When you hear the phrase “work ethic,” you might think of the perfect employee. The one who puts her job above everything else, who never complains, the type that lives to work.

That is certainly one version of the work ethic, and it’s a story that serves employers much more than it serves employees. But is that the only version of the work ethic? Or to put it more directly, is it the best version of the work ethic? A new book by the University of Michigan philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that we should revisit the origins of the work ethic because the answer to both of those questions is no.

Anderson tells the history of the Protestant Work Ethic and how it gave rise to dueling interpretations. One of those interpretations was pro-worker and the other was not. And for various reasons, the anti-worker version is the one that ultimately prevailed — or at least it’s the one that dominates our society today.

So I invited her onto The Gray Area to talk about what happened and why she thinks we need to reclaim the work ethic for workers. Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Sean Illing

Where does the phrase “Protestant work ethic” come from?

Elizabeth Anderson

The phrase the Protestant work ethic comes from the great social theorist Max Weber, who wrote a book called The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; the English translation came out in 1920. He set the basic terms for our understanding of the work ethic. In his description, the Protestant work ethic was an ethic of nose to the grindstone for the workers for the maximum profit of the capitalist. So it’s a pretty dreary ethic, and he himself, despite his profession of value neutrality and social science, condemned the work ethic as consigning us to an iron cage, and he contrasted the Puritan attitude toward work as recalling the capitalist version of the work ethic that came to us where we are forced to work in our calling.

Sean Illing

How important is the Protestant part of the Protestant work ethic? Is the religious foundation essential?

Elizabeth Anderson

This is coming right out of the Puritans. The Puritans in England were basically Calvinist in theology and obsessed with getting certainty about their salvation. Theologically, the Calvinists think we’re all doomed from the start except for a tiny number of people who are saved. The critical issue, then, is you’re all desperate to know whether you’re saved, and the Puritan said the only way to tell is if you are working really, really hard because that shows that God has graced you and that you really have faith.

Sean Illing

There were contradictions built into the work ethic right from the start. You call them the “repressive” and “uplifting” dimensions, and these dimensions get teased apart during the Industrial Revolution, and out of that comes the conservative and progressive work ethics. Tell me about these competing work ethics and what happened here.

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