One of the images we have of life under communism is endless bureaucracy, a succession of people doing nothing useful, just shuffling paper from one office to the next.

That’s them, but surely the competitive engine that drives capitalism makes us immune from such waste.

Maybe not!

That’s according to David Graeber. David was an anthropologist by training who tragically is no longer with us, however he left an outstanding legacy most easily seen in his two signature books, Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011) and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018).

This video dates from 2015, recorded after David’s original article about BS jobs was published in 2013 in the radical magazine, Strike. The article was titled On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs and proved such a hit it was translated into 12 languages.

The later book Bullshit Jobs elaborated and expanded on the original article.

David says in this interview the genesis of his idea developed out of a forecast made by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s where he predicted that in 100 years, we’d need only work 15 hours a week because technology would do most jobs for us.

As David summarises, paid work would have become a relatively unimportant part of our lives.

Well, as we know, that prediction is way off. But interestingly in the interview, David says if we’d kept the same economy-wide jobs profile as the 1930s, we would be enjoying the lifestyle as envisaged by Keynes.

The difference is not – as we might suspect – in the growth of the service industries, rather by what David calls the administrative / clerical / supervisory sector. In other words, white-collar jobs, all the jobs in middle-management where “people watch people.”

In the interview, he talks about telemarketers and corporate lawyers as examples of unnecessary jobs, however he does offer a fuller explanation in the book where he categorises five types of BS jobs:

•    flunkies
•    goons
•    duct tapers
•    box tickers
•    taskmasters.

While David’s argument has been criticised for exaggerating the extent of meaningless office work in the modern economy, it gives us reason to think long and hard about our job and whether we find it truly fulfilling and if it gives us the purpose that should be central to every part of our lives.

If not, then it’s time to start looking for something that’s not BS.