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The Dignity of Labour
Does work give our lives purpose, meaning and status? Or is it a tedious necessity that will soon be abolished by automation, leaving humans free to enjoy a life of leisure and basic income?
In this erudite and highly readable book, Jon Cruddas MP argues that it is imperative that the Left rejects the siren call of technological determinism and roots it politics firmly in the workplace. Drawing from his experience of his own Dagenham and Rainham constituency, he examines the history of Marxist and social democratic thinking about work in order to critique the fatalism of both Blairism and radical left techno-utopianism, which, he contends, have more in common than either would like to admit. He argues that, especially in the context of COVID-19, socialists must embrace an ethical socialist politics based on the dignity and agency of the labour interest.
This timely book is a brilliant intervention in the highly contentious debate on the future of work, as well as an ambitious account of how the left must rediscover its animating purpose or risk irrelevance.
In this erudite and highly readable book, Jon Cruddas MP argues that it is imperative that the Left rejects the siren call of technological determinism and roots it politics firmly in the workplace. Drawing from his experience of his own Dagenham and Rainham constituency, he examines the history of Marxist and social democratic thinking about work in order to critique the fatalism of both Blairism and radical left techno-utopianism, which, he contends, have more in common than either would like to admit. He argues that, especially in the context of COVID-19, socialists must embrace an ethical socialist politics based on the dignity and agency of the labour interest.
This timely book is a brilliant intervention in the highly contentious debate on the future of work, as well as an ambitious account of how the left must rediscover its animating purpose or risk irrelevance.
238 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 8, 2021
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About the author
Jon Cruddas
5 books1 followerJonathan Cruddas is an English Labour Party politician who has served as Member of Parliament for Dagenham and Rainham since 2010, and formerly for Dagenham between 2001 and 2010. A graduate of the University of Warwick, Cruddas was first elected to Parliament at the 2001 general election.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 2, 2021
There are many good reasons to be sceptical about the current enthusiasm for the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), and a number of them are set out with cogency in this book. Cruddas feels most strongly about the way it skews left political agendas away from the call for full employment and towards the more pallid notion of distributive justice.
Work has intrinsic value to human beings which goes over and beyond the means to secure a living. But Cruddas describes the ‘contested quality’ of physical labour under capitalism: at once providing personal meaning to individuals, but also being exploitative and failing to sustain a sense of wider social usefulness. A political programme which addresses this paradox head-on by demanding that all work is reconfigured as activity consistent with the human aspiration of dignity and self-determination seems like a positive was to frame the core impulse of the socialist left.
But Cruddas sees a current of technological utopianism standing against this position. It has two components. The first is a negative view of the character of labour itself, seeing it as an oppressive activity form which human beings need to be liberated; the second being the appearance of wonderful new technologies which promise to shift the burden to work to a new generation of intelligent machines. The people he sees as the leading proponents of technological utopianism – Paul Mason and Aaron Bastani – are slated for their advocacy of, using the latter’s phrase, fully automated luxury communism.
The book takes a rather circuitous route in developing its critique of a supposedly left neglect of the importance of work to socialist politics. The critique of distributionism comes by way of a terse argument about the labour theory of value, which Cruddas sees as being infected by the Ricardian view of the amount of concrete labour embodied in a commodity, as opposed to Marx’s reformulation based on a philosophical understanding of abstract labour time. He may well be correct on this point but his view that Ricardo’s version of the theory leads to the error of over-stating the significance of technology in the value equation needs explaining rather than simply asserting.
But there are more important gaps in the line of reasoning. His treatment of work as a relationship that exists within a firm – and more so, a firm that happens to exist in his Parliamentary constituency of Dagenham – leaves the entire dimension of the global scope of the labour process under capitalism out of consideration. Nowhere in this book does he consider the impact of outsourcing, the role of foreign direct investment, or arm’s-length control over world-spanning supply chains in his evaluation of the evolution of work under the conditions of modern day capitalism. Had he done so he would have confronted facts about the character of the demand for labour which have far higher value in explaining why the nature of work has changed so much over the last forty years.
Cruddas is correct to criticise the technology utopians for seeing the ‘rise of the robots’ as in itself threatening the future of human employment. Technological innovation has been one of the constant elements of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution that commenced in the eighteenth century, with labour becoming more productive because of its enhancement by machinery. But machinery does not diminish the demand for human labour as long as increases in the demand for output is higher than the increase in labour productivity. If labour productivity increases by 5 percent a year but output by 7 percent, then the difference will have to be met by a 2 percent increase in the labour force, and hence ever-rising employment.
In a recent book which also challenges the rise of the robots thesis, Automation and the Future of Work, Aaron Benanav describes long-term stagnation in growth in the global capitalist economy which had its origins in America’s quest for global hegemony during the years of the Cold War, which it pursued by sharing its advanced technology with the nations which it wanted to keep out of the influence of Soviet camp. High level industrial technique came to countries devasted by war and, with the advantage of lower wage costs, gave them the opportunities to enter the hitherto impenetrable US markets. Since this time industrial capacity has increased in leaps and bounds across the planet whilst growth in the market for goods has been more limited.
More detail is added to this account in studies like Intan Suwandi’s work on value chains as the new economic imperialism, which serves better to describe to describe the global fall in the demand for labour as arising, not from technology, but by the conditions which the capitalist system imposes on economic development. What it shows it the future will be less about unemployment per se, and more like systemic, chronic under- employment which forces more workers into a smaller share of the jobs that are being made available. It is this version of the future that makes UBI so attractive to its advocates, born out of a fatalism that has little hope that capitalism can be induced to generate decent jobs. Until the left comes up with a political programme that sets out a perspective for these well-paid, decent jobs for all workers across the world, then hopes for a better future for the good people of Dagenham, Essex will prove to be forlorn.
Work has intrinsic value to human beings which goes over and beyond the means to secure a living. But Cruddas describes the ‘contested quality’ of physical labour under capitalism: at once providing personal meaning to individuals, but also being exploitative and failing to sustain a sense of wider social usefulness. A political programme which addresses this paradox head-on by demanding that all work is reconfigured as activity consistent with the human aspiration of dignity and self-determination seems like a positive was to frame the core impulse of the socialist left.
But Cruddas sees a current of technological utopianism standing against this position. It has two components. The first is a negative view of the character of labour itself, seeing it as an oppressive activity form which human beings need to be liberated; the second being the appearance of wonderful new technologies which promise to shift the burden to work to a new generation of intelligent machines. The people he sees as the leading proponents of technological utopianism – Paul Mason and Aaron Bastani – are slated for their advocacy of, using the latter’s phrase, fully automated luxury communism.
The book takes a rather circuitous route in developing its critique of a supposedly left neglect of the importance of work to socialist politics. The critique of distributionism comes by way of a terse argument about the labour theory of value, which Cruddas sees as being infected by the Ricardian view of the amount of concrete labour embodied in a commodity, as opposed to Marx’s reformulation based on a philosophical understanding of abstract labour time. He may well be correct on this point but his view that Ricardo’s version of the theory leads to the error of over-stating the significance of technology in the value equation needs explaining rather than simply asserting.
But there are more important gaps in the line of reasoning. His treatment of work as a relationship that exists within a firm – and more so, a firm that happens to exist in his Parliamentary constituency of Dagenham – leaves the entire dimension of the global scope of the labour process under capitalism out of consideration. Nowhere in this book does he consider the impact of outsourcing, the role of foreign direct investment, or arm’s-length control over world-spanning supply chains in his evaluation of the evolution of work under the conditions of modern day capitalism. Had he done so he would have confronted facts about the character of the demand for labour which have far higher value in explaining why the nature of work has changed so much over the last forty years.
Cruddas is correct to criticise the technology utopians for seeing the ‘rise of the robots’ as in itself threatening the future of human employment. Technological innovation has been one of the constant elements of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution that commenced in the eighteenth century, with labour becoming more productive because of its enhancement by machinery. But machinery does not diminish the demand for human labour as long as increases in the demand for output is higher than the increase in labour productivity. If labour productivity increases by 5 percent a year but output by 7 percent, then the difference will have to be met by a 2 percent increase in the labour force, and hence ever-rising employment.
In a recent book which also challenges the rise of the robots thesis, Automation and the Future of Work, Aaron Benanav describes long-term stagnation in growth in the global capitalist economy which had its origins in America’s quest for global hegemony during the years of the Cold War, which it pursued by sharing its advanced technology with the nations which it wanted to keep out of the influence of Soviet camp. High level industrial technique came to countries devasted by war and, with the advantage of lower wage costs, gave them the opportunities to enter the hitherto impenetrable US markets. Since this time industrial capacity has increased in leaps and bounds across the planet whilst growth in the market for goods has been more limited.
More detail is added to this account in studies like Intan Suwandi’s work on value chains as the new economic imperialism, which serves better to describe to describe the global fall in the demand for labour as arising, not from technology, but by the conditions which the capitalist system imposes on economic development. What it shows it the future will be less about unemployment per se, and more like systemic, chronic under- employment which forces more workers into a smaller share of the jobs that are being made available. It is this version of the future that makes UBI so attractive to its advocates, born out of a fatalism that has little hope that capitalism can be induced to generate decent jobs. Until the left comes up with a political programme that sets out a perspective for these well-paid, decent jobs for all workers across the world, then hopes for a better future for the good people of Dagenham, Essex will prove to be forlorn.
August 15, 2021
A star rating doesn't really do justice to a book whose ideas I found interesting, but perhaps needed longer to cook and find their place in what is, at times, quite a dense argument. Cruddas' book is strongest in its historical sweeps of the politics of work and how this has played out in 20th century government policy and in the philosophical and economic traditions of the Labour Party. His critique of technological determinism and his appeal to put a reappraisal of work at the heart of the left's thinking are, I think, timely but not as compellingly argued as they could be. The final chapter in particular is trying to do a lot: counter philosophical justifications for. Universal Basic Income; propose policy to guarantee good work in the life of citizens - the result is a shopping list of interventions whose introduction hasn't necessarily been strongly set up in the preceeding chapters.
I felt the book was stronger in dealing with "labour" than it was with "dignity". I found, however, myself interested in the way that Cruddas sets out the themes he is looking at in relation to the history of his constituency, Dagenham. These vignettes in the book pointed to the possibility of exploring even more deeply how these ideas have and could play out in reality. Perhaps unfair of me to ask this of a book that is grounded so much in the philosophical questions of what work is and why it should be fundamental to human dignity - and yet its a part of the book that I wanted even more of.
I felt the book was stronger in dealing with "labour" than it was with "dignity". I found, however, myself interested in the way that Cruddas sets out the themes he is looking at in relation to the history of his constituency, Dagenham. These vignettes in the book pointed to the possibility of exploring even more deeply how these ideas have and could play out in reality. Perhaps unfair of me to ask this of a book that is grounded so much in the philosophical questions of what work is and why it should be fundamental to human dignity - and yet its a part of the book that I wanted even more of.
June 28, 2025
The concept of 'The Dignity of Labour' is very relevant now. The new Pope Leo XIV chose his name as an homage to the earlier Leo XIII whose works like Rerum Novarum from 1891 were big steps forward in Catholic thinking about work.
Outside of Catholic theology though you can't really talk in any depth about the dignity of contemporary labour without also talking about why our culture reveres luxury and self-aggrandisement. Cruddas tries for 170 pages but it doesn't cover any new ground. Plus, since he's not talking about capitalism and finance, the only culprits for undignified lives among the working class that he can find are on the left.
This suits him because he's a social conservative. I want to give this book just two stars because this book doesn't wear that conservatism on its sleeve. What redeems it one more star is the insight about how central Marx's 'Fragment on Machines' is to a lot of discussion on the left. His argument that this has disproportionate sway over optimistic, accelerationist pro-abundance left is interesting and ahead of its time. That argument could be put into an interesting dialogue with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's 'Abundance' thesis.
Outside of Catholic theology though you can't really talk in any depth about the dignity of contemporary labour without also talking about why our culture reveres luxury and self-aggrandisement. Cruddas tries for 170 pages but it doesn't cover any new ground. Plus, since he's not talking about capitalism and finance, the only culprits for undignified lives among the working class that he can find are on the left.
This suits him because he's a social conservative. I want to give this book just two stars because this book doesn't wear that conservatism on its sleeve. What redeems it one more star is the insight about how central Marx's 'Fragment on Machines' is to a lot of discussion on the left. His argument that this has disproportionate sway over optimistic, accelerationist pro-abundance left is interesting and ahead of its time. That argument could be put into an interesting dialogue with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's 'Abundance' thesis.
September 30, 2021
Really interesting look at a potential post liberal world from an ex New Labour politician.
October 21, 2021
Great political primer for those concerned with the future of Labour and work..
Enthusiastic and hopeful while being realistic. Delves into some technical disputes (briefly) within Marxism and current left thinking, but this only goes to show their importance and also the tendency of the far left to seek a predefined position. We need more fluency in our thinking about power and politics and this book is a step on that road.
Enthusiastic and hopeful while being realistic. Delves into some technical disputes (briefly) within Marxism and current left thinking, but this only goes to show their importance and also the tendency of the far left to seek a predefined position. We need more fluency in our thinking about power and politics and this book is a step on that road.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews