No More Work, James Livingston
No More Work, James Livingston
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No More Work
Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea

Author: James Livingston

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 3 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/28/2016

Synopsis

For centuries we’ve believed that work was where you learned discipline, initiative, honesty, self-reliance—in a word, character. A job was also, and not incidentally, the source of your income: if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat, or else you were stealing from someone. If only you worked hard, you could earn your way and maybe even make something of yourself.In recent decades, through everyday experience, these beliefs have proven spectacularly false. In this book, James Livingston explains how and why Americans still cling to work as a solution rather than a problem—why it is that both liberals and conservatives announce that “full employment” is their goal when job creation is no longer a feasible solution for any problem, moral or economic. The result is a witty, stirring denunciation of the ways we think about why we labor, exhorting us to imagine a new way of finding meaning, character, and sustenance beyond our workaday world—and showing us that we can afford to leave that world behind.

About James Livingston

James Livingston, PhD, is a professor of history at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He is the author of Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism; Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850–1940; Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American History; The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century; and Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul.

About Grover Gardner

Alexander Adams is an award-winning audiobook narrator. He is best known for his reading of the novelization of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. He has also narrated numerous books by Jonathan Kellerman and John Grisham.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Adam on July 18, 2017

This was a captivating, short read. The subtitle is unfortunate, because it sounds like he is opposed to people making a living, but the book is actually advocating for a universal basic income. The author is a professor of economic history, and he argues that our economic issues are largely because......more

Goodreads review by Anthony on November 30, 2016

Why do you work? Some work to pay the bills, others find work meaningful and fulfilling. What would you do if you didn't have to work? Would you spend more time with your family? Would you become a writer or a musician? Or would you watch TV all day? What will you do when your job is automated by a......more

Goodreads review by Alicia on November 17, 2017

I imagined that I'd like this book, since I generally support the idea of a universal basic income. The idea of "full employment" has run its course as we live in a world where work is taken over by machines, and those who produce writing, art, music, etc., are often not compensated. For the most pa......more

Quotes

“No More Work is, wonderfully, at once a rude book and a kind one. Livingston is bracingly impolite about the cult of capitalistic productivity, all in the service of the happiness and pleasure that could be ours if we demanded less toil from ourselves and more justice from our society.” Benjamin Kunkel, author of Utopia or Bust

“James Livingston’s manifesto answers the question as to why Americans have such a ‘fetish’ with the idea of full employment and what happens when work in the United States disappears. Given the current debates about America’s economic status, modern American life, and dependence on Third World labor, Livingston’s new political theory poses a new self-understanding for Americans in an era of long-term unemployment.” Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

“Here we are treated to exhilarating leaps of the historical imagination—from the Bible to Daniel Bell—cushioned by a sensibility that is as radical as reality itself. ” Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center

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