
No More Work
Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea
James Livingston(Author)
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 1. August 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
128 pages
978-1-4696-9208-1 (ISBN)
Description
For centuries we've believed that work was where you learned discipline, initiative, honesty, self-reliance - in a word, character. A job was also, and not incidentally, the source of your income: if you didn't work, you didn't eat, or else you were stealing from someone. If only you worked hard, you could earn your way and maybe even make something of yourself.
In recent decades, through everyday experience, these beliefs have proven spectacularly false. In this book, James Livingston explains how and why Americans still cling to work as a solution rather than a problem - why it is that both liberals and conservatives announce that "full employment" is their goal when job creation is no longer a feasible solution for any problem, moral or economic. The result is a witty, stirring denunciation of the ways we think about why we labor, exhorting us to imagine a new way of finding meaning, character, and sustenance beyond our workaday world - and showing us that we can afford to leave that world behind.
In recent decades, through everyday experience, these beliefs have proven spectacularly false. In this book, James Livingston explains how and why Americans still cling to work as a solution rather than a problem - why it is that both liberals and conservatives announce that "full employment" is their goal when job creation is no longer a feasible solution for any problem, moral or economic. The result is a witty, stirring denunciation of the ways we think about why we labor, exhorting us to imagine a new way of finding meaning, character, and sustenance beyond our workaday world - and showing us that we can afford to leave that world behind.
Reviews / Votes
"Unrivaled . . . in its audacity and brashness, all in a delightfully amusing little essay that is guaranteed to delight undergrads and provoke them to question their individual collective future. Highly recommended." - CHOICE"Pack[s] a verbal blow against all those - on the Right and the Left - who continue to kneel in adoration in the Chapel of Work." - Dissident Voices
"Livingston is at his most persuasive as a historian. . . . No More Work seek[s] to solve the problem of work through resource redistribution rather than by inviting readers to hack their own lives. " - Public Books
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
notes
Dimensions
Height: 178 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight
129 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4696-9208-1 (9781469692081)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2016
The University of North Carolina Press
€14.49
Available for download
Person
James Livingston is professor of history at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He is the author of five other books on topics ranging from the Federal Reserve System to South Park.