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In an interview, anthropologist David Graeber answers questions about the modern workplace and the purposeless jobs that fill it.
Not since Dilbert has truth been spoken to power in soulless work settings. But the cartoon character's successor may be David Graeber. In 2013 he achieved viral fame with cubicle zombies everywhere after he published a short essay on the prevalence of work that had no social or economic reason to exist, which he called "bullshit jobs". The wide attention seemed to confirm his thesis.
Mr Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, has expanded on the ideas in a recent book. He responded to five questions from The Economist's Open Future initiative. He rails against "feudal retinues of basically useless flunkies." As he puts it: "People want to feel they are transforming the world around them in a way that makes some kind a positive difference."
[...] One thing it shows is that the whole "lean and mean" ideal is applied much more to productive workers than to office cubicles. It's not at all uncommon for the same executives who pride themselves on downsizing and speed-ups on the shop floor, or in delivery and so forth, to use the money saved at least in part to fill their offices with feudal retinues of basically useless flunkies.
From The Economist : Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:30AM
I think you're leaving out the effect of unions and organized labor, which evolved greatly over time. When you had apprenticeships and masters, the masters did organize, and they did even strike. Not the unions we understand today, and most often, the organizations were disbanded the moment they got what they want. So you could look at as periodic, and constantly evolving. The response of the "owners" so to speak, was to start employing the apprentices more, which caused quality to suffer and the wages of the masters to decrease through lost work. Again, labor organizing evolved by these proto-unions deciding to allow in the apprentices to close that loophole.
Forgot the name, but there was a very interesting guy in the north east that went around recruiting for unions in the middle of the 19th century. This was before the civil war I believe, and he had the audacious notion to allow blacks into the unions with the same thinking to foil the plans of the "owners" to pit one class of workers against the next. That plan being effective and widely used all the way up till today with White Nationalists screaming hysterically that Mexicans are taking their jobs. It's not the c-suites, regulations, or anything else, but some other guys that just want to work. *rolls eyes*
Industrialization was never the problem. It was the lack of living wages, as always. Again, as always, the war is between owners and workers. Currently right now, workers are at a real, real, fucking low. I predict labor organization to grow again, until we force them to give us some scraps, and the game continues unabated, but continually changing.
So it really depends on exactly when you're talking about in the pre-Industrialization age, and what industry you were referring to. In general though, you're probably right that the times could be referred as glorious never existed. However, there really WAS a time, however brief, that the workers were living it up. Afterwards, there was a much longer period of time when unions (again, not as we know them now), were extremely effective. That was the glorious golden age for the worker which lasted up till the late 70's. Union membership was near 1/3rd of every American, living wages were high, and union factory jobs were plentiful. I'd say maybe 15-20 years. Which is not a lot out of the last 300 years or so.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.