Series Title: Recovering the Lost Legacy of the Pro-Worker Work Ethic for Workers Today
 
Lecture 1:  The Pro-Worker Work Ethic from the Puritans to Marx
 
Abstract: There is much discussion today of "the Great Resignation"-- a dramatic rise in workers quitting their jobs, spurred by widespread worker discontent.  In this lecture, I argue that the Protestant work ethic supplies important resources for understanding and addressing this discontent.  Long attacked for rationalizing the consignment of workers to tedious drudgery for bare subsistence wages, the work ethic in fact contained, from its beginnings in the 17th century, a powerful ideal of good and meaningful work.  This ideal was further developed by classical economists including Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx.