Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe is her most recent published book, coming out in 2021 amid the pandemic. Here are the thoughts that I had while reading this book. It is broken down into chapters, which are listed in bold. In some chapters, I had a lot to share while in some I had no thoughts.

Work Won’t Love You Back

Neoliberalism is what emerged as a response to the crisis of postwar capitalism. This was after WW2 when the Great Depression hit, and the Ford Compromise (started by Henry Ford) was made where 8-hour, five-day work weeks were introduced. Neoliberalism is also, “an ideology of generating market relations through social engineering” (13, Introduction). The book brings up that work is trying to make us love it. A naive reader could retort with, “Why is that a bad thing?” The book acknowledges that, if many Americans must have this work-life immersion and handle business calls at the dinner table and in bed, then why would it be bad for them to love their job, especially because they are so involved with it?

Well, the book brings up three points:

• The reality of being fired from your work family
• The increased effort you put in doesn’t change the respected outcome (salary)
• Americans are getting more depressed rather than happier with their life satisfaction.

It makes me wonder, if I were getting paid to write these short plays or these film reviews, would it corrupt my work? Not in means of the value of it, but what does it mean in my mind? Does it mean that I would have to find another hobby?

Nuclear Fallout: The Family

This chapter describes how a woman’s first exploitation of labor-love is within the home and in the family. She is expected, with a smile, to cook, clean, and teach her children how to read and talk while also showing empathy for others. Therefore, it’s not hard to understand how women may undervalue their place in the corporate world since they are expected to understand that some hard work doesn’t have compensation. And must be done with a smile to please society’s eyes if it’s either being a good housewife or a good employee.

The family also acts as the oil that makes the gears turn within capitalism. A shortage of babies means a shortage of future-generation employees. This is why we’re starting to see better work-life balances between families and employers. Maybe corporations should engage with Wages for Housework.

The witch trials are brought up as well. Magic, back then, was said to be, “an illicit form of power and an instrument to obtain what one wanted without work, that is, a refusal of work in action (12, Nuclear Fallout: The Family).” Women who were usually accused of witchcraft were women who refused to marry, women who owned little property, and women who got abortions. The labor of a woman always depended on her man. And her ability to carry a child and do house chores, whether with a reward to herself or not. Women weren’t treated seriously by employees since it seemed that they were using work to amuse themselves rather than the chores that they were usually left with by their husbands. Therefore, they were often paid less. 

Marriage is seen as an economic advantage since it usually promotes reproduction which will boost the economy with more people working in future generations. Therefore, gay marriage can be seen as an economic disadvantage.

Currently, people are getting married later and having kids even later. This could be seen as a form of resistance against neoliberalism and capitalism. But this chapter positions a Universal Basic Income or Wages for Housework as the solution for single moms and even moms who pay other moms to do their housework. It states that 60% of people are living on money they didn’t work to earn, an inheritance. Therefore, why not apply that same common sense to giving a universal payment to all households that didn’t work for it as well?

Just Like One of the Family: Domestic Work

This is just an extension of the last chapter for household chores done by people of nonfamilial connections.

Service with a Smile: Retail

An interesting anecdote here is that Walmart chose to rename its slogan to: Our People Make the Difference after the workers of Walmart went on strike instead of increasing their pay. A lot of other retail places started implementing this family mentality within their work as well. 

Suffer for the Cause: Non-Profits

“As long as the women’s desire for education was “rooted in virtue and not in ambition,” as Kessler-Harris wrote, they could even go to business school.” This is interesting since it seems that this is how women artists are also criticized if there is no deeper message behind their art besides feminism. It reminds me of the 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

It seems that this book’s main message is to never do work for free. It makes me wonder about the background of this author and if she’s ever had to work with an un-worthy salary, but forced to participate anyway.

My Studio Is the World: Art

The book makes me understand why art is one of the least important commodities or assets that someone in society might have (fashion curating, art curating) and it’s that you can’t make multiple streams of income from an art piece. It’s either the ownership of it or even the selling/licensing of it. Because of pirating, the revenue from selling/licensing is even smaller. With real estate, you make money based on how long someone has your property- giving you multiple payments. With stocks, you make money off of that business’ performance throughout a given amount of time. Art does not change as time goes on, hence why there is no payment given (except residuals) after it is licensed or sold.

It is an interesting statistic that more artists are coming out of these art schools than those who will make a living from art. The audience for art is growing, but why are not the people making a living from it? Perhaps it is because we are growing into a more corporate-based society where people want to free themselves from. Art could be a form of resistance to this, and most artists are liberal and left-wing as well. 

It’s important to find cheap ways to create and produce films to counteract the cheap ways it is to access these films. While it would be great to find these pirating websites, the internet lives on forever and there’s no way to fully regulate it. Therefore, maybe it’s time to figure out how to make it less expensive to create a movie. 

Hoping for Work: Interns

Interestingly, there are more women in college, however, two-thirds of men are getting more internships as well and their pay is higher than those starting salaries.

Overall, the book seems to make a surface-level impression of the argument on whether neoliberalism and capitalism are the right way that we should be moving towards in society. There are no alternative solutions given within this book instead, in-depth background on these jobs that are seen to be done “with passion” and how unions have been shot down throughout history. However, just because I know that artists are being paid less and also usually liberal women, how does this help the case? The main takeaways I got from this book were:

• Choose carefully your passion and your work. Your passion may not be the right choice in work if work is to sustain you and your passion is to keep you alive.
• You’re more susceptible to being taken advantage of in your work if you’re a woman and a person of color.