Spiritual Contamination
From After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time (2023) by Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek:
In the early 1900s, sociologist Thorstein Veblen delineated the existence of a ‘leisure class’ whose class status was, in no small part, expressed by their ability to withdraw from work.
Sounds nice. That’s what I’d do.
The aristocrats from the feudal era had also been able to separate themselves from the daily grind, and many from the new capitalist classes followed in this tradition. Whereas the lower classes — quite literally the working classes — were forced to work in order to survive, the upper classes were able to extract themselves from the ‘spiritual contamination’ of work. Instead they signified their social status through expressions of idleness, frivolity, and consumption.
In other words, it used to be fashionable to be “idle rich.” Maybe some people even aspired to it.
It’s bizarre how today’s rich do everything they can to avoid being seen as idle. They launch “brands,” lie to magazines about their impossible daily schedules, monopolise public discourse, claim to have the answers, run for president. Yawn. What a bunch of strivers.
Maybe liberal guilt or survivor guilt is at the bottom of it: “I know you have to bust your hump to stay alive; I’m sorry for that but even here at the top of the tree, we work hard too.”
Or perhaps it’s indicative of the total dominance of the work ethic.
Either way: fuck ’em. Stay at the bottom of the tree and work less anyway. Don’t aspire to riches, especially if it means hard work when you get there.
Don’t get your hands or spirits dirty if you don’t have to. Idleness and frivolity are the order of the moment.
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About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk
After Work is a great book, I would definitely recommend it.
I am reading Work Capitalism Economics Resistance by Crimethinc at the moment and it is very good as well.
Great recommendations. Thanks. I just finished After Work. Planning to review it in NE17. I should send Nick and Helen our back issues really as well.
I’m also adding “After Work” and “Work Capitalism Economics Resistance” to my reading list
After Work is pretty good. Some of the solutions they eventually land on aren’t as helpful as they seem to think they are. But there are some excellent thought experiments in there and some really strong historic research.