“Bullshit Job”: The Critic of Capitalism in D. Graeber’s Theory

Abstract

The article is on the theme of the emergence of nonsensical job as a result of the Neoliberal Capitalism development. American anthropologist D. Graeber, the author of the conception of ‘bullshit jobs’, decided to solve the scholarly problem: why the fast-moving technical development run to the situation, when people start to work more instead to work less. It happens because the new nonsensical posts and jobs are built. Graeber proposes the ‘bullshit job’s’ classification showing that the contemporary capitalism creates the useless working place and pays people for doing nothing contrary to the economical law (minimization of costs and maximization of profit). The term ‘bullshit’ resulted from the word ‘bull’ which is rooted in French ‘bole’ (illusion, swindle). This fact shows that ‘bullshit jobs’ consist of an illusion and fraud: the person, doing some ‘bullshit job’, knows that his/her work is nonsensical and useless but he/she have to make a show (for himself and other people) that this is not the case. Graeber comes to the light that moral and psychical violence are rooted in contemporary labour relationships and it is shown the negative essence of the Neoliberal society. Graeber offers the initiative of the Universal Basic Income as the ‘medicine’ from ‘bullshit jobs’. Article shows that the governmental protection of the basic human needs operates as the Universal Basic Income in Socialist society. There were no ‘bullshit jobs’ in the U.S.S.R.