Introduction

Work means everything to us. For centuries — since, say, 1650 — we’ve believed that it builds character (punctuality, initiative, honesty, self-discipline, and so forth). We’ve also believed that the market in labor, where we go to find work, has been relatively efficient in allocating opportunities and incomes. And we’ve believed that even if it sucks, the job gives meaning, purpose, and structure to our everyday lives — at any rate we’re pretty sure that it gets us out of bed, pays the bills, makes us feel responsible, and keeps us away from daytime TV....

Love and Work in the Shadow of the Reformation

This chapter shows the latter day ramifications of clinging to the Protestant Work Ethic. It explores how workers cooperatives talk about employment, and looks at the fixation on craftsmanship.

After Work

This chapter looks at the breakdown of the labor market not as an economic crisis, but as a moral opportunity to rethink our relationship to work and to one another. It examines the work of John Maynard Keynes. It looks at the fear, among advocates of a universal basic income, of idleness.

Labor and the Essence of Man

This chapter describes the intellectual history of full employment. It shows how the left of today has inherited its preoccupation with labor from Hegel. It shows how Americans continue to cling to the Protestant Work Ethic.

The Family Assistance Plan and the End of Work

This chapter describes the US Congress’s attempts to pass a universal basic income scheme in 1970. It details the work of Nixon Administration operatives, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, to accomplish this effort. It describes the sociological experiments that proved that decoupling income from work actually had a positive effect.

Coda

Can love survive the end of work? I’ve been asking that question all along. I guess I’ve been asking whether love can replace work — whether socially beneficial labor, the love of our neighbors, can replace socially necessary labor as the criterion we use in calculating the distribution of income and the development of character....