Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR

by Sharon Beder

Subjected to the discipline of work and production, people’s living standards have risen across the North and in the most economically dynamic areas of the South. But material affluence is accompanied by increasing levels of stress, insecurity, depression, crime, and addiction. The environmen that life itself depends on is also being destroyed. This book is a history of the capitalist culture of work.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Economics

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Sharon Beder is an honorary professor in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong.

Sharon's research has focussed on how power relationships are maintained and challenged, particularly by corporations and professions. She is interested in environmental politics; the rhetoric of sustainable development; the philosophies behind environmental economics; and trends in environmentalism and corporate activism/public relations. Most recently she has broadened her research interests to critique various manifestations of neoliberalism including privatisation and deregulation, market solutions to social problems and the business takeover of school education.

She has written 10 books, around 150 articles, book chapters and conference papers, as well as designing teaching resources and educational websites.

Reviews

[Valerie]

To say this book is derivative doesn't even begin to cover it. All the references are to secondary (and sometimes even tertiary) sources.

This is not a basis for rejection in itself--many popularizations are derivative, and this one is a good read: BUT...

Several of the quotes are implausible. The notoriously taciturn Calvin Coolidge (who is said to have once replied to a woman who'd bet she could get more than two words from him, "You lose.") is rendered quite improbably prolix.

Worse, Darwin is described as 'not averse' to social Darwinism, on the the basis of one quote which is very stylistically uncharacteristic of him. Darwin may have been quite racist by our standards--his comments on the Maori and the people of Tierra del Fuego in The Voyage of The Beagle are often quite offensive. But he was a paternalistic meliorist, and quite alarmingly mild of tone. I'm not saying he didn't say what he's quoted as saying--I can't tell, because the source given is a secondary one. And, like Whitman, Darwin was 'large', he 'contain(ed) multitudes'.) But I keep going back to the oft-quoted lines from the last (anti-slavery)chapter of Voyage of The Beagle: "if the sufferings of the poor be due, not to Nature, but to our institutions, great is our sin." There's pretty strong evidence that Darwin was, in fact, as fiercely opposed to the excesses of 'Social Darwinism' as he was capable of being fiercely anything.

With those caveats, this may serve as a useful introductory text, if (and only if) its leads are followed up. And it is very readable. The last time I read it, I set it aside, intending to follow up on the endnotes. This time I took it out of the pile of unfinished business. I hope I actually get digging, this time, and it doesn't just go backe into the pile.

Update: Since this was written, I did track down the quote from Darwin. It's from The Descent of Man, and it is written by Darwin--but it's a nearly exact transcription from quotes by Darwin's cousin Galton. The rest of the book (so far, I've only got to about page 550 simply brackets the Galtonesque section--and ignores it, to focus on Darwin's main contention in the rest of the book--that much of evolution, far from being a matter of gladiatorial combats, is a matter of male animals competing for the attention of females by being as beautiful as they can be in the eyes of the females.

[Jim Cullison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two dozen years after its initial publication, this withering chronicle of the ascent and evolution of the work ethic is even more cogent and powerful than when it first appeared in bookstores at the dawn of the 21st century. Part historical autopsy, part moral indictment, this book about the most powerful ideology in our secular world, the ideology of WORKISM, is not merely outstanding, but engrossing, dragging the reader headlong to a sobering finish a few hours later. Highly recommended.

P.S. The author, writing in 2000, shared the prediction that by the year 2020, work-related stress would be among the leading causes of major diseases. Prophecy.

[lyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book but it has some oversights. Sharon Beder, the author, does a thorough job of examining the background and harmful effects of the work ethic. The work ethic is seen as a tool of capitalism used to exploit workers, legitimize inequality, and rob people of their identity as something other than workers. These views are well supported and have merit, but some interesting facets of the work ethic, covered by Kerr and Scitovsky, are omitted. For example, the work ethic draws much of its strength from altruistic motives to help other people, as typified for example by parents who mistakenly overwork to try to give their children a better life, when the children would be better off spending quality time with the parents. A more nuanced approach that covered the way in which utilitarian motives support the work ethic would have led the way to further insights.

Another difficulty is that Beder undermines her own topic by concluding at one point that the work ethic is in a state of crisis, effectively being supplanted by a wealth ethic or a consumption ethic. Here again Scitovsky has a more sophisticated treatment of the subject, suggesting that the problem is not consumption but an overemphasis on production and a lack of skilled consumption. What Beder does well she does very well.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was prescribed reading for my Industrial Psychology Honours class and, as with most academic texts, I found this repetitive and only mildly interesting. I can only vaguely remember half of the historical events noted in its chapters on the evolving work ethic and the meanings attributed to work over the centuries. This book depressed me, simply because it highlighted the unhealthy nature of work in the 21st century and, as a student on the threshold of a corporate career, it's made me question my career choice and if maybe I should strike out on my own and seek a means of self-employment instead of turning into a corporate slave who sacrifices family life and social relationships to benefit a corporation to whom I'm just another name on a pay slip and easily replaceable. There were a few valid points made here, although I think that the book presented too bleak a picture of the nature of work in the modern world.

[Elizabeth Lund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like a textbook--informative with well-supported arguments, but somewhat dry.