Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

by Sarah Jaffe

The compulsion to be happy at work, in other words, is always a demand for emotional work from the worker. Work, after all, has no feelings. Capitalism cannot love.

They are the curdled side of the unfinished feminist revolution: frustrated with limited career prospects and a shredded social safety net, they retreat to the home and blame feminism—and nonwhite people—for their plight.

“Caring means giving more than you get, or giving without hope of receiving,” wrote nurse Laura Anne Robertson.

“This, to me, is living proof that art cannot change the world and that is why we need to organize. Artists need to realize how little power we all actually really have and how power needs to be built. It doesn’t come naturally and it is not a divine gift you get by being an artist.”