Is passionate work a neoliberal delusion?

April 25, 2015 1:44 PM

Angela McRobbie on the rise of the creative economy. Why are young people attracted to creative jobs with low pay, and how does this benefit the neoliberal project?
posted by winterportage (36 comments total)

I saw a great quote attributed to Mike Rowe: "Don't follow passion, follow opportunity."
posted by Nevin at 2:27 PM on April 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

See also: In the Name of Love, by Miya Tokumitsu.

There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation, but to the devaluation of actual work, including the very work it pretends to elevate — and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers.

Superficially, DWYL is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? Who is the audience for this dictum? Who is not?

By keeping us focused on ourselves and our individual happiness, DWYL distracts us from the working conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all who labor, whether or not they love it. It is the secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment. According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation, but an act of self-love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.

posted by wuwei at 2:28 PM on April 25, 2015 [64 favorites]

An economy where people aspire to do what they love and earn a moderate amount of money for it—instead of working overtime in high-status high-stress jobs to earn a seven-figure salary—sounds more like a social democratic ideal than a neoliberal one. (Assuming the negative connotation of "neoliberal," given the author and audience.)

The article does acknowledge this possibility:

Or might new forms of organisation emerge which support the idea of welfare and social protection inside precarious creative work? Or might it be the case that creative labour can be put to social use—for example in pioneering radical social enterprises rather than simply going along with the idea of the ‘social business model’?

Combine the push towards creative work with a basic income guarantee (since not everyone is equally creative and unskilled jobs are increasingly being done by robots), and you have a promising alternative to our current economy.
posted by Rangi at 2:32 PM on April 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

It seems to me that "creative work" has always involved some sort of trade-off. The great artists always relied on patrons (who were typically illiberal in outlook).
posted by Nevin at 2:56 PM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation, but to the devaluation of actual work, including the very work it pretends to elevate — and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers.

I don't know about that. Do respect what you love would be a more instructive piece of advice, as in, don't work for free. Then it is desperation driving you, not love for your job.

This could be solved by teaching younger generations concepts such as self-respect, cooperation with your so-called competition, negotiation skills, and how to lobby governments not to allow robber barons to screw you over by making billions and then paying you pittance.

We live in a world that values paper crowns: people get tricked into thinking they need to make the resume sound enviable to the little people back home. People get tricked into keeping how they are struggling and being exploited and abused to themselves so they can pretend everything is great and people won't pity them. People get tricked into pitying other people to delude themselves into thinking that's how you can ignore how bad you have it.

So, as usual, it is more complicated than that. Do what you want and need to do, but be prepared to fight to be respected and make sure others get respect, too.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 2:59 PM on April 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am constantly encountering jobs that I hadn't known even existed, and that are not at all glamorous but are entirely necessary. No one goes to art school hoping to be a regional rep for an equipment company, but it pays the bills. I suspect many of the drifting young people looking for meaningful work were like myself at that age, totally unaware of most kinds of work and unsure of how to get started.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:01 PM on April 25, 2015 [20 favorites]

Why? Because our parents didn't, and they all look fucking miserable.

If capitalism demands you spend most of your waking life doing SOMETHING for money, it may as well be something that doesn't make you want to kill yourself.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:23 PM on April 25, 2015 [26 favorites]

The heavy reliance on Foucault is telling, I think. This seems very long on assertion about the way society is, and very short on concrete examples, or evidence to support those claims. The general and the particular are made to stand in for each other in a way that, for me, seems to potentially echo some of the less respectable aspects of Foucault's work.

While I have considerable sympathy for Professor McRobbie's concerns, and I think there is an essentially sound argument about how late-stage capitalism and consumerism create a auto-exploiting proletariat, this is the kind of academic writing that makes me glad that I got out of academia.
posted by howfar at 3:31 PM on April 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

Peedee knows the score.
posted by JHarris at 3:34 PM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Is this empirically the case? The percentage of undergraduates majoring in business is very high -- maybe at an all time high? The kids I know (and know of) pursuing "creative" paths very much seem biased to the creative jobs that have stock option and big Hollywood credit lottery tickets attached.
posted by MattD at 3:45 PM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time.

I imagine that's only true for a pretty small portion of the workforce. That is, the only people in a position to actively wrestle with the question "should I do what I love, or just go for the best paying job" are already people in pretty privileged positions. Nobody gets a job at McDonald's thinking "I'm following my bliss!"
posted by yoink at 4:00 PM on April 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

Definitely some interesting ideas here but the article isn't too helpful at digesting them.

I like the critique of entrepreneurialism. The flip side of venerating the entrepreneur is denigrating anyone who is unwilling (or unable) to stake their entire economic future on an extremely risky premise. It's interesting to view the rise of the (precarious) creative class as connected to the end of manufacturing in most western countries. The government is no longer going to encourage steady lifetime employment in unionized manufacturing jobs (through trade policy, etc...) so instead of, I don't know, engaging in dignified burly manual labor, citizens are now supposed to go entrepreneur themselves into comfier self-actualizing work.

From another angle, the question comes down to Adam Smith versus David Graeber. I.e., do we work at the jobs we do because of the invisible hand, where the available jobs are shitty ones because that's what the market (and our current state of technology, etc...) demands? Or is the world covered in bullshit jobs because we've created a monstrous self-perpetuating system that wastes our time and siphons resources off for a few gazillionaires?

Clearly it's a bit of both, but how much? And from a practical standpoint, how can we create better jobs?
posted by ropeladder at 4:02 PM on April 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

But Citibank, you know what the best day of my life was? The day I realized that I could work a shitty part time job to cover my rent and my food, and the rest of my time could be my own.

posted by NoraReed at 4:08 PM on April 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

"'Her current research focuses on the 'new culture industry', particularly on the labour practices in the world of freelance, casualised creative work and micro-enterprises of creative labour such as fashion design, art-working, multi-media, curating and arts administration." Wikipedia entry.
Administration is administration, be it in long haul trucking or arts. People who push paper can pretend they're working in the arts, just like every production accountant I know insists he's in film.
posted by Ideefixe at 4:27 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

People who push paper can pretend they're working in the arts

Yeah, those poseurs negotiating venues, sourcing materials, dealing with audiences, engaging the community, finding sponsors, interviewing staff, writing press releases, managing budgets, clearing IP, clearing up after events...fuck them.
posted by howfar at 4:39 PM on April 25, 2015 [30 favorites]

If they're going to be working jobs with low pay anyway, why not go for creative ones?j
posted by happyroach at 5:12 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will note that every job I've ever seen where you were expected to work because you loved the field paid like absolute shit. So the reason you shouldn't work for the love of it is because in working for the love of it, you aren't working for money.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:43 PM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I don't know, I think some of the "creative" workforce is part of the invisible hand of the market. As we become consumers and businesses are competing for more eyeballs be it to sell a product or sell a service, there is a rise in what I'd call creative marketing. From trying to create bran "personalities" for consumes to relate to, to the need to compete on fields traditionally thought of as creative such as user experience design and new product design.

Granted, it might not be so simple. There was an earlier post about "pretend jobs", the thesis being people working what amount to imaginary jobs that don't produce anything. If that's the case, then I suppose it is possible that the act of people coming out of school with the idea of becoming a creative is causing these jobs to manifest. Which, actually really could be part of what's happening- creatives preach to the choir, who carry the message to their place of work; creating tasks that hadn't previously been done. Filling their own plates until they need a second to help. Which, of course then leads us to question the very nature of why we need jobs in the first place....
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:13 PM on April 25, 2015

DWYL is the ruling class telling you that they won't be creating any more jobs, so you better start monetizing that one thing you do that makes waking up in the morning worthwhile.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:47 PM on April 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

"Do What You Love" because nobody will pay you for anything else.

It serves the economic neoliberals only by reducing the number of unemployed people who are TOTALLY miserable. Then again, without creatives being totally miserable, movements opposing the Crap Economy lose a lot of valuable talent. (That could explain why Occupy was so damn stupid.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:16 PM on April 25, 2015

Yeah, I still don't understand the occupy hate that exists to this day. At the time, it was a pretty effective smear campaign. But look how it changed the conversation about wealth inequity. Something previously only talked about by leftists on places like metafilter. It's so popularized that the right has been trying to co-opt it. It's one thing to have bought into the directionless narrative back when it was happening, but now? That's just willfully blind.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 7:50 PM on April 25, 2015 [13 favorites]

Yeah, I still don't understand the occupy hate that exists to this day. At the time, it was a pretty effective smear campaign. But look how it changed the conversation about wealth inequity.

Occupy was both an inept failure and managed to place inequality firmly on the national agenda. The inept part means that the answer to that conversation undoubtedly will not include Occupy-style solutions, but just getting the topic into play was huge.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:11 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will note that every job I've ever seen where you were expected to work because you loved the field paid like absolute shit.

I will note that the one time I worked in a job in a field I loved, it ruined my love of the field completely. Never ask to see how the sausage is made.

And yeah, it paid relatively poorly too.
posted by primethyme at 9:36 PM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

From trying to create bran "personalities" for consumes to relate to,

I know those are both likely typos, but I love everything about this sentence.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:02 PM on April 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Is passionate work a neoliberal delusion?

Uh....

No?

If you really want to stick it to The Man the dispositif, get a soul sucking 9-5 that pays well. Because doing otherwise makes you a tool of the meat grinder, foolhardy individual you are.

This stuff seems more bullshitty than average. McRobbie doesn't even argue in favor of being handsomely compensated for long hours of creative work. She simply disapproves of other people working long hours of creative, work for entities/fields she disapproves of.

Tokumitsu tells us that our work's real value is in how well it keeps us grounded in the obligations to the welfare of our fellow laborers. Maybe one might find that a more noble motivation. But I think it probably less sustainable for the average person, and in the end, you're still working The Man. And basically for no other reason. I'd bet money this path turns more well meaning liberals into bitter Tea Partiers than not.

The worst thing about the arguments over the value of work is that such people cannot be relied on to make reasonable judgments for themselves. If they work for less than I approve of, they are obviously being hoodwinked, too foolish to see it themselves. Who will think of the young, creative people, willing and able to work long hours doing things they love?
posted by 2N2222 at 11:43 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

People who believe that Occupy failed are themselves failing to see the value of the connections that different people on the left made during Occupy. We're already starting to see people who were heavily involved in Occupy successfully running for municipal level office, for example. I mean it wasn't the revolution, it wasn't even May '68, but it accomplished a hell of a lot even if you just think of it as a big left networking meeting.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:51 AM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

If you think that work is all about supply and production, you're missing something.

A lot of labor is consumption. That is: a lot of people are working at something and taking the experience and status of that work as part of their remuneration. They may not be able to buy a yachts, but they love what they do.

As society gets richer, we should expect more people to do this. The old model was the rich trophy wife who runs a small, ineffective charity in her spare time. But now there are plenty of trophy husbands writing novels, blogging, making music, or teaching university students. Why should we be surprised that they take most of their pay in status and esteem rather than money? I mean, isn't that what we're all doing on Metafilter right now?
posted by anotherpanacea at 5:47 AM on April 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

I thought I was just getting a cheap fix of meaningless validation through the acquisition of favorites.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:44 AM on April 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

As society gets richer, we should expect more people to do this.

Which part of society is getting richer? I don't think it's the people for whom the DWYL message is largely aimed.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:59 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

These days, I feel like I'm trolling The System by having a public sector union job.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:34 AM on April 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

if that's trolling, may we all be trolls someday.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:47 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Which part of society is getting richer? I don't think it's the people for whom the DWYL message is largely aimed.

Really? My sense is that DWYL is aimed almost exusively at the children of the bourgeoisie; that is, it's a message aimed at the children of relative privilege. Poor and working class kids are pragmatic because they have to be; rich kids worry about passion because they think they'll be okay financially no matter what they do.
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:43 PM on April 26, 2015

We Are All Venture Capitalists Now
Jon Evans, TechCrunch

...Music, movies, books, and other arts have always been “tournament” industries, in which most success accrues to a minority of blockbuster hits, as described by a power law. For every billionaire J.K. Rowling, you find ten thousand frustrated unpublished novelists.
...

The great Nassim Taleb calls these kinds of tournament industries Extremistan, as opposed to Mediocristan. In Mediocristan, you work fixed hours for a fixed wage. In Extremistan, success is enormously lucrative, but failure is far more common … and, for artists, condemns you to a life of grinding poverty and/or working outside of your chosen field.
...

I’ve argued before that, because software is eating the world, “technology is slowly dragging us all, economically, away from Mediocristan and into Extremistan.” The power of software is such that it gives ever-smaller numbers of people ever-greater leverage. Meanwhile, much of yesterday’s rote Mediocristan work can and will be automated tomorrow.

As a result, our economies are moving (slowly, in fits and starts) to a power-law Extremistan future: one which features ever more entrepreneurs, ever more creative work, ever more self-employed contractors, ever more startup launches … and economics ever more like those of tournament industries such as startups and the arts.
...

...what’s needed is a strong safety net so that increasingly common individual losses/downturns aren’t irrevocably catastrophic, and a life spent in the long tail of the power-law curve is still a life morally worthy of great and wealthy nations.

Ironically, the largely libertarian Silicon Valley tech industry actually provides us with an excellent example of this. The Valley is deeply entrepreneurial, and its startup scene is pure Extremistan — but while most startups fail, most of their founders (especially engineers) know that they can easily fall back on the safety net of a full-time tech job.

What we need is some kind of safety net like that, writ larger; a kind of economic trampoline that gives everyone new chances, even if their last attempt to achieve their dreams failed ignominiously. I believe the ultimate answer is a universal basic income — and that sooner rather than later, technology (and world-eating software) will make the developed world wealthy enough to easily afford such a net.


[via @WardPlunet]

posted by Bron at 2:14 PM on April 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

How do we blue-collar Charles Saatchi? I imagine neoliberals asking each other. And, student debt. I think many people than we realise have existentially moved on from student debt and from paying student debt. Creative industry jobs are more attainable by lesser academically skilled people across the board. However, neoliberals could not account for the art market changing how goods are bought and sold. Most neoliberal projects turn out to be outdated in 20 years. I think the community college pledge by Obama is the best way to blunt neoliberalism by creating a debt-free generation of young workers for the first time in over 20 years.
posted by parmanparman at 3:59 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

A raise? You're lucky I gave you a job. I got ten people waiting to do your job for the same wage. Now shut up and get back to work before I fire you.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:56 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Combine the push towards creative work with a basic income guarantee...

I believe the ultimate answer is a universal basic income...

if you're in the UK, vote green! which 'the young people are attracted to': "Amongst under 25s it shows voting intentions of CON 22%, LAB 36%, LDEM 5%, UKIP 12%, GRN 19% (tabs). Note that Green score, in third place on 19% but close behind the Tories in second." :P
posted by kliuless at 2:56 PM on May 1, 2015