Our modern Western society is obsessed with the idea of hustling. Everywhere you look specially on social media and even in college career talks. The message is basically the same, work hard, sleep less and always be productive. This way of thinking is not just personal ambition, but it has become a social expectations. People are brain washed to turn their entire life into a long career project. We put value on human by their job title, income and how busy they are.
In this paper I will argue that the modern Western rise and grind hustle culture is a social ill and it only serve as a wealth making mechanism for the capitalist elites that gives rise to alienation rather than human flourishing.
Hustle culture does not benefit workers. All this system is doing is extracting wealth, health and time from the working class while paving the road to more of an authoritarian society. The consequences are super clear, the working class are exhausted, broken, divided and constantly fighting with each other over minor differences.
In section 2, I will talk about the what is the modern hustle culture is and why it is bad for humanity, and also how this is making the rich more richer all while giving rise to alienation among the working class. I will use my modern day observation, documentary, my personal story with story of other people close to me and the writing of Karl Marx.
In section 3, I will write about the objection to my clam that hustle culture is good and the economy and how this mechanism of capitalism alienation improved our life and the life of billions of other people all over the world.
In Section 4, I will show how this objection that life improved by capitalism alienation is not a good improvement is way. They might look good on the paper but at the end they are not really good for humanity and or for the planet.
At the end, In section 5 with will conclude my argument by going back to the point where I started in the introduction.
Let’s get into the rise of modern Western hustle culture. The idea of working hard has been in our human subconscious form the beginning of human evolution. The current idea is not about working hard for a personal goal but to just be busy all the time and non-stop optimization for corporation. The idea that someone’s self worth is tied to their work or how busy that person is. I feel like couple hundred years ago, looking busy meant your are poor and a looser and now it is the opposite. Our modern western culture tells us every where like in social media, movies and in documentaries that, the meaning of life is having more money or die working toward that goal. But all this does is melt down our personal time and life goals, hobbies and turn our life into a one long career goal.
In this paper, I will argue that this constant grinding pressure is a wired social ill and mechanism of capitalism designed to take the maximum value possible from our labor. All this does is move wealth at the top of the food chain, making rich more richer all while we willingly make our life measurable to live. One of biggest consequences of this idea is the alienation among the working class.
My primary and most important tool is Alienation and the idea of human flourishing. By looking at this concept I’ll try to measure modern practices and how much of this necessary for human flourishing, with out doing any damage to the planet or other organism. First the improvement of life is a rigged game from the beginning. We have better phones, tech products and other goods, but we are alienated from the work that brought that things. Our system do not make us fulfilled human, it only made us better consumers. In the religion and work section of the philosophic paper from Stanford website said, “Labour in capitalism, we can say, is alienated because it embodies separations preventing the self-realization of producers; because it is organized in a way that frustrates the human need for free, conscious, and creative work.”1 It is basically saying that we human ment to find fulfillment from our work and creation but the modern capitalism system do not provide that.
The idea of better life is a lie that they sell. The system want us to believe that if we just hustle harder then we can get some more stuff, and more stuff is the definition of winning. The more we hustle, the more value we create for our bosses and the less value we retain for ourself.
This is a trap of capitalism, instead of living a creating, meaningful life, what Marx calls Human Flourishing, it replaces that with quick shallow form of buying things.
Alienation from the products: We do not own what we make. Weather it is a content, apps, service or something in a factory. It is own by someone else.
Alienation from act of creating or production: The work is not free. I mean we do not decide what and how we are going to create something.
And most important, Alienation from other people: Hustle culture under capitalism turns other human into rivals, not friends or partners.
Alienation form being: We are loosing touch with what makes us human. We need to create freely, works with others and grow but right now a lot of us are just a gear for the giant machine.
Using this forms of alienation, I will argue that hustle culture is not about personal success but just a social problem.
The modern hustle culture might look like it motivates people to work harder archive more, but when we look through the lens of Karl Marx, we can see that this actually makes the alienation bigger. Instead of creating happy human being, it created angry exhausted workers and good consumers. They are disconnected from their own lives, their works and from other people.
First alienation from products of our labor, for Marx this means that the workers do not own or control what they make. In the modern day hustle culture this is extremely obvious. Most people work long hours and never see any real ownership of their creation. This is even true for high skill workers like programmer, graphic designer etc etc. For example, video game programmers can work more than 8 hours a day but, they game and the IP belongs to the company forever.
People who work in gig economy, the modern day king of hustle culture, gets treated like replaceable tools. At the end basically the system like the hustle, but the products of the hustle never belongs to the hustler.
The most damaging of all alienation from other people. Marx explained that capitalism turns human relationship into competition. As it said on the Stanford philosophy paper, “Third, immediate producers are separated from other individuals; contemporary economic relations socialize individuals to view others as merely means to their own particular ends.”2 The modern hustle culture does the same thing. Instead of seeing coworkers as friends or partners, the culture tells us to view them as rivals. Most people all the time post their success, new jobs and promotions etc on social media, this creates more pressure for the rest of us to compete more. When everyone competing to prove they are more productive than the other person, there is no shape for community or support.
This is one of the biggest problems in our modern society. We are taught from the beginning that all the other human being are our competitions. From school to college to workplace, we were taught to compete for grades, internship, jobs and status. Under capitalist hustle culture, other human are no longer people we grow with. They kinda become obstacles or like a benchmark we have to meet and exceed. Competing for fun with like sports is good for society, but not for man-made basic survival.
This is by design of the capitalist system. One of their best invention. Hustle culture mindset destroy trust and lowers our collective power between the working class. We do this all the time, we do not ask why the system demands so much more from all, instead we just turn against each other. Our modern politics is all this. It is left vs right, men vs women, gay vs straight etc etc. It’s all working class fighting, while the system never changes or need to do anything good for us.
When we see individual or families struggling to survive, we blame them instead of questioning why in the world survival itself requires constant overwork. We even do this subconsciously, when we see a really poor or homeless person, we just think they did not hustle enough and not that the system is broken.
By keeping people divided and making them focus on outperforming each other, the system never gets questioned. As I was saying before, Gig economy workers are the modern day king of hustler. For them outperforming each others are deigned like a video game. They gets stars and points for basically being voluntary slave for billion dollars tech companies by competing with others just like them on who can sell the most amount of time and energy for few bucks.
Then there is alienation from the space of being. As it said one the Stanford philosophy paper, “Fourth, and finally, immediate producers are separated from their own human nature; for instance, the human capacities for community and for free, conscious, and creative, work, are both frustrated by contemporary capitalist relations.”3 Marx believed that human are meant to be creative and social. We are suppose to create meaning through our work. The idea of work does not have to be a necessary evil. But everything now all about fast, efficiency and output. We stop caring about our hobbies and spending time with family and friends. We even stop thinning about rest and sleep. People now feel guilty while resting. Because while resting they see other’s success on social media.
I think some time ago there was a saying that “sleep when you die” or something like that. This is a pretty bad form of alienation because it disconnects us from ourself.
Now I want to focus on how hustle culture is extremely bad for the environment. Imagine, a very hard working ambitious modern day individual. He works full time in some office and trying to start an online marketplace businesses for example.
Now because most of his time goes toward working, he do not have any for cooking for example. Instead he orders food on Doordash, buys essential items online instead of going to a local store. All this create more pollutions. Now multiple this buy millions of people.
So, basically when people work less they do other time intensive daily routine which are always better for the planet. Doordashing not only bad for the environment but it helps move wealth to the top. Instead of a local grocery owner getting that guys money, the multi-billion dollars oil, car and tech company gets his money. Also the hustler getting no sunlight, lost unhealthy food and maybe no or very little exercise. At the end, hustling only benefits the elites.
Now, speaking of elites, true democracy will never survive in a society where hustling is the dominant mindset. When all the things I describe comes together, then democracy will not survive. For example, alienation between the working class, working long hours having no time and energy to protest and question the system. Eventually the society will be ran by billionsrs. I guess we can argue that the United States has already gone there.
So, hustle culture is not just a personal mindset but a way to keep workers alienated and keep the flow of wealth upward. The harder people hustle the more values they create for their bosses. They selling this to us as a badge of honor.
By applying Marx’s four types of alienation, we can see that modern capitalism hustle culture is not a path to success. It only harms workers, distory community and damages our mental health and stops human flourishing. It turns workers against each other so they never question the system itself.
Supporters will argue that hustle culture improves life. They will say that working hard, being productive and always working on self improvement is never harmful. They will only bring better skills, higher income and better opportunity. They will argue that the modern push from capitalism hustle culture are important for some people to get out of their bed and work for something in their life. Without it they will never achieve anything in life.
Another part of their objection will be how the modern capitalism system lifted billions of people out of poverty. It increased out life expetency and created new innovation that was unimaginable before. Like the modern computer that I am using right now to write this paper and internet that I will use to send it to my Prof.
Even if the poor workers feel alienated, we have a better quality of life than the previous generation.
Then finally, they will say that it is not universal. Some people will chose to do this. They chose to work and be alienated form the society and themself. And they might find the meaning of life through working and just being a gear for the big machine. Who are we to say no to them?
Yeah, it is kinda true that some people chose to work hard and why should we care. And also a lot of people to find their meaning in life by working for other. I actually see this a lot in my parents generation and people around their age.
But this creates a rat race. It like if one person does more work in a office then the pressure is one for the rest to work harder. Even when other do not want to.
Then the facts that modern capitalism system invented all the modern tech like computers processor, display or the internet is not true.4 A lot of these came from federal or military finding. It is kinda crazy to think tech like micro processor and GPS was invented to kill thousands to people in a short period of time by the military, not by private company driven by capitalism.
Then speaking of better quality of life, I do not think that is true for our generation anymore. We live in the peak of capitalism hustle culture society. But is our quality of life better than the previous generation in the United States? We can objectively say NO. Just because we have modern tech does not mean our quality of life is better. For example, owning a house, traveling and eating good quality foods etc etc are way harder for Gen-Z compare to previous generation. So, we can say that hustle culture does not make quality of life better.
If we go back to the idea that hustle culture teaches us to be more discipline and hard working comes from externally by the system. They are not coming from the heart of human being.
For example, no one is doing doordash just for fun. It is hard work, with very small rewards. You have to do this work for a long time to see any meaningful change in life. On the other hand, I see people running in parks and swimming in pool just for the fun of it. They are also hard work. And you have to do running and swimming for a long time to see any changes in life. Still people doing this but not that.
People also voluntair for the sake of it. People do life long research and donate them to the world. For example the inventor of first polio vaccine, John Salk.5 He did not pattern the vaccine. He could have made millions of dollars. There are many more example of these. Like the inventor of Linux OS and the whole online open-source community.6 It is in our human nature to do work that is meaningful to us and share it to the world for free and then live of donation.7 Helping each other live with our works like a big community. The modern capitalism hustle culture is taking that away from us.
So we can say that modern capitalism hustle culture did not come form human heart but from the capitalism system to extract wealth, health and time from the poor.
And lastly, if hustle culture create wealth for hustler then why the top 10% has 60% of the wealth and bottom only holds 6%.8
In this philosophy paper I argued that the modern Western capitalism hustle culture is a social problem that creates alienation among the working class. Using Karl Marx’s idea of alienation and human flourishing we can see that hustle culture disconnects people from the products of the labor, from the act of creating and from other people and finally from their own human nature.
Some people will say that this is the best system of all and this hustle culture motivates and makes a human the best version of themself. But behind the shadow all this system is doing is extracting wealth, health and time from the working class while destroying our planet.
And the consequences are super clear, people are exhausted, broken and divided and fighting with each other.
For human flourishing we need work that is creative, social and meaningful to that individual, and the capitalism system and hustle culture will never give us that.