Our reverence for slogging our guts out demeans us all, says Ruairi Creaney
“Hard work,” we’re often told, is a positive thing in and of itself, regardless of its social effects or the impact it has on the individual worker.
The term, employed in the rhetoric of both the left and the right, is rarely challenged and forms much of what is viewed as “common sense.” Hard work is seen as a virtue, a service to the nation and an ideal to aspire to.
Yet, when we are honest with ourselves, most of us hate work. It’s why Mondays are grim and Fridays are awesome. It’s why we spend most of our week days watching the clock in eager anticipation of 5 o’clock, all the time wishing our lives away. The person who claims to enjoy “hard work” is either a liar or intensely boring.
A recent Gallup poll found that, across the globe, only 13 per cent of people actually like going to work. This is unsurprising, given that work for most people under capitalism is often low-paid, unrewarding, stressful, degrading and tedious.
There is nothing noble about coming home from work mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. Neglecting your friends and family in favour of helping your boss make more profits is not virtuous.
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The capitalist work ethic is often used as a vicious weapon of class warfare. It dehumanises us and commodifies our very being. We are not seen as individuals with aspirations and interests — we are mere beasts of burden, with the sole life purpose of “working hard.”
Our lives should not be defined merely by productivity nor should we have to justify our existence by proving to others our ability and willingness to “work hard.”
Human progress is about overcoming the need for human toil as much as is practicable, and this is a case the left needs to make.
As the great Scottish trade unionist Jimmy Reid once quipped: “A rat race is for rats. We are not rats. We are human beings.”
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