Book Review

If workplace technology brought hopes of a shorter working week and more time for leisure and social fulfillment, such hopes have long since been dashed. Juliet Schor's The Overworked American (1991), has shown that those in full-time employment were working increasingly long hours, a trend experienced beyond the USA. (Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: the Unexpected Decline in Leisure, Basic Books, New York, 1991.) More recently, attention has been drawn to the results of employers' demands for 'flexibility': a widening gap between the 'work rich' and the 'work poor'. While the latter battle against poverty and uncertainty, the former are left with less time to taste life outside of work. (Ernest Healy, 'The Shift to Long Working Hours: a Social and Political Crisis in the Making,' People and Place, vol. 8, no. 1, 2000, pp. 38-50.)	1
Such dramatic shifts could not have taken place without a strong culture that upholds the primary value of work, even when performed under the most appalling conditions. Sharon Beder's latest book is an invaluable contribution to plotting that process of enculturation.	2
This extremely thorough history of the work ethic takes us through the ideological strata that have laid the foundations for present work relations and attitudes to work, as well as the many strategies employed to supplement or enhance the work ethic. Among early shifts was reconceptualisation of work—once thought of primarily in terms of being essential for survival—so that it came to be seen as a virtue, with strong intonations of goodness. Conversely, unemployment came to be seen as a vice, an attitude that lingers to this day and is buttressed at various institutional points.	3
Compounding the equation of work—and later wealth—with goodness was the legitimation of inequality. Instead of the maldistribution of resources being seen as inherently unjust, it was seen as a cause for acclaim of the wealthy and proof of unworthiness in the poor. Such self-fulfilling prophesies gave way to their own warped logic, with notions that wealth, even excessive wealth, was natural reward for hard work. Of course, those who worked hardest had no call on the wealth they produced for others, but work they did, either because their needs were so pressing or, more paramount at other times, because work was linked so strongly with worthiness and the promise of rewards.	4
While the work ethic was promoted by the church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, it was later to be secularised and came to have a dynamic of its own. It may no longer have been tied to religion but it was embraced with a religious zeal. Over different stages of capitalism the approaches adopted towards work have been many, even if singular in their goal. Coercion and persuasion of workers, as well as blaming and marginalising those without work have all been used and continue to be used, but fostering of the work ethic in a number of forms has been a staple of the strategies employed to maximise output from workers. Towards this end, the fostering of worker identity and corporate loyalty have played major roles, each looked at thoroughly by Beder.	5
Of course, the identity which comes from work has largely been replaced by identities which come from product association. Supposedly, the running shoes we wear and the cars we drive give us the sense we have of ourselves and the range of options for how we want the world to perceive us. This works largely through advertising and the celebration of commodities which so characterises our modern world. If product-identity has taken over, to some significant degree, from the sense of identity given to us by our occupation, it has only escalated our sense of needing to work and work hard, as work becomes more intricately linked with the riotous rush for goods to label us as who we want to be. It seems that, as our spare time dissipates and with it our chance of finding and expressing ourselves through other means and other activities, there is more reliance on products and therefore on work. The vicious circle is thus set in motion. Meanwhile, an array of other factors complement the work ethic: attacks on welfare and welfare recipients; stigmatisation and scapegoating of the unemployed; and the corporatisation of universities, with education geared around plans for workforces. All these come under Beder's microscope and are structured to support her compelling argument, that the quality of life has been a victim of the capitalist imperatives of work and production.	6
The discussion within the book, then, takes on more than the work ethic. It is a book which presents once again the fundamental questions of the relationship between happiness and materialism. While abject poverty is clearly linked to misery, it is not proven that material riches enhance happiness, though a sense of community and adequate community resources may. Ironically, some of us may be working overtime to ensure adequate health cover, a good education for our children and other services which, arguably, would be our right in a society less directed towards profits and more concerned with universal needs. And while there is so much overtime worked, others go without work at all. If this makes no sense socially, it fits well into an economic model that determines that it is more economical and more convenient to have a few workers work excessive hours. There is less training, less provision of space and services and employers can cut back as required, as with casual work. It does not make for a happier society but that has seldom been high on the priority list, as Selling the Work Ethic shows all too clearly.	7
Not that all this is without challenge, of course. Rather it is simply that the challenge to the work ethic and its underpinnings has not been given the strident voice and the level of efficacy which might yet set it as a key labour issue. Hopefully it will come to such prominence. Certainly, this fine book is an important step in that direction.	8
University of Wollongong WENDY VARNEY

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