The Ideology of Work

The Ideology of Work is an unflinching critique of theoretical humanism and how it has undermined our analysis of work. In On the Reproduction of Capitalism, Louis Althusser cited an appendix which, it seems, remains lost or was never completed – it was titled ‘the Ideology of Work’. Samuel J.R. Mercer takes this appendix as his starting point to think about what is at stake for both Marxism and sociology in analyzing work from an Althusserian perspective. Drawing on contemporary discourses about post-work, social reproduction and the Anthropocene, Mercer argues that theoretical humanism has become the dominant form of the ideology of work. The book shows that only a theoretical anti-humanism, grounded in Althusserian Marxism, can offer a viable path forward for the sociology of work and give us a better understanding of social relations under contemporary capitalism.