind of exploitation that's quite extreme. So by the late 18th century, we see conservative thinkers, notably Edmund Burke and Malthus, people like this, who are in an absolute panic about the rising radicalism of propertyless workers. Many of them are inspired by the French Revolution, 1789. They're out in the streets. They're starting to protest and demand that their voices be heard. Yeah, exactly. And also the welfare roles are growing, and conservatives are in a complete panic over this. Malthus had this idea that it must be because of population increase. Those lazy workers are having too many kids that they can't afford to feed because they will not restrain their sexual impulses. And many of us might recall similar ideas being promulgated in all the controversies about welfare reform in the United States. Yeah, never mind that there's never any empirical evidence for this.
- [16:25]
B
When did wealth become a sign of virtue and poverty become a sign of vice? Do we have the conservative work ethic to thank for that nugget?
- [16:33]
C
Yes, we do. But you can see a little bit of that even in the Puritans. Yeah, so the Puritans are always desperately looking for signs, right, that they're saved. And they often took wealth as a proxy for how hard you were working and how frugally you were saving your income. By the Industrial Revolution, of course, there's virtually nothing to that idea. The owner of the factory saunters in there, makes a couple of decisions, and comes home with massive profits. And then down the bureaucratic ranks of the factory, the clerk is working harder, but the factory workers working even harder. And the hardest working of all is the poor agricultural day laborer.
- [17:23]
B
I thought a lot about ideologies, these stories we tell ourselves and how they work and why they're so useful and why they can be so dangerous. And you wrote something in the book that summed up my thoughts better than I ever have. And if you don't mind, I just want to read this brief passage to you. Is that okay?
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C
Yeah.
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B
Ideologies map our social world in ways that promote particular paths around it and discourage or blind us to others. They mark people occupying different social positions as more or less credible, trustworthy, or suspect. They inform our emotions, habits, social norms and practices, often in ways that cannot be fully rationalized by the beliefs and values we consciously endorse. Now, I wanted to read that passage aloud because it does set up the stakes here, right? These. These ideologies, these stories, they're more than just stories in our head, right? They have a material impact on how we see the world on who we see and who we ignore, they really, really matter in the most tangible way possible.
- [18:27]
C
A lot of what I'm writing about is, especially in the United States, which is neoliberalism on steroids. Here the culture is deeply imbued with the hijacked version of the work ethic, the capitalist version. And so there's unbelievable contempt and suspicion of the poor. The overwhelming majority of Republicans think that poor people who maybe are getting food stamps or some kind of public assistance are lazy and life is easy for them. It's like they're just living on a hammock right now. Anyone who's actually been poor knows that it's in fact a lot of work to be poor. Just getting the daily subsistence and you know, often they're keeping down three part time jobs. They can't get full time hours anywhere. And it's enormously difficult just to pay for basic necessities. But that's not the image that many Americans have because we're deeply imbued with the work ethic, suspicion of the poor, contempt for the poor, when in fact what social scientists have been telling us really ever since the rise of social science is that a lot of poverty is structural, has nothing to do with the virtues and vices of individuals. It's already built into the system.
- [19:52]
B
We're talking about all this history, these are very old ideas. But many of the assumptions baked into the way we think about politics and economics today are rooted in the legacies of this work ethic or these work ethics. We have all these models and metrics, interested in returns and growth and efficiency, but they're all so inhuman, right? Like the well being of workers. The dignity of human beings really just isn't part of these sorts of models. And that's a consequence of these ideas, whether we know it or not.
- [20:25]
C
Oh, absolutely. So if you look for instance at your typical business and our ideological representations of them, which are deeply set in economic theory, they're the very models of efficiency. They never waste anything. They're constantly looking for productive efficiencies, but they also never lead an opportunity to make progress. Profit on the table, right? You're always seeking more, more, more. If you go back to the purines of the 17th century, that's how they said business people ought to be. And in fact everyone ought to be that way. Always look for another dollar if you can find an opportunity to make it. So in fact, businessmen today just are modern puritans.
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B
You've mentioned the word neoliberalism two or three times now. That's a scary word, a boogeyman word at this point. But that's basically what you're talking about, correct?
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C
That is correct. Neoliberalism just is the late 20th century and early 21st century revival of the conservative work ethic. Really all the patterns of thinking were already set in the late 18th century and we just keep repeating them. And it all comes back to a series of policy rationalizations for all kinds of policies that redistribute income from workers to property owners to the holders of assets. And that's what neoliberalism amounts to, is just a whole bunch of policies that secure an increasing share of income for the holders of capital assets.
- [22:09]
B
I'm wondering why you think neoliberalism won when it did. I mean, we had this long period of, you know, post war social democracy in America, and then in the late 70s, early 80s, depending on who you ask. That sort of gives way to the era of neoliberalism, the era we're still living in today. Why did it win at that particular moment in history?
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C
The late 70s were a period of stagflation. You know, we had the Vietnam War, rising distrust in institutions.
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B
Sounds familiar.
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C
And the society was ripe, I think, for a critique of heavy handed government. There was actually excessive regulation, I have to say. That's a legacy of the New Deal. And so society was ripe for a critique of many aspects of the New Deal regime that was still dominant in the 1970s. But it's also the case that a lot of business people themselves hated the New Deal from the start. Never liked it, always resented it. Businesses though, had won a great victory. The Taft Hartley Law, which undermined labor unions. And they had to spend a couple of decades steadily chipping away at the power of unions in order to essentially redistribute income from unionized workers to profits. And, you know, by the mid-70s, they had already undermined unions quite a lot. Reagan gets elected in 1980 and one of his most famous acts was to fire all of the striking air traffic controllers. That was a deliberate signal he was sending to corporations that they should be equally tough and break unions and employ very aggressive methods. And that really, I think, got the ball rolling even faster.
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B
You know, neoliberals and market fanatics in general want you to believe that their model liberates ordinary people from government power. But you make the case in the book, and I think you're absolutely right. The reality is that we still have government. It's just government by capital interest. Now. That's great. If you're Part of the capitalist class. But if you're an ordinary worker, this is not the orgy of freedom you were promised. You're not freeing yourself from hierarchical power. You've just changed it from one entity to another. The difference being one of those is accountable to democratic checks and the other isn't.
- [24:44]
C
Yes, I think that's exactly right. And look, I mean, you could see this ideology absolutely explicit in the Tech Bros in Silicon Valley. Some of them even are running corporations like Meta, for instance. Zuckerberg holds a majority of all the voting shares, right. So nobody can unseat him. It doesn't matter, you know, what mistakes he makes. He has permanent control. The board has no power, really. I mean, that just expresses a desire for authoritarian rule. And then they promulgate an ideology like we're going to develop this fantastic technology that's going to make everyone's lives dramatically better. And it would be awful if government were ever to stop the headlong rush into the future because we're the heroes of this story and nothing should get in our way.
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B
I mean, you and I are both. I think we're more or less aligned in our basic political values and commitments are aligned enough. But I should ask if you do see any wisdom in the conservative work ethic, do you see anything true and important in that tradition of thought?
- [25:51]
C
Well, the tradition, of course. I'm extracting some different lessons from it. I do think the Puritans themselves were actually pretty good business ethicists and they made a very strong distinction between predatory and extractive business models and business models that actually add value. And. Right. It's only the latter. Businesses that actually make profits only by helping other people. What? Imagine that like, I think that actually offers a positive path for ethical businesses. That would be a great thing if all businesses followed the Puritans along those lines. And I also, I never disparage hard work. I'm a creature of the work ethic myself and I'm working all the time. But of course I'm very advantaged. I'm super privileged in having an unbelievably interesting job where I can exercise enormous amounts of autonomy at work. I'm trusted to do a good job. I'm not being micromanaged. I can build wonderful relationships with my students, which are highly rewarding. So I, yeah, tenured professors at research universities are about the best off wage workers there could be in terms of meaningful work. And so yeah, I think we ought to be working hard. On the other hand, the typical ordinary worker who has a boring, alienating Job that's deskilled and gets now respect. They're the people who I worry about and I'm not going to ask them to put in all kinds of hard work and expect very little out of it other than a bare existence.
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B
I think certainly for me, maybe one of the more insidious consequences of the work ethic is that we get this shift away from a more leisurely and comfortable attitude toward life, toward a more materialist philosophy where the point of life becomes to just acquire as much money as possible, which is great for capitalist society built on endless consumption. But I don't think it's so great if you think human flourishing requires more than that.
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C
Oh, I agree completely. You know, you go to some of the social democracies, the Nordic countries, you don't need all this stuff. You don't need gigantic homes and gigantic cars to be happy. The Finns have figured it out, right? They have really good lives. And in fact, what I argue is the either side of the work ethic, the pro worker work ethic led to social democracy. If anything makes social democracy distinctive from anything we see in the United States, it's the existence of universal guaranteed paid vacations. Social democrats said, no, the purpose of life is not to work so hard to accumulate money so that you can buy all this stuff and show it off and compete with your neighbors about how you have better stuff than they do. It's totally opposed to conspicuous consumption as an ideal of life. Instead they said, you should be able to take your leisure, take your pleasures, enjoy yourself. They totally cast off the asceticism of the Puritans. But of course the other side, the neoliberal side, also cast off the asceticism of the Puritans, but in the name of conspicuous consumption rather than leisure with friends and family.
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B
Do you think it would just be better if our livelihoods and our status and sense of self worth and all that weren't anchored to our jobs?
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C
I think that Americans probably excessively identify themselves with their jobs, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to do that. I think it depends on what the content of your job is. I think most professionals do identify with their jobs because if they're doing meaningful work, well, that's primary source of satisfaction.
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B
But that's part of the problem though, right? I mean, to borrow a phrase from David Graeber, right? I mean, we have all these bullshit jobs.
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C
Absolutely.
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B
The nature of the work we do matters a ton. If we were all working jobs that we truly enjoyed, well, that would be different, but that's not the case.
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C
Yes. And in fact, you know, even the professional managerial class has its difficulties. You might have come across this Washington Post article which was discussing who are the happiest workers in America. It's the lumberjacks, the farmers, and the fishers. Professionals are actually way down there.
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B
How are podcasters doing?
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C
I don't think they were listed.
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B
Is that good or bad? I don't know.
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C
But you probably have a good life, don't you? Work life?
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B
Oh, it's yes is the short answer. But I've gone through this evolution in my own professional life where I think at one point I really thought I could make a difference, and the way I was going to do that was through my work, and that was central to my identity. But I don't think I feel that way anymore. And don't get me wrong, it really is a privilege to do this, and I hope some people find it valuable. And occasionally people write to me and say that it is, and that makes my day every single time. What I'm trying to say is my own thinking was maybe colored by the work ethic in ways I didn't realize. And it's not that I can't enjoy or take pride in my work. It's more that I think it's just wiser and healthier to think of work as work. And in my case, being a good dad, a good husband, a good friend, that's the real stuff. That's what life is about. And I think we need a work ethic that celebrates that kind of balance, and we don't have that now.
- [31:38]
C
Yes. So work life balance certainly is very, very, very important. And notably, the Puritans recognized the raising of children as an important form of work.
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B
Hell, yeah. Because it is.
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C
Because work just is disciplined activity that helps other people, whether it's paid or not. They did care about discipline, but, you know, you have to get up every day to take care of your kids. You know what I mean? There's, you know, you got to feed them. There's regular activities here. Not all of them are fun. A lot of them are fun, but not all of them. Nevertheless, we can reap the rewards of meaningfulness when you see your kids grow and mature and become adults. And the point about wage work or paid work is that you can also benefit human beings on a wider scale, beyond the scope of the family. So, you know, I don't know how big your audience is for the gray area, but you're bringing ideas and thoughtfulness to a significant number of people who really enjoy your show, including me.
- [32:54]
B
Yes, the show is, it is a gift to humanity. That's how I like to think of it.
- [32:58]
C
No, it is actually. You should, you should really, you know, I mean, it's very thought provoking.
- [33:04]
B
I, I genuinely appreciate that. More of my conversation with Elizabeth Anderson after one last break. Make every get together chill this Memorial Day. Get up to an extra thousand dollars off select top brand appliances like LG plus get free delivery at the Home Depot Tackle pool towels and camp laundry with a large capacity washer. And host in style with the fridge serving craft ice, mini craft ice, cubed ice and crushed ice. Shop appliance Savings now through June 3rd at the Home Depot offer valid May 14th through June 3rd US only. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. C Store online for details. When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing. You can do anything so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing.
- [34:26]
C
Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode I sit down with high achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, clinical psychologist
- [34:36]
A
and founder Dr. Becky Kennedy and I unpack what it really means to raise kids today.
- [34:41]
C
I think parenting is the most important
- [34:43]
B
job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your
- [34:46]
C
world and the world. It is non stop. Check out Pretty Tough new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app.
- [35:14]
B
So you and I agree that a majority of people would be happier if they had more work life balance if the basic conditions of survival weren't tied to these precarious things we call jobs. So why the hell can't we get this world here? What's the biggest obstacle in our country to building this kind of society? A society that I think majority of people, if you, if you really drill down, would prefer. So why can't we have it?
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C
I think it's because we're still locked into the logic of the conservative work ethic. So people think that the amount of money they make is a measure of their virtue and in particular especially how hard they work and how much they save. And so they don't want to see people who they think of as lazier or more imprudent getting lifted up by means that have nothing to do with their own personal effort. Because the thought is, ah, there must be something wrong with them. How come they're not as well off as me? Right. And they resent paying taxes too, because they know how hard they worked for that money. And in contrast with the lazy landlord lords back in the day, now the rich actually do work harder. I mean, not necessarily productively. They could be very extractive and exploitative work. But they are putting a lot of time in the office.
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B
Yeah, even the people who are winning are not really winning.
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C
I think that's right. I think a lot of them, they're kind of driven to it. Part of it is due to the structure of esteem in society. It's like people will look down on you if you're not working like crazy and accumulating a lot of stuff and able to show it off. That pressure of esteem and contempt, I think drives a lot of people, including the people at the very tippy top of our work system.
- [37:09]
B
What do you think is the most immediate thing we could do to empower workers so that they do have more genuine freedom in their lives? Is it as simple as just more unions or is it more complicated than that?
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C
Well, I do think unions would definitely help. I think paid vacations would co determination, which I mentioned, worker was actually having a say at work. But also importantly making necessities more available to people without having that be tied to work. That's critical.
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B
What do you mean?
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C
In all the social democracies, access to health care is not contingent on your having a job and you don't have to pay a lot for it. The prices are way more reasonable than they are in the United States. So I think some kind of public provision there. And also in the social democracies, you don't have to pay for college. You know, you have a rich public university system and you know, your tuition's paid for in places like Denmark and Germany, 18 year olds even get a stipend for going to college. So they're not even financially dependent on their parents while they're not working, but just going to school.
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B
You know, we have the rise of gig work and remote work and that really does seem to cut against progress here. Right. Because everything we're talking about is infinitely more difficult to do if you can't organize and mobilize. And in a very atomized society where people are cut off from each other in the ways that they are. That's very difficult to do. And that seems to be, if not the biggest obstacle, certainly one of them, wouldn't you say?
- [38:53]
C
Yes, that's right. And also just the sheer fragmentation of the workplace. But of course, you can change the rules of organization, too. I mean, that's just a artifact of our labor law that workers have to organize each Starbucks separately from each other. Like, you don't have to do that. You could let all the workers vote, all the employees of Starbucks vote together, and you could do that for any franchise as well. Like, why not let all the workers at McDonald's vote on a labor union?
- [39:27]
B
Your professorship is actually named after the great John Dewey. Yeah, and I love that because it fits.
- [39:33]
C
Oh, I got to choose the name.
- [39:35]
B
Oh, you did?
- [39:36]
C
I'm the John Dewey Distinguished University professor, and every university professor gets to choose a previous scholar who once taught at the university as their names.
- [39:47]
B
So why was he your guy? Why'd you pick him?
- [39:49]
C
Oh, because, you know, I'm a Dewey and pragmatist through and through.
- [39:53]
B
What does that mean for people who aren't Dewey lovers in the way that we are?
- [39:56]
C
Pragmatism is the view that we figure out how to live better through experiments and living, and the key site of figuring that out is democracy. That's how we figure out how to live together in better ways. But we have to approach this all in a very experimental spirit.
- [40:15]
B
But we've talked about Dewey on the show we had Cornel west on last year. And, you know, like Dewey, you seem to embrace the necessity to experiment and evolve, and democracy is the site of that experimentation. And if it isn't, we end up with an unfree and undignified society, which is what we have, in my opinion, right now.
- [40:35]
C
Yeah, I think that's right. And the increasing inequality that comes from neoliberal policies, where you have almost all economic growth going to the top 1 to 10% for decades now. It creates a lot of resentment, increasing distrust, and political polarization and makes democracy harder because people are hating each other now.
- [41:01]
B
Well, look, I know you're not a politician, you're not a political consultant, but part of what makes your work as a philosopher so valuable is how connected it is to the real world. And in that spirit, I think I want to get you out of here by asking, how would you sell this vision to the public if it was your job to sell this vision to the public? And by this vision, I basically just mean the progressive work ethic as you've defined it in this conversation?
- [41:31]
C
Well, A big thing I want to point out is that we are putting up with a lot of predatory and exploitative behaviors of the top 1 to 10%, which is not really helping other people. Why should we tolerate businesses that are not helping other people and making profits from that fact? There's no reason for us to tolerate that. And at the same time, all of our lives could be a lot better if workers who are more empowered at work, if they were respected, if they had fair and living wages, we would actually have a more successful democracy if we had more democracy at work.
- [42:08]
B
Are you running?
- [42:09]
C
I'm not a politician.
- [42:11]
B
Did you just announce your candidacy? All right, all right, all right. Once again, the book is called Hijacked How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back. Elizabeth Anderson, this was a real pleasure. Thanks for coming in.
- [42:28]
C
It's a great pleasure talking with you. Sean.
- [42:45]
B
Our producer is John Ahrens. Jorge just is our editor. Patrick Boyd engineered this episode and Alex Overington wrote our theme music. If you dug the episode rate and review, that stuff really helps. And as always, if you have thoughts on the episode, share them with us. Drop us a line at the gray area@box.com we read all of the notes and we really love them.
- [43:15]
C
Sam.