Mythology of Work

When viewed from the ground, corporate rationality appears highly dysfunctional, disorganized, wasteful, incoherent and grossly inefficient - even anti-social. Planet of Work argues that this is because it is primarily designed to shore-up class domination rather than facilitate the achievement of wider social needs and workable democratic outcomes. Managers don't 'co-ordinate' but manage simply for the sake of it. Jobs feel painfully self-referential, frequently regulated in a way that strangely impedes getting the job done well. Multinational firms - in say the music industry - are considered more of an obstruction to innovative trends rather than an instigator of them. Large businesses spend millions of pounds on Corporate Social Responsibility programmes that no one really believes, not even those who design them. To make matters worse, because the compulsive injunction to work has become almost entirely detached from socially necessary goals (making it more of a pointless ritual than a necessity) it is experienced not only as highly dysfunctional but also profoundly meaningless. This book unpacks these observations by beginning with neoliberalism itself. The central point of this book is this: today's mode of capitalist hegemony could never reproduce itself on its own terms. It relies upon something beyond and extraneous to its own principles - co-operation, community resilience and workplace solidarity. Therein lies the radical potential for subversion peculiar to our current predicament.