A personal essay on labour and identity

Regarding the entanglement of work and being

During every family gathering, or an interaction with an old acquaintance, it seems inevitable that you will get asked about your job.

“What do you do? What do you study? What are you doing after graduation?”

Sometimes, those questions will be met by incredibly specific and optimistic answers from an individual who has their entire career planned out. For a majority of people, however, the answers to those questions about jobs prompts awkward laughter and a shoulder shrug.

However, with this editorial, my concerns are not with career planning, but rather, with the way that we’ve come to inexplicably tie our identity to our job titles, or to the kind of work that we do. If somebody were to tell you that they worked as a secretary for a law firm, you immediately attach certain traits and characteristics of that job and project them onto the individual. For example, the secretary bumps into an old high school colleague who proceeds to ask, “What do you do?” The individual would generally respond with their job title. But truly, is that all you are? Is that all you do with your entire life? You’re a secretary? No, you’re more than that.

While I’m arguing that your job and the work that you do should not define who you are, I’m fully aware that there are some exceptions. For many, work is a means of expressing certain feelings and experiences, and thus, becomes an enormous part of their core identity. However, my issue lies in the way we communicate these concepts of work and identity to others and the way in which we seemingly start to identify individuals as a nurse, a pilot, or a consultant.

In 1844, German philosopher Karl Marx published Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, which tackled themes of money, wages, labour, and alienated labour. Specifically, Marx aims to investigate the effects of alienated labour on the individual and how it can inform their civil life outside of work. However, it should be noted that Marx also posited that labour, when at its best and highest form, is an essential component of what makes us human. Alienated labour, then, occurs when the progression of industrialization essentially removes the individual from the product they are working on and from the others working on that same product.

Marx writes, “Since alienated labour: (1) alienates nature from man; and (2) alienates man from himself, from his own active function, his life activity; so it alienates him from the species. […] For labour, life activity, productive life, now appear to man only as means for the satisfaction of a need, the need to maintain physical existence.”

This idea of alienated labour is significant because it identifies a crucial division between two different kinds of work—the kind that adds to your being, and the kind that consumes it.

Throughout high school and university, individuals are forced to confront questions about their future and the kind of work that they would like to do. Specifically, there exists a constant reinforcement of the implicit belief that, if you don’t have a job, you are nothing—banished into the category of unemployment. While it is important to think about your future and to consider the kind of work you might be interested in, it becomes problematic when your time spent at university entirely becomes a means towards obtaining that job.

A quote from Buckminster Fuller, a prominent American architect, speaks to the kind of obsession that individuals tend to attach to the act of having a job. The quote reads:

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.”

In a way, this passage is particularly poignant when thinking about contemporary society. In high school we are forced to complete career path surveys and personality tests—supposedly with the purpose of signalling momenumental change in a young teenagers life—providing them with a direction and path for the future. Fuller’s quote continues:

“We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

While it seems wrong to solely rely on a job title or position to constitute your identity, it appears equally false to entirely alienate yourself and your being from the work you are doing. Both Marx and Fuller’s words provide phenomenal context within this discussion—yes, our work, our future, and our career trajectory all influence the actions we take in our lives, but the degree to which your being becomes entangled and attached to your job titles urges serious reconsideration.

In a way, Marx’s concept of alienated labour compliments Fuller’s sentiment of inventing jobs just for the sake of being employed. When an individual takes part in the kind of work that does not contribute to their aspirations in any capacity, they are ultimately alienating themselves from the fulfillment and development of character that meaningful labour has the ability to provide.

While talking about Marx and alienated labour is less than ideal at family gatherings, it is important to consider the role work plays in your own personal identity—so, whenever you’re asked by inquisitive friends or family members trying to prod at your personal life, be sure to answer with more than just your job title. Talk about the kind of work you do, what you enjoy about it, and the tasks that accompany the role—it says a whole lot more about you than you might know.