Bill Mitchell — Bullshit jobs – the essence of capitalist control and realisation

... in the last few days I have done a few media interviews (radio) on an article that appeared in the local Fairfax press, but was originally published in the Strike! magazine as – On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by LSE anthropologist, David Graeber. The title in the local article had changed to “nonsense jobs” – a sign of the conservatism of our press. The interviews I did were interesting because the article brings together a number of strands that further expose the weakness of the economic theory taught to students in most universities. That is much more interesting to write about here than the tawdry realities of Australian politics at present which can be described as indecent ignorance.



David Graeber article seeks to investigate why the 1930 prediction by John John Maynard Keynes that by the Year 2000, “technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week” has not materialised.

He might have just concluded – Capitalism and realisation of surplus value.....

Does he really answer his basic question – to explain why we are not all working within the technological limits – that is much less hours? He clearly doesn’t provide a good explanation despite the Op Ed being much longer than most. 

To really answer the question and to understand why neo-liberalism has become dominant we have to ground the explanation in the dynamics of the capitalist system, which is why most of the competitive neo-classical theory fails. The latter doesn’t differentiate between the unique characteristics of production systems and thus ignores key dynamics, which yield explanatory capacity.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Bullshit jobs – the essence of capitalist control and realisation
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia