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Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
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Bullshit Jobs

A Theory
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Christopher Ragland

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Length 12 hours 38 minutes
Language English
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Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, read by Christopher Ragland.

Be honest: if your job didn't exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered why not? Up to 40% of us secretly believe our jobs probably aren't necessary. In other words: they are bullshit jobs. This book shows why, and what we can do about it.
In the early twentieth century, people prophesied that technology would see us all working fifteen-hour weeks and driving flying cars. Instead, something curious happened. Not only have the flying cars not materialised, but average working hours have increased rather than decreased. And now, across the developed world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services, finance or admin: jobs that don't seem to contribute anything to society. In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber explores how this phenomenon - one more associated with the Soviet Union, but which capitalism was supposed to eliminate - has happened. In doing so, he looks at how, rather than producing anything, work has become an end in itself; the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and, finally, how we can get out of it.
This book is for anyone whose heart has sunk at the sight of a whiteboard, who believes 'workshops' should only be for making things, or who just suspects that there might be a better way to run our world.


'Spectacular and terrifyingly true' Owen Jones
'Explosive' John McDonnell, New Statesman, Books of the Year
'Thought-provoking and funny' The Times

David Graeber (Author)
David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of, among others, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and Pirate Enlightenment, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, the Guardian, and the Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts helped to make Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on 2 September 2020.

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Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

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Reviews

Praise for The Democracy Project: 'Clear, pungent and right ... a compact and incisive account of why capitalism has run with such a smash into the buffers' Graeber's talent is to take big concepts and unpack them, forcing us to examine their implications for society ... the book is a cool drink of water after so much dry, academic writing on the "revolutions" of 2011' Captures the joys and fears of a movement The most influential radical political thinker of the moment Expand reviews
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