Book Notes: Work Without the Worker by Phil Jones

Work Without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism by Phil Jones describes the transformation of the concept of work in neoliberal times. Microwork, gig work, Uber, Fiver, remote work, offshoring, and outsourcing are robbing many of us of stable careers and plunging us into badly paid, uncertain, unreliable gigs.

This is a very important subject, and Jones describes the phenomenon well. There are even a couple of interesting turns of phrase that he comes up with. He says, for instance, that microwork is increasingly gamified, and as a result, in order to get paid for the work he already performed, a worker has to gain bonus points and reach competency levels. As a result, Jones says, what used to be a wage becomes a wager. That is well-said and very true.

Still, the book is mostly a wasted opportunity. Jones describes the situation carefully and the description is good and useful. But every time he tries to analyze what he observed, he runs into a huge obstacle. Jones is very left-wing. He can’t allow himself to see how his own ideology is at the root of the destruction of work, security, safety, and welfare. Whenever time comes to draw conclusions on the basis of the information he gathered, Jones veers off into empty sloganeering. This is a short book, yet he somehow manages to recite every lefty slogan in existence. Climate change, BLM, defund the police, poor persecuted Palestinians, white ethnonationalists, defund ICE, fascist Trump, evil white men, poor persecuted gang members, racism, sexism, something-phobia.

In the absence of ideas of his own, Jones attacks Yarvin and Land. It’s become the favorite pastime of the intellectually impoverished left to express contempt for Yarvin whom they never even attempted to read. The problem is, Jones is a prisoner of such a rigid ideology that he can’t come up with any counterargument. All he does is the standard leftist practice of name-calling. Proto-fascist! Ethno-Nazi! But we’ve heard all this so often that it lost all power to make an impression. The only unexpected thing here was that Jones placed Narendra Modi on the list of proto-fascists. Why Modi had to be rubbished when really evil politicians weren’t even mentioned is a mystery.

Jones’s solution to the problem of job scarcity? Brace yourselves because this one is a doozy.

“A world where a hundred sexes bloom.”  Because right now we are experiencing “gender scarcity.” Meaning, there are not enough genders.

By all means, let’s criticize Yarvin’s thought but it’s best to leave people who believe there are too few genders out of a task so arduous for their overstrained brains.

The rest of Jones’s prescriptions include embracing some form of communism, making sure men do dishes as often as women, and assigning jobs collectively.

Leftism, ladies and gentlemen. A place where any semblance of thought goes to die a sad and gruesome death.