America’s Work Ethic Is Under Assault
The rise of capitalism required a revolution in attitudes toward work. But the forces of cultural change that forged the work ethic can also destroy it.
The work ethic builds bridges.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images North AmericaThe work ethic is the most important engine of capitalist civilization. It keeps workers working long after they have satisfied their basic needs, drives entrepreneurs to found new companies and inventors to invent new things, and, in general, generates the surplus that pays for productive investment and social welfare.
Yet the belief that work is a moral duty rather than an inconvenient necessity is hardly a natural one. In most civilizations, social status has been determined by your distance from productive labor — aristocrats in Naples even lost their patents of nobility if they were caught doing anything useful — while workers abandoned the grindstone for the alehouse at the slightest opportunity.