Okay, so this episode was initially going to cover an area Weeks identifies as failures of Productivist Marxism; Socialist Modernization and Socialist Humanism, but we're going to be addressing the latter in the next episode. This one ran long enough as is. We're also going to be taking a minute to address, and correct, a mistake I made in the last episode as regards the conservative, capitalist approach to the if, then clause regarding waged work and profit maximazation that has some surprising implications, and we'll take look down the rabit hole of progressive taxation and the Trump tax cuts. We've, um, got a lot to go over.

Join the conversation on Patreon!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Klein, Ezra, and Derek Thompson, Abundance. Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2025.

Tucker, Robert C., Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. Second edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. P.538

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work : Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Links:

"Current Population Reports; Consumer Income” U.S. Department of Commerce. May 1953

"Historical U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates & Brackets, 1862-2021” 8/24/2021. Tax Foundation

Fry, Richard. “Are You in the American Middle Class? Find out with Our Income Calculator.” Pew Research Center, September 16, 2024.

Picci, Aimee. “Do you know what you pay in taxes? Here's who pays the most and least to the IRS.” 4/15/2025

York, Erica. “Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2024 Update.” 3/13/2024. Tax Foundation

Message Us!

Support the show

Hey all, welcome back. There's a ton to go over from what's been going on on my end lately, what's been happening with the economy, we talk a little about 'where have all the Leftists gone?' (queue Paula Cole), and, for the bulk of the episode, we return to Kathi Weeks' The Problem with Work. For part 3, we're focusing on Weber's primitive construction of subjectivities, what the structures of Capitalism and the Work Ethic do, the antinomy of systems of inclusion and exclusion, and we start digging a little into Marx' Capital to help explain the significance of sacrifice and exchange in the system of waged labor, that identifies this movement from being made subject to being made victim. I hope you're up for a long episode!

Join the conversation on Patreon!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Dictionary of Untranslatables : A Philosophical Lexicon. . Translated by Steven Rendall. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lawlor, Leonard, and John Nale, eds. “Subjectification.” Chapter. In The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, 496–502. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. P.496

Tucker, Robert C., Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. "Capital, Volume One."The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton, 1978. p.321., also “Wage, Labor, and Capital.” Pp.204-5. My emphasis.

Weber, Max. 2012. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Lexington, Ky.: Renaissance Classics.

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work : Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Links to check out:

“FACT SHEET the HISTORY of the TIPPED MINIMUM WAGE a Civil Rights Issue.” Oct. 2018.

Sacrifice and Prostitution. Etymonline.

Schmidtz, David and Peter Boettke, "Friedrich Hayek", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.)

#Work #Commodities #Feminism #SexWork #Trump #Hayek #Marx #Weber #Sacrifice #Exchange #Victim #WorkEthic #Feminism #FarLeft #Leftism #Progressive #Socialism #Existentialism #BadFaith #Capitalism #Structuralism #Democrats #Neoliberalism #PrivateEquity

Message Us!

Support the show

Okay, it feels a little strange to be getting here over 20 episodes in, but let’s talk about the work ethic. Now, I know I said this episode was going to be about my reading of Weeks and what I propose is this movement from subject to victim of work, but, surprise, we’re not there yet. Today we’re looking at the background theory and the move from the Traditionalist to Protestant work ethic.

I mentioned last episode that we need to perform a genealogy of the work ethic if we’re to understand the problem and have any hopes of overcoming it. To keep to the text though, Weeks notes that Weber’s analysis provides an “archeology” of the ethic. So, I guess the first question is, is this just a semantic difference? Well, no.

Join the conversation on Patreon!

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Berardi, Franco. “Anatomy of Autonomy.” Semiotext(e), translated by Jared Becker et al., vol. 3, no. 3, 1980, pp. 148–71.

Karim, Muzaffar. “Understanding Foucault: The Shift from Archaeology to Genealogy.” Quest Journals. Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science. Volume 9 ~ Issue 9 (2021) pp: 72-75

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1910. The Gay Science. Dover ed. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.

Weber, Max. 2012. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Lexington, Ky.: Renaissance Classics.

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work : Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Links to check out:

For Work /Against Work

Vogt, Katja. “Seneca.”

Wicks, Robert. “Arthur Schopenhauer.”

Message Us!

Support the show