Bullshit Jobs : A Theory

Notes
I’ve got a lot of push-back about the actuaries, and now think I was being unfair to them. Some actuarial work does make a difference. I’m still convinced the rest could disappear with no negative consequences. David Graeber, “The Modern Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs,” Canberra (Australia) Times online, last modified September 3, 2013, www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/the-modern-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-20130831-2sy3j.html. To my knowledge, only one book has ever been written on the subject of bullshit jobs, Boulots de Merde!, by Paris-based journalists Julien Brygo and Olivier Cyran —and the authors told me it was directly inspired by my article. It’s a good book but covers a rather different range of questions than my own. “Bullshit Jobs,” LiquidLegends, www.liquidlegends.net/forum/general/460469-bullshit-jobs?page... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Bibliography
Bibliography Ackroyd, Stephen, and Paul Thompson. Organizational Misbehavior. London: Sage, 1999. Anderson, Perry. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: Verso Press, 1974. Applebaum, Herbert. The Concept of Work: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (SUNY Series in the Anthropology of Work). Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Baumeister, Roy, Sara Wotman, and Arlene Stillwell. “Unrequited Love: On Heartbreak, Anger, Guilt, Scriptlessness, and Humiliation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 3 : 377–94. Beder, Sharon. Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR. London: Zed Books, 2000. Black, Bob. “The Abolition of Work.” The Abolition of Work and Other Essays. Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics, 1... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Bibliography
Bibliography Ackroyd, Stephen, and Paul Thompson. Organizational Misbehavior. London: Sage, 1999. Anderson, Perry. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: Verso Press, 1974. Applebaum, Herbert. The Concept of Work: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (SUNY Series in the Anthropology of Work). Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Baumeister, Roy, Sara Wotman, and Arlene Stillwell. “Unrequited Love: On Heartbreak, Anger, Guilt, Scriptlessness, and Humiliation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 3 : 377–94. Beder, Sharon. Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR. London: Zed Books, 2000. Black, Bob. “The Abolition of Work.” The Abolition of Work and Other Essa... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

About the Author
About the Author Photographer: MARI JAN MURAT David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of DEBT: The First 5,000 Years, and a contributor to Harper’s, The Guardian, and The Baffler. He lives in London. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments I would like to thank the hundreds of people who shared their stories of workplace woe, but cannot be named. You know who you are. I would like to thank Vyvian Raoul at Strike! for commissioning the original essay and everyone else at Strike! (especially The Special Patrol Group) for making all this possible. This book wouldn’t exist without the hard work of my team at Simon & Schuster: editor Ben Loehnen, Erin Reback, Jonathan Karp, and Amar Deol, and without the encouragement of my agent, Melissa Flashman at Janklow & Nesbit. And, of course, much gratitude to my friends who put up with me and my colleagues at LSE, for their patience and support, and particularly to the administrative staff: Yanina and Tom Hinrichsen, Renata Todd, Camilla Kennedy Harper, and Andrea Elsik. Sophie Carapetian and Rebecca Coles provided excellent research assistance and support. I think I should also than... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Why Are Bullshit Jobs Proliferating?
Chapter 5: Why Are Bullshit Jobs Proliferating? In the Scilly Islands… the natives of that group are popularly said to have eked out a precarious livelihood by taking in each other’s washing. —obscure nineteenth-century joke A bourgeois paradise will supervene, in which everyone will be free to exploit—but there will be no one to exploit. On the whole, one must suppose that the type of it would be that town that I have heard of, whose inhabitants lived by taking in each other’s washing. —William Morris, 1887 If the preceding chapters merely described forms of pointless employment that have always been with us in one way or another—or even that have always been with us since the dawn of capitalism&m... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

What Are the Political Effects of Bullshit Jobs, and Is There Anything That Can Be Done About This Situation?
Chapter 7: What Are the Political Effects of Bullshit Jobs, and Is There Anything That Can Be Done About This Situation? 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. —George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorized stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger s... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

What Sorts of Bullshit Jobs Are There?
Chapter 2 What Sorts of Bullshit Jobs Are There? My research has revealed five basic types of bullshit jobs. In this chapter, I will describe them and outline their essential features. First, a word about this research. I am drawing on two large bodies of data. In the wake of my original 2013 essay, “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs,” a number of newspapers in different countries ran the essay as an opinion piece, and it was also reproduced on a number of blogs. As a result, there was a great deal of online discussion, over the course of which many participants made references to personal experiences of jobs they considered particularly absurd or pointless. I downloaded 124 of these and spent some time sorting through them. Th... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Why Do We as a Society Not Object to the Growth of Pointless Employment?
Chapter 6: Why Do We as a Society Not Object to the Growth of Pointless Employment? How vain the opinion is of some certain people of the East Indies, who think that apes and baboons, which are with them in great numbers, are imbued with understanding, and that they can speak but will not, for fear they should be imployed and set to work. —Antoine Le Grand, c. 1675 We have already considered the economic and social forces that have led to the proliferation of bullshit jobs, as well as the misery and distress those jobs cause for those who have to do them. Yet despite this evident and widespread distress, the fact that millions of people show up to work every day convinced they are doing absolutely nothing has not, until now, been cons... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

What Is a Bullshit Job?
Chapter 1: What Is a Bullshit Job? Let us begin with what might be considered a paradigmatic example of a bullshit job. Kurt works for a subcontractor for the German military. Or… actually, he is employed by a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor for the German military. Here is how he describes his work: The German military has a subcontractor that does their IT work. The IT firm has a subcontractor that does their logistics. The logistics firm has a subcontractor that does their personnel management, and I work for that company. Let’s say soldier A moves to an office two rooms farther down the hall. Instead of just carrying his computer over there, he has to fill out a form. The IT subcontractor will get the fo... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)