I think one of the most pernicious ideas within capitalist culture is the idea that we must "earn our living": this belief that we must prove our worthiness to exist through our labor. This idea has manifested differently in different time periods: from the Ragged Dick tales of Horatio Alger to countless TikToks that idolize “the grindset.” The belief that it is virtuous to tether your life’s purpose to the generation and accumulation of profit is difficult to eradicate.
Oftentimes, people cling to this belief because of their own struggles within our economic and cultural system. Maybe they were born to a working-class family and were moderately successful in finding some degree of upward mobility, or at least making some kind of modest living for themselves. They hold onto the idea that if they had to struggle, why should anyone else be exempt? And yet that avoids the larger question: why is struggling to survive required at all?
If you’ve read my blog before, it will come as no surprise where I stand on this topic. I’ve written about mutual aid, compared ChatGPT to the plight of the Luddites, as well as have written more broadly about how another world is possible. It’s clear that I am critical of capitalism and how deeply it has failed the American public, especially in my lifetime. (Thanks, Reagan). It breaks my heart to see the suffering that systemic failures have brought upon the American public and how little political will there is to do anything about it.
Even before the pandemic, millions of Americans were one paycheck away from a financial crisis. Today, 40% of American households are struggling to make ends meet, and it’s having an impact on our mental health — which is a damn shame because it’s difficult to work when you’re depressed, and it’s really hard to get affordable mental healthcare if you don’t have a well-paying job. Rugged individualism is putting people into impossible positions and then blaming them for not pulling hard enough on their bootstraps. It should be criminal, but instead, it’s codified into our laws.
In America, people must earn their basic human needs (food, shelter, healthcare), which means that each of us is born into a kind of debt. Unless you are of the fortunate few who will inherit a safety net of generational wealth, each of us is born with the knowledge that we must participate in the generation of profit or perish. And so, with few choices provided to us, we internalize this belief that we must “earn our living” and live in this state of constant survival. This survival instinct is often what we call “ambition,” but what if ambition could be more than a survival instinct? What if it could be reimagined?
I read a very interesting piece about this written for the Guardian by Rainesford Strauffer. In it, she imagines what it would be like if ambition was not about proving our worthiness to live, but one based on our own “intrinsic yearning” to build, create, and solve problems for ourselves and for the common good. Not a world where the goal of ambition is to generate profit but one where the goal is to create something bigger and better than one’s self. Something that will better your community and make a difference in the lives of others. Certainly, this world is possible, as far off as that world can sometimes feel.
I believe this is why money has never been much of a motivator for me. Why should it? My labor under capitalism is a means to an end. If I didn’t do it, I would be homeless and hungry — if not worse. This is not motivation but coercion. What motivates me runs much deeper in my soul. If I was free of mere survival, who would I be? What would my life look like? I know that I would rest more, but I would not only rest. As psychologist Viktor Frankl noted, man has a will to meaning: an inherent desire to find meaning and purpose in one’s life. We are not “lazy”, as though such a thing exists. We are a species that thrives on work, just not the over-work that capitalism demands of us. Without coerced labor, I know that my ambition would remain unchanged.
My ambition is not for a better job but for a better world, where each person contributes what they can, as they can, with the comfort that they will never go cold or hungry. For me, that is where I find my purpose: in community and interdependence, not only with other people but all living things. I find meaning in recognizing my small and momentary place in this great expanse. To stake my worth to my labor under capitalism — to the mere task of “earning a living” — would be to make my life a great and utter poverty.