[This history of neoliberalism focuses on how this school of
thought and governance repurposed the Protestant work ethic to serve
the wealthiest one percent.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

HIJACKED: HOW NEOLIBERALISM TURNED THE WORK ETHIC AGAINST WORKERS AND
HOW WORKERS CAN TAKE IT BACK  
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Magdalene D’Silva
December 11, 2023
LSE Review of Books blog,
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_ This history of neoliberalism focuses on how this school of thought
and governance repurposed the Protestant work ethic to serve the
wealthiest one percent. _

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_Hijacked
How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How
Workers Can Take It Back_
Elizabeth Anderson
Cambridge University Press
ISBN-13: ? 978-1009275439

Elizabeth Anderson’s excellent 2023 book _Hijacked_
[[link removed]] was
published the same month Australian multi-millionaire Tim Gurner
[[link removed]] said:

“Unemployment has to jump … we need to see pain … Employees feel
the employer is extremely lucky to have them … We’ve gotta kill
that attitude…”

America’s Senator Bernie Sanders
[[link removed]] rebuked Gurner’s
diatribe as “disgusting. It’s hard to believe that you have that
kind of mentality among the ruling class in the year 2023.”

Ironically, Gurner’s comments favouring
employees’ objectification
[[link removed]] and employer coercive control
[[link removed]] show
just what _Hijacked_ says is: [T]he ascendance of the conservative
work ethic… (which) tells workers … they owe their employers
relentless toil and unquestioning obedience under whatever harsh
conditions their employer chooses …”(xii).

Indeed, “neoliberalism is the descendant of this harsh version of
the work ethic … [i]t entrenches the commodification of labor …
people have no alternative but to submit to the arbitrary government
of employers to survive.” (xii).

Anderson defines neoliberalism as an ideology favouring market
orderings over state regulation (xii) to maximise the wealth and power
of capital relative to labour (272) where the
so-called “de-regulation” of labour and other markets doesn’t
liberate ordinary people from the state; it transfers state regulatory
authority to the most powerful, dominant firms in each market (xii).

_Hijacked_ follows Anderson’s prior writing
[[link removed]] on
neoliberalism’s replacement of democratically elected public
government by the state, with unelected private government by
employers. Like other work ethic critiques
[[link removed]], _Hijacked_ explains
how Puritan theologians behind the work ethic dismissed feelings with
contempt for emotional styles of faith worship (3).

The original work ethic proselytised utilitarianism (19) but with
inherent contradictions between progressive and conservative ideals
(14). Early conservative work ethic advocates included Joseph
Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Malthus and Edmund Burke (Chapters 2
and 3) who aligned with the new capitalist, manager entrepreneur
classes and “lazy landlords, speculators and predatory
capitalists” (65) who claimed _they _exemplified the work ethic
(127).

The work ethic split into conservative and progressive versions which
Anderson distinguishes by class-based power relations, rather than
competitive markets, as conservatives “favour government by and for
property owners, assign different duties to employers and employees,
rich and poor” (while expecting) “workers to submit to despotic
employer authority” (and) “regard poverty as a sign of bad
character … poor workers as morally inferior” (xv).

Progressives like Adam Smith (130-135) supported “democracy and
worker self-government. They oppose class-based duties … and reject
stigmatization of poverty” (xvi). Anderson
traces _this “_progressive” work ethic to classical liberals
like John Locke (Chapter 2), Adam Smith (132-135), John Stuart Mill
(Chapter 6) _and _progressive, socialist
[[link removed]] thinkers like Karl Marx
(Chapter 7) who stressed how paid work should not alienate workers
“from their essence or species-being…” (209) but express their
individuality, as “[t]he distinctively human essence is to freely
shape oneself…” (209).

Furthermore, Locke “condemned the idle predatory rich as well as
able-bodied beggars” (65). Marx applied Mill’s emphasis on the
importance of individuality, which Anderson links to the Puritan idea
that our vocation must match our individual talents and interests
(206) whatever our economic class.

Yet our worthiness now had to be proved (to God) by ‘work’ that
entailed: disciplining drudgery (9), slavery (10, 259), racism
(97-99), exploitative maltreatment of poor people (106) and
industrious productivity (52) which became conspicuously competitive,
luxury consumption (170).

Conservatives (Chapters 3, 4) secularised these ideas so the
“upper-class targets of the Puritan critique hijacked the work ethic
… into an instrument of class warfare against workers. Now only
workers were held to its demands … the busy schemers who … extract
value from others cast themselves as heroes of the work ethic, the
poor as the only scoundrels” (65).

Anderson doesn’t idolise Locke, Smith, J. S. Mill and other early
progressive work ethic advocates like Ricardo (Chapter 5) by
highlighting harsh contradictions in their views. For example, within
Locke’s pro-worker agenda were draconian measures for poor children
(61) such that Anderson says Locke’s harsh policies for those he
called the idle poor, contain “the seeds of the ultimate hijacking
of the work ethic by capital owners” (25).

Anderson criticises the perversion and reversal of the work ethic’s
originally progressive, classical liberal aspirations “and successor
traditions on the left” (xviii). Her scrutiny of _both_ left and
right-wing support of the neoliberal conservative work ethic
complements other critiques of the left-wing origins of neoliberal
markets [[link removed]]. Anderson also
says the conservative work ethic arose in a period of rapidly rising
productivity and stagnant wages, “when market discipline was
reserved for workers, not the rich” (108).

Yet it was the progressive work ethic that culminated in social
democracy throughout Western Europe by promoting the “freedom,
dignity and welfare of each” (242). Marx was so influenced by the
progressive work ethic espoused by classical liberals, his most
developed work on economic theory apparently quotes Adam Smith
copiously and admiringly (226). Anderson thus contends that criticism
of social democracy as a radical break from classical liberalism –
is a myth, as ideas like social insurance “developed within the
classical liberal tradition” (227).

However, “Cold War ideology represented social democracy as … a
slippery slope to totalitarianism … the title of Friederich
Hayek’s … _Road to Serfdom_, says it all” (226).

Social democracy declined worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s when
neoliberalism arose and the conservative work ethic returned with the
elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (Chapter 9). Social
democratic centre-left parties like the US Democrats and the UK’s
Labour Party (293) didn’t counter neoliberalism’s conservative
work ethic, as “the demographics of these parties shifted… from
the working class to the professional managerial class” (257),
seduced by meritocracy ideology in a competitive race for (their own)
superior status (257). Anderson’s observation complements Elizabeth
Humphry’s
[[link removed]] research
on how Australia’s Labor Party and labour union movement introduced
vanguard neoliberalism to Australia against workers, in the 1980s.

Anderson recognises the success of some neoliberal policies in the
US’s economic stagnation in the 1970s, like trucking deregulation,
emissions reduction trade schemes and international trade
liberalisation (285-287). However, she argues the focus on efficiency
and aggregate growth neglected workers’ conditions and plight as
neoliberal work (for welfare) policies degrade people’s autonomy and
capabilities because “the most important product of our economic
system is ourselves” (288).

_Hijacked’s_ last chapter recommends social democracy renewal and
updating the progressive work ethic “to ensure … every person …
has the resources and opportunities to develop … their talents … 
engage with others on terms of trust, sympathy and genuine
cooperation” (298). Employees could be empowered through worker
cooperatives [[link removed]] (297).

A gap in _Hijacked’s _analysis is a lack of clear definition
of “work.” Anderson doesn’t  distinguish
between “employment” in a “job,” and rich elites’
voluntary, symbolic “duties,”
[[link removed].] like
those of Britain’s “working royals”
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“work”.

Another dilemma is whether economic class power struggles can change
peacefully, noting Peter Turchin
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we’re facing ‘end times’
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political disintegration because competing elites won’t relinquish
power.

Nevertheless,_ Hijacked_ is compelling reading for everyone on the
left and the right who needs employment in a paid job to survive, so
today’s neoliberal conservative work ethic no longer gaslights
[[link removed]] us
to believe our dignity demands our exploitation.

_This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the
LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and
Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if
you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link.
This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review
of Books._

Magdalene L. D’Silva BA/LLB (Tas), GCLP (Tas), LLM (Syd), MA (Lond),
is a former university law academic and insurance defence solicitor in
Australia. Her current writing interests are: the legal profession,
neoliberal political-economy and critical psychiatry.

* Neoliberalism
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* the work ethic
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* History of Ideas
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* Labor
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