Jean-Laurent Cassely: "A large part of humanity instantly recognized itself in its concept of Bullshit jobs"

Jean-Laurent Cassely is a journalist, columnist for Slate and L'Express.

He has notably published

La revolte des premiers de la classe

No Fake

FIGAROVOX.

- David Graeber's latest book, “Bullshit job” (2018) was a worldwide success.

The anthropologist describes how modernity has helped to create “stupid jobs” by asking the majority of office workers to dedicate their lives to unnecessary and uninteresting tasks.

Do you think this is an essential book for the 21st century?

Jean-Laurent CASSELY.

-

I will say that the original article from 2013, published in English in the magazine Strike !, has become a classic.

The publishers must have sensed it since they had published the paper in open access and online, although it is a paid paper journal.

The article functioned as a whistleblower platform,

are almost a hashtag that anyone can now mobilize, since a large part of humanity, at least the one who reads articles behind his screen. computer at lunch break, instantly recognized it.

The ability to ignite the internet signals the talent and intuition of Graeber, who had a great sensitivity to contemporary issues and was not just "a mug".

From a brilliant initial intuition, Graeber asked in 2013 the following question: why so many useless and well-paid employees, not in a Soviet state with an administered economy, which is notoriously inefficient, but in a system that is want agile, obsessed with efficiency and return on investment?

Then, the book itself, published five years after the article, and without the element of surprise which meant that we overlooked the limits of reasoning, seems less convincing to me.

In my opinion, he does not add much to the initial demonstration, and he sometimes gets lost in questions about HR or management, which Graeber was not an expert on.

But the central question of

, once accepted the principle, is its interpretation.

The success of the article is based on the fact that its author dramatized it as a riddle to be solved.

From a brilliant initial intuition, Graeber asked in 2013 the following question: why so many useless and well-paid employees, not in a Soviet state with an administered economy, which is notoriously inefficient, but in a system that is want agile, obsessed with efficiency and return on investment?

He therefore attacks the system not on its weaknesses, but on its strengths.

His response was that if there were so many absurd

in companies, it was to prevent individuals from being freed from the burden of office hours and finally devoting themselves to a life of business. idleness.

He also helped to make the famous “liberal globalization” outdated, pointing to the fact that it was in the hands of finicky bureaucrats working in large groups and not of brilliant, inspired and maverick business creators.

A large part of

correspond to what specialists call

or business services, in which large companies invoice each other for services, from consulting companies or even internally.

You wrote, among other things, "The revolt of the first in the class" (Arkhê, 2017), a book in which you also deal with this theme.

How did your analyzes of the world of work come together?

I relied on the success of his article which in my opinion acted as an indicator of a social problem which was beginning to take on a certain scale, and which until now was considered a benign disease of a rich country.

The fact either of suffering unemployment, which was the number one economic and social problem of the 1980s and 1990s, or of having a thankless and physically demanding job (because it is repetitive, requiring you to stand up, etc.), but to spend his life performing tasks that we feel as meaningless, causing moral suffering.

The problem was new, because the highly qualified, bac + 5, graduates of grandes écoles, were now numerous enough to constitute a social category.

They just lacked a class conscience.

Today we realize that on the one hand there are those traumatized by confined teleworking, who want to leave Paris and change their life, and those who fear the consequences of the crisis and cling to a job that is not necessarily fulfilling but who allows you to pay the bills.

Then, we can see today how Graeber anticipated our current debates;

the status and usefulness of health and

, which he discusses in his article on

, the fact that we can finally quite well do without middle management as has been proven by confinement, etc. .

We also realize that on the one hand there are those traumatized by confined teleworking, who want to leave Paris and change their life, and those who fear the consequences of the crisis and cling to a job that is not necessarily fulfilling but which allows pay the bills.

In the end, Graeber will rather, ironically, have spoken to the former.

This is why I spoke of the revolt of the first of the class, that of the good students condemned to project meetings and

, which is certainly more comfortable than delivering gourmet burgers or packing clothes in a warehouse, but can generate another form of suffering.

Beyond this success, what do you retain from the work of David Graeber, who has become an icon in protest circles?

The

do not summarize the work of Graeber, who ventured in many areas, and I am far from having read the entirety of his work.

For me, his contribution lies in his way of resorting to anthropology in a way or on unexpected or shifted grounds, for example in the study of symbolism, to study not ancient or culturally distant societies, but the heart of the contemporary West.

Applied to

consultants

or the workings of finance, Graeber's analytical grids are often refreshing and hilarious because they catch us off guard.

The protest galaxy tends to rehash the same slogans and the same theses (the 1%, the critique of neoliberalism), yet while adhering to them Graeber had a somewhat oblique and creative way of approaching these problems.