Meaningful Work

vs. Meaningless Toil

“But it is waste of time to try to express in words due contempt of the productions of the much-praised cheapness of our epoch. It must be enough to say that this cheapness is necessary to the system of exploiting on which modern manufacture rests. In other words, our society includes a great mass of slaves, who must be fed, clothed, housed and amused as slaves, and that their daily necessity compels them to make the slave-wares whose use is the perpetuation of their slavery.

To sum up, then, concerning the manner of work in civilized States, these States are composed of three classes - a class which does not even pretend to work, a class which pretends to works but which produces nothing, and a class which works, but is compelled by the other two classes to do work which is often unproductive.

Civilization therefore wastes its own resources, and will do so as long as the present system lasts. These are cold words with which to describe the tyranny under which we suffer; try then to consider what they mean.”

— William Morris, “Useful Work vs. Useless Toil” 1884

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, and an old school Liberal. It is my opinion that all should have the right to work, that it is in participating outside of our atomized homes that we enter into community, and that opportunity should be available to all.

But I am also a Real Idealist. And, yes, a Democratic Socialist.

Every day I see working-class people struggle with the stresses of squalor, and every day I see people who have been so fortunate as to gather assets in this world act as though they have no human contact with these people.

Of course, I think that we should find a fair way to tax properly across all incomes. Of course, I think that health care, healthy food, and basic education should be made available to children at least until grade 6. (And by basic education, I mean the basic things we should be learning by sixth grade — solid literacy, math, music, the basic tenants of science, and a solid understanding of civics and ethics. All of these are absolutely possible by that age were we to focus our energies and beef up pre-school through sixth grade with *well-educated* staff.)

But I also think that a fantasy of a Robin Hood-style “take from the rich and give to the poor” is not only untenable — it would also be ineffective, and wouldn’t address the roots of the problem. My suspicion is that, as we worked through the political machine trying and failing and trying and failing, we’d just continue to see the same ebb and flow of resentment and pseudo-revolution as powerless people attempted to gain power from a weaponized state.

Further, I think that often we are too preoccupied with material goods (which, to the extent that people need the basics, we SHOULD be) to the detriment of the ideal Good. That seems to be a part of what makes a lower-class life so unbearable. (I said “a part.”)

Much is made of the fact that as China, India, Russia, and other countries continue to “grow economically” and acquire the same comforts our upper and upper-middle classes enjoy, resources will continue to grow scarcer and scarcer, and the environment less and less inhabitable.

But there is another argument being made in other quarters which doesn’t seem to enter into the political realm — the fact that material goods aren’t what make us happy.

Happiness comes from a meaningful life well lived in participation among the community. It comes from rising in the morning and not feeling as though life is both overwhelming and meaningless.

You can’t legislate that. As a Democratic Socialist I am stridently dedicated to the notion that we do need to provide the basics for everyone. But I also believe that the “Pursuit of Happiness” (which I strongly believe was Jefferson’s translation of “Eudaimonia”) is just as important, and that the way that we are currently interacting with our globe and its fruits is not the way which would best suit any of us.

Now comes the relevant question, “What to do about it?” Obviously, I’m not nearly enlightened enough to have an answer, but there are glimpses of hope here and there.

Observe, for example, entrepreneur Ryan Barton’s philosophy on the purpose of business: The Business Itself Must Be Doing Something Good In The World.

“The business itself must be doing something that is good in the world. What you’re actually producing should be of genuine value. The money that we make should be a signifier of the value that we are bringing into the world through serving people with meaningful goods and services, not by tricking them into drinking sugar water that’s terrible for them and giving them diabetes. […] The business must itself be serving people in a way that it’s doing something good with Beauty in Truth, that we are communicating in truth, and that the business model — the products and services — are done that way. And that we have anchors and checks as we’re building and iterating those over time to actually put metrics around it, to actually honor and check for that.”

We hear often about how competition and market economics have created great advances in medical technology, management, distribution, and application in the health care industry. Yet we still hear every day about the challenge of its costs. And while you sometimes hear of someone getting pharmaceuticals from Canada or popping somewhere else to get a procedure, there is generally a sense that one can get the health care one needs here in the United States, and with shorter wait times than you would in countries with fully socialized medicine.

And yet we have trouble hiring and retaining nurses and, now, even doctors. Do these people avoiding the field feel as though they are going to work to do what it was that they had imagined as a young person? Or are they, too, dispossessed of a certain type of Hope, of a sense of value in their own enterprise?

These are existential questions, and they matter. And as long as we keep assuming that we possess the Holy Grail answer to the detriment of political participation, we’re going to keep voting in factional, tribal ways denying the many merits that *all* groups bring, including the ones we dislike.

If we don’t begin to recognize our shared values and investments, and make shared commitments to these principles, nihilism is going to be the only way.

I’d rather not spiral into destruction.

Read more from Ryan Barton here: The Purpose of Work.

Here’s a LinkedIn Podcast on finding a “Good” job: How to find a “Good Enough” Job.