YOLA 11: The Great Work Myth - p1

depriving
Work gets a terrible press. Pick up the paper on any day and you'll read about how work is killing our marriages, generating stress, depriving children of 'quality time', hollowing out local communities, and depressing us.

scapegoat
Work has become the scapegoat for all our woes. The case against work is put in persuasive terms on a daily basis. There’s just one problem: it's nonsense. In fact, as far as work is concerned, we've never had it so good.

satisfied
One survey shows that four out of ten British workers declare themselves 'very satisfied' with their jobs - more than in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain.

maternity
Average earnings have increased, a lot of firms offer longer maternity leave, a third of firms now offer sabbaticals, and two-thirds allow their staff to work from home some of the time.

rhetoric
The rhetoric about longer working hours also needs to be put in perspective. The average working day has increased in length over the last two decades, but by just one minute and forty-two seconds.

ingrained
Despite all the improvements in work over recent decades, there is still an ingrained attitude that happiness lies outside work; that we are waiting for the weekend.

alienation
This idea that work is essentially bad for us has a long history. Karl Marx described workers being 'alienated' from the product of their labor: What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?' he asked.

affirm
Marx goes on to answer: 'First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work he does not affirm himself but denies himself.'

mortify
Marx continues: 'The worker does not feel content but unhappy; does not develop his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.'

condemns
However, relentless negativity about work condemns us to precisely the sort of work that Marx was trying to free us from 150 years ago.

demeaning
If we accept that work is dull and demeaning - a ransom paid for the hostage of our 'free time' - then we are allowing alienation to remain.