One day past Labor Day, some quick thoughts on why Americans work so much:

-We have the idea that hard work is a primary reason that people get ahead.

-We work because we need money. Many (not all) make enough to subsist even as the median income has been stagnant in recent years and working multiple low-wage jobs is seen as a badge of courage. Then, the money can be used to consume or buy the things we need to have to be up-to-date people (these days, a smartphone, flat-screen television, Internet access, etc.) or to assert our social standing. Or, we may buy things just because we like having a lot of things and we enjoy shopping and acquiring. Plus, much of our economy depends on consumer spending so people without jobs and money leads to some big issues for many economic sectors.

-We work because some like their jobs and want to use their skills and use their time doing something important or productive.

-We work to have an identity. No work = not being productive or not contributing to society. Either work or parenting (with a tentative guess that the first is ascending and the second descending) is the primary task of the adult life.

-We work to bank vacation days that we don’t use to the full extent.

Granted, I was thinking of this after teaching an Introduction to Sociology class the basics of Karl Marx’s observations about society. I paraphrased this quote from The German Ideology (pg. 12-13):

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

If we weren’t in this particular social economic system, how might work be organized differently to take advantage of people’s interest in creativity and production? How much of work today is freeing and leads to improvement of communities and the self?