marxism

I've only read like 5 chapters of the books, but "Bullshit Jobs" is mostly about the pointlessness and self-deception labor aristocrats go through to make it through the day. I didn't finish the book because I didn't like how the book focuses on labor aristocrats at the expense of everyone else. It's not what he said in particular that I found objectionable, but the fact that he spend time and energy to write a book called "why being a labor aristocrat sucks" even though by all accounts, a labor aristocrat has a lot more going for them than your average prole or precariat or lumpen. It's certainly better than Congolian kids digging for cobalt or Bangladeshi women crammed into sweatshops. You won't find any bullshit job in some neocolonial Global South country.

He even admits this:

Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. Those who work shit jobs tend to be the object of indignities; they not only work hard but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. But at least they know they’re doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers—as the sort of people who can be justly proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it’s all based on a lie—as, indeed, it is.

These are two profoundly different forms of oppression. I certainly wouldn’t want to equate them; few people I know would trade in a pointless middle-management position for a job as a ditchdigger, even if they knew that the ditches really did need to be dug. (I do know people who quit such jobs to become cleaners, though, and are quite happy that they did.) All I wish to emphasize here is that each is indeed oppressive in its own way.

Every strata of the broader working class faces their own brand of oppression. Labor aristocrats have it bad. Blue collar dudes with yellow hardhats have it bad. Nurses have it bad. Blue-haired baristas have it bad. Uber drivers have it bad. Sex workers have it bad. Prisoners forced to make shoes for Nike have it bad. I just find it a bit galling for someone to focus on a particular strata and the more privileged strata at that. Not to turn this into a contest, but when I think of a strata that have it so bad that their particular form of oppression deserves its own book, I think of sex workers or prison laborers or undocumented migrant workers, not white-collar workers who have a sense of ennui because they stare at Excel spreadsheets all day.

At the end of the day, the book's target audience is other labor aristocrats because he's writing as if you yourself have or had a bullshit job or know someone with a bullshit job. In a way, I feel like his casual writing style that's light on leftist jargon is wasted because I can't imagine an actual proletariat relating to this book at all outside of like secretaries and low level clerical workers.