Utopia versus slavery

I was re-reading Lucassen's book The Story of Work last year, where he talked about a dichotomy of views in his introduction which led to his writing this sweeping book on the history of work. I think he was surprised by a growing polarisation he had noticed in work attitudes, where:

On one hand, utopia, arising in the 1990s, where we could "earn our money as independent entrepreneurs, hiring out our creative talents to the highest bidder. We would have to work perhaps only a few hours a day, or even a week. We would be so successful that, ultimately, we would have time – vast expanses of delicious leisure time. Our life would be defined by consumption, not by production" and "the new, true individuals are the self-employed and the entrepreneurs, and everyone craves a ‘portfolio’ career" (Lucassen, 2021, p. ix).

On the other hand, slavery; where we "work[ed] for someone else", with a taint "of conventional working people as either exploited victims or as uninventive and unimaginative dullards" (Lucassen, 2021, p. ix).  Ouch. Seems a bit harsh for what is, after all, "the daily reality for most of the world’s population", where we are being paid by 'the man' for "working five to six days a week, usually in household and wage labour" (Lucassen, 2021, p. x).

As Lucassen points out, utopia, with "entrepreneur [a]s a hero" at one end and "the ordinary worker a slave" at the other, is not realistic (2021, p. ix) for a process which most of us spend a third of our lives contributing to. Maybe it is more a continuum: with self-employment or entrepreneurship at one end, and fully waged worker at the other end: but this is not an either/or choice. Many people have their own side-hustles and gigs that they do as passion projects. 

Of course, we have come to think of work being what we are paid for. And what we are paid for is not the end of what could be termed work, as "Work includes any human effort adding use value to goods and services" with "most work tak[ing] place outside of regular jobs" (Tilly & Tilly, 1998, p. 22). Most of us do a lot of unpaid work each day: preparing food; cleaning; organising; planning; social obligations and care. 

If we stop trying to think of work so narrowly (i.e. as a 'job'), and embrace it as that which we have to do, want to do, and which feeds our soul, we are less likely to get trapped in these narrowed definitions of utopia and slavery.

Sam

References:

Lucassen, J. (2021). The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind. Yale University Press.

Tilly, C., & Tilly, C. (1998). Work under Capitalism. Westview Press.