Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Graebers popular books seem to be poorly marketed.
The point of the book isn't to give you an explicit theory - ultimately Graeber settles on Universal Basic Income as being the one idea he'll explicitly support in this text. It's more of a philosophical work intended to give anecdotal and historical commentary about the development of “bullshit” jobs in current capitalist societies, mainly America and the UK. The definition of bullshit jobs gets laid out while acknowledging that this system is also aided by misogyny, xenophobia, religion, militarism, racism, and the phobias/isms that come with protestantism. The definition of bullshit jobs itself is supported largely by anecdotes and is the idea that a large portion of our current jobs exist only because all the other jobs actively life-supporting our society are taken up by a smaller number of our population.

Our societies should have been alleviated with
fewer required working hours with more groups entering into the workforce and the aid of technological advancements, but they haven't been. Required working hours being the hours required to accrue money to support yourself and to aid your family/loved ones, but also the required hours in the sense that most of us aren't truly free to quit our jobs or tell a boss, “No, I'm not coming in for the next month.” At least not without serious repercussions.

The fear and danger that automation and technological advances would yield a catastrophe for the job market in essence only affects the rich and powerful. At least, in part, until the bullshit job comes in. The simplified reason being that if you had 100 people working 40+ hours a week and had an advance in technology to reduce the workload down to only needing 50 people at 40 hours a week or 20 hours for 100 people, then what are the rich and powerful to do? This leads to the game of the job market, political propaganda (unemployment numbers/total jobs/GDP), and ultimately the creation of (more) bullshit jobs. Bullshit jobs keep a working hierarchy that hinders a majority revolution that would occur. The danger of that revolution being people being able to spend their time as they choose. The danger of that being that it would lead to more free thinking and discussion. The danger of that is it leads to people being able to actively critique their environment and the employers/landlords/politicians. The danger of that being that the powerful could lose their grip as a shift majority class/caste consciousness could dissolve this systems structures that work to hinder the masses and enrich the few.