A global downturn, when a large number of people are either unemployed or fear losing their job, is not the best time to talk about useless work. But since I’m a kind of specialist in useless-ness I think the case has to be made nevertheless. The only point of working nowadays, or so we’re lead to believe, is to make money. That’s what makes work ‘useful’ and to believe otherwise is to entertain the most delusional of pre-modern fantasies about work and fulfillment somehow meshing together. Everyone knows that work is a form of drudgery (even the word ‘labour’ is related to pain, suffering, and toil and is a kind of Biblical curse). Apart from politicians and a few creative people most of us are wage-slaves.
And if you ask an economist they’d confirm this since in their view you have to renege on your freedom to earn a wage. Your salary “compensates” you for not doing something more interesting like reading a book or spending time with the family. That’s also why economists have a very narrow view of ‘incentives’: if no-one can monitor what you’re doing, why should you put in the effort without adequate compensation.
So, there are two arguments in favour of ‘useless work’. According to the first, it allows one to get away from the perspective of those who identify themselves too closely with their jobs and the incomes they derive from them. To say that all work is truly useless is to acknowledge that you have a life over and beyond material pursuits. You learn to laugh at ‘productivity targets’, time management, quantitative measures of performance, and the whole Protestant idea that a good work-ethic, discipline, and perfection are signs of good character. You clearly see all that currying for favour with the managers is laughable and petty and that the whole language surrounding work is meaningless drivel: ‘work shall set you free’, ‘work hard and play hard’, ‘think out of the box’, contribute to the ‘knowledge economy’ and so on.
Everyone who knows me will testify to what an absolute and shameless slacker I am. ‘Slack’ comes from an old word meaning loose, careless. Today it means indifferent, blasé, someone who avoids or evades work. I would love to say I’m a slacker because I’m such an anarchic, counter-culture, hip revolutionary, but the sad truth is that it’s really plain old Kashmiri laziness! And no, not the kind of deep and quiet idleness that leads you to self-reflection and profound insights into what life’s all about but, rather, the kind of idleness that means that for large parts of the day you’re sleeping or thinking about sleeping.
I’ve got a grudging respect for people who work hard, but mostly they make me slightly sick and dizzy. When I was unemployed I found it hugely comforting doing something like getting dressed and posting a letter at the local post office. Now I realise that universities are amongst the best places for useless people like me. They’re like a retirement home for the middle-aged and badly dressed.
A second way of thinking of useless work is more positive though. Perhaps we should try to imagine how work could serve purposes beyond the ‘useful’ one of subsistence? Work would then be ‘useless’ in the sense that it transcends our immediate concerns and embodies a sense of hope. Hope in the possibility of our playing a part in producing a world in which we can derive worthwhile pleasures and satisfactions, including aesthetic ones. And the hope that we find the joy of creative and free work, that we can be engaged in activities that are themselves meaningful and that can lead to a sense of belonging, place, solidarity, and equality. If we look to teachers, doctors, nurses in the public sector who are often driven by the desire to help other people; or to soldiers, judges, and policeman who should act out of a professional sense of duty; or if we think of craftsmen or artists with their commitment to giving practical shape to their ideals, we’d recognise that we can have intelligent interests and not just material ones.
If we start to think of work in terms of ends and purposes, what we’re working towards, in terms of its ability as a frame of reference to sustain a good life-for everyone – then we’d probably move away from the current system that is often associated with exploitation, inequalities, soul-numbing routines, and anxieties about our skills becoming redundant. We’d then be more concerned about creating jobs and lifestyles that lead to something more durable, beautiful, a type of work that engages more of our faculties and that connects us with other people, rather than leading to alienation.
The writer is a professor of economics at LUMS