Without bullshit jobs, we would only have to work 15 hours a week

What does it mean if 37 per cent of employees indicate that her or his job is completely useless? David Graeber wrote a fascinating book about it.

Four years ago, the anthropologist and activist David Graeber wrote a clickhit. Millions of people read his op-ed piece about what he called bullshit jobs. He received hundreds of testimonies from people who recognized themselves in what he described. He used these stories to work out that original idea from the op-ed piece and to structure it into a book: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.

You may know Graeber from his monumental Debt: The First 5000 Years or from his role in Occupy Wall Street. It made us dream of a global uprising against financial capitalism in 2011. He would even be the inventor of the slogan 'we are the 99%', but as befits an activist, he prefers to call it the result of a collective creativity.

But this time it is about bullshit jobs. Let me immediately correct e misunderstanding. A bullshit job has nothing to do with shitty jobs. On the contrary: doing the dishes in the kitchen of a restaurant, cleaning toilets at a university or washing sick people are not the most pleasant jobs, but they are essential for life. If kitchen or cleaning staff and nurses halt work altogether, society as we know it would collapse.

Definition

With bullshit jobs, it is just the other way around. If the employees of bullshit jobs strike, no one would notice it. Or as Graeber defines the phenomenon itself:

A bullshit job is a form of work that is so completely useless, unnecessary and harmful that even the employee cannot come up with any justification, even though workers pretend that their role isn't as pointless or harmful as they know it to be.

Polling organization Yougov asked the question to the British. "Does your job contribute something meaningful to the world?" Only half of the respondents answered yes. 37 percent crossed 'no'. More than one in three employees think that her or his job can disappear without anyone bothering.

It is even worse. Another study found that US office workers spend only 39 percent of their time on their real - useful - work. The rest is spent on senseless meetings, unnecessary mails and useless administrative tasks.

Bullshitization

Nurses and teachers know that phenomenon only too well. The real work - teaching or caring for the sick - is increasingly being replaced by administration. So there is not only a massive increase in bullshit jobs, but also a worrying 'bullshitization' of the useful jobs.

Maybe I should first give some examples of bullshit jobs. The book of Graeber is packed with examples thanks to those testimonies. Take Kurt. He is employed by a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor of the German army.

He describes a situation. Once he had to drive a few hundred kilometers to a military base to move a computer a few meters to another location. The military soldier had first to submit an application to the company that is doing the IT on his base. After that, the company had contracted the job out to a logistics company that in turn gave the order to the small company that Kurt works for.

In the past, the German army itself employed IT personnel and, if necessary, a soldier would have moved the computer himself. In its place came a bunch of employees and accountants who produce mountains of forms and invoices for one small job.

From duct tapers to flunkies

It is an extreme example, but everyone can now measure her or his own job through this situation. Graeber himself distinguishes five types. The first are the flunkies. They are people who allow a superior to shine. They serve to make others feel important. Think of the receptionists of CEOs who barely have to answer a few phone calls a day. Or the concierges in expensive apartment buildings of millionaires who find it below their dignity to take a key from their own pocket.

Second type: the goons. They are jobs within companies that only exist because the competitor also has them. They often act aggressively on behalf of their employers. Think of corporate lawyers or tax specialists.

Third type: the duct tapers (the fixers). These are employees who are needed because others (often outside of their will) do not do their work properly. Kurt is a good example of this. But also IT developers increasingly only stick tape. More and more companies are using free software (written by volunteers). The paid developers then have to make those pieces of software compatible.

Four: the 'box tickers'. It is the people who complete reports and brochures with what their company or organization does. Multinationals often have an internal newspaper or even a TV channel that nobody is looking at. But those who once applied for subsidies also know the phenomenon. The mountain of papers that you have to fill in for small sums is huge.

The fifth type are the task masters. Employees who need to keep an eye on other employees. Since the managers seized power within companies (but unfortunately also within government and many non-profit organizations), a whole layer of so-called middle management was added. So much so that those task managers have to be monitored by even more task managers.

How is that possible?
Ok, but how is it possible that in a system such as capitalism, that is based on profit (and therefore as few employees as possible), jobs are created that aren’t paying? And is the existence of something like bullshit jobs not counter-intuitive? Do managers not prefer to cut as many jobs as possible?

If jobs are to be lost – Graeber writes - it always involves useful jobs. In the real 'fat', the court of flunkies and middle managers around the CEO, is rarely cut.

By the way, this is a bizarre paradox. An useful job is often looked down upon. These kind of jobs often have lower wages and it’s easy to throw out these people on the street. You often see it in strikes. You ought to click on the profiles of the haters on Twitter and it is often about people who do something undefined in 'communication management' and spend a whole day on social media.

That's why the question is, why is that? According to Graeber, much has to do with the financialisation of contemporary capitalism. Even a classic production company such as General Motors now takes most of the profit from financial practices (including car loans). Much profit is nowadays obtained from what is no more than looting activities. Look at the subcontracts of Kurt who simply skim the government's resources and divide them among themselves.

Work 15 hours a week

It is a known and already a thousand times repeated fact. The great 20th century economist Keynes predicted before World War II that his grandchildren should only work 15 hours a week in 2030. His calculations are correct and may even be too pessimistic. Everything we need can be (and is) produced with far fewer hands than 80 years ago.

There are machines and robots and now even AI, but they do not replace jobs. Or they do, but for every job that disappears, a bullshit job takes its place. In the time of Keynes, there were not yet millions of people working in a call center to fix people up with a subscription to an unread magazine via their mobile phone.

Orwell already wrote it in one of his early works:

I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.

Burnout

The many testimonies in Graeber's book show that the performers of bullshit jobs become mentally and even physically ill. It could well be the hidden cause of many burnouts and depressions. People want to feel useful. That is why there may be so much envy on train conductors and teachers. Graeber calls that 'moral envy'. People who are well paid but getting depressed in an anaemic office are envious of fellow people who at least do something useful. And as a kind of punishment, they are best paid as little as possible.

'There is no alternative' is the holy spell of this time. Work longer? We cannot do otherwise. 30-hour week? Are you crazy? Basic income? Unaffordable. But suppose that we, the whole of humanity, after a long journey, with all our knowledge and technology, arrive on this planet. Together we have to come up with a system that brings the greatest possible happiness for as many people as possible. We also have to keep the planet in its original state. Would this be it? At least, Graeber's book helps to think carefully about the absurd phenomenon of bullshit jobs.