The Mises Institute monthly, free with membership
December 1999
Volume 17 Number 12
The Workaholic Canard
Michael Levin
The workaholic, or more precisely worry about him, is back.
During the 1980s, just as the free market's reputation was beginning to rebound, the guardians of
the national psyche discovered "workaholism." The victim of this disorder was defined as
working compulsively, spending far too much time at his occupation, too little with friends or
loved ones. He loses the capacity to enjoy what little leisure he allows himself, and eventually
cannot even recall the point of his own frenetic activity. We were all advised to ease up, slow
down, and smell the roses.
I had thought that this idiocy had passed, but my optimism was premature. A few weeks ago I
spotted an op-ed piece entitled "Unions Can Save the Workaholic;" not long after a new play by
noted English playwright Simon Gray appeared, entitled "The Late Middle Classes" and
described as concerning "a woman desperate for distraction [and] her workaholic husband." The
very absence of accompanying explanation shows that, at least among literary types, the
prevalence of the disease is taken as fact. Families once threatened by addiction to strong drink
are now threatened by addiction to work.
Let's get one thing clear right away: there is no such disease. The implied comparison of hard
work to alcoholism ("workaholism"; get it?) is bunk. A compulsion is a drive that causes its
sufferer to do what he doesn't want to do, and which he regrets acting on the very moment, or
immediately after, he acts on it.
Druggies and alcoholics can't stop even though they want to, and are ashamed of what their
habits make them do. Addictions and compulsions interfere with goals that all rational people,
including the addict himself in a cool moment, wish to pursue. Addiction is an unhealthy
dependence. Finally, there is the suggestion of an ever-rising threshold of relief-every time the
addict shoots up, he will have to inject even more next time to ease his craving.
Now think of those productive souls putting in long hours in the office or the field. Is it likely
that computer whizzes-who notoriously work day and night-really wish they were at home
watching TV but are afraid of going to pieces if they leave the lab? Do they wake up "the
morning after" regretting their lost weekends spent poring over printouts? Just what are the odds
that Steve Jobs suffered the DTs rescuing Apple? Is Bill Gates on a downward spiral, doomed to
work ever harder just to obtain that transient "high"? These comparisons need only be made
explicit to be recognized as laughable. If anything, hard workers experience exhilaration and,
when successful, a great sense of triumph; the rest of us should envy those who find work so
inherently rewarding that time away from it is felt as lost.
Of course, single-mindedness can have its downside. The private lives of many creative scientists
and artists are littered with divorces and the complaints of neglected children. (This is less true of
high executives in business.) Geniuses and high achievers generally tend to focus on their own
interests to the exclusion of everything else. But that is a very different matter from their being
unhappy or "sick." For the same reason we have to reject George Gilder's sentimental notion that
free markets are driven by "altruism." Gilder defines altruism as concern with the desires of
others, and of course anyone hoping to sell anything must offer what other people desire. But this
does not make the well-being of others his paramount aim (the proper definition of
altruism)-only that knowledge of what gratifies others is necessary for his own success.
Gilder of course is seeking to acquit capitalism of the charge that it rests on "greed," but his
contortions are unnecessary. The unique virtue of the market is that it rewards activities that
satisfy the desires of others, whatever motives prompt them. In truth, as I keep insisting, the
motive characteristic of entrepreneurs and innovators is neither love of others nor of self, but of
what they do. That's why they work so hard. A wag once said the secret of happiness is to figure
out how to get paid for doing what you would gladly do for nothing. He should have added that
this works best in a free market. Why, then, the persistent diagnosis of "workaholism?" The
usual suspect, I'm afraid: the increasingly desperate desire of intellectuals to discredit freedom in
favor of socialism. Remember, the disease was originally spotted when east European
communism was in its death throes. New outbreaks have been spotted again in a remarkably
prosperous America (and at a time when mainland China, the last bastion of communism, is
burying its past).
It becomes more obvious daily that freely-chosen labor, undertaken in cooperation with others
who have chosen likewise, not only adds to the wealth of the world, it is the sole way wealth can
be created. Intellectuals do not like this message, but, unable to dispute it on the facts, they have
shifted tactics. Now they ridicule hard work and achievement, to try to make it out as
pathological. Workaholism is an invention of the intellectual class to discredit the market.
This shift really just updates the old Marxist canard that workers under capitalism are crushed
and oppressed. The charge that capitalism immiserates the proletariat physically having become
pretty threadbare, given the superior health and affluence of today's paid employees as compared
to that even of princes of ages past, the thing to say now is that it harms their mental health. It
drives both workers and bosses crazy. Capitalism destroys our psyches, or, in language
fashionable a few decades ago, it causes "alienation."
Indeed, if one takes the workaholism literature seriously, it is the professional and managerial
classes who suffer the most. Socialism, by contrast, is good mental hygiene. And socialism it
must be, for by any name the alternative to individual control of resources and labor is control by
government. Here at any rate is how Thomas Geoghegan, a labor lawyer, thinks we might be
saved: "Perhaps in a future decade, a foreign government will intervene and impose some sort of
detox program, banning fax machines at home. . . Only when there's a labor movement that's
strong enough to limit weekly hours to 40, or to make normal the idea of taking off the whole
month of August, can those in the salaried classes bring some sanity to their own lives as well."
Thank you, Thomas. The basic error of "workaholism," like that behind all versions of socialism,
is denial that people are the best judges of how they expend their energy, and the corollary belief
that there is some further standard accessible to the enlightened. Telling someone else how much
work is too much is no less absurd, or intrusive, than telling him how much sex or exercise is too
much. Given the attention people devote to the topic, maybe everyone is a sex addict. Americans
spend billions on running shoes and other athletic equipment; perhaps some outside force is
needed to bring "sanity" to our lives in that respect too.
Fortunately, nobody takes talk of "workaholism" very seriously. Even its proponents keep their
tongues half in their cheeks, allowing them to say in effect "only kidding" should they be pressed
about exactly what they mean. I trust this latest verbal dart will go the way of "alienation,"
"dialectics," and the buggy whip.
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Michael Levin teaches philosophy at the City University of New York.
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