Wages have been bad for years, but the quality of work hasn’t fared much better. Gig work, with its insecurity and minimal protection from managerial whims, has proliferated. New technology has enabled a degree of workforce surveillance that previous generations would have regarded as unacceptable. The degradation of corporate work at all levels is an important aspect of enshittification. Unsurprisingly, you can now click across multiple websites advising you how to look like you’re doing your job when your brain is somewhere else. And now AI is poised to usher us — those who still have jobs — into a new era of management-by-slop. Where can we look for an agenda to fight back?

There’s a branch of left-wing thought that focuses on exactly these kinds of problems: the theory of alienation. Karl Marx argued that capitalism alienates workers from the products of their labor, from control over their work activity and their capacity to develop themselves through it, and by separating them from the communal life of their coworkers, making them competitors instead of comrades. After capitalism is swept away by the working class, such alienation will presumably disappear. Unfortunately, this theory makes sweeping claims without providing much practical guidance for identifying the problem in real-world contexts, understanding its causes, and taking steps to counteract it.

I think it’s better to start over, using more familiar social science concepts and beginning with the important distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is the system of rewards and punishments that push you toward the choices and actions someone else wants you to take. Getting paid to do a job is the most obvious example. Intrinsic motivation comes from the purpose or experience of the action itself. Recreational sports and cooking a dinner for your household are things you do for their own value, not, usually, for extrinsic reasons.