Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America

by Erik Baker

A sweeping new history of the changing meaning of work in the United States, from Horatio Alger to Instagram influencers.

How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Successful workers were increasingly expected to show initiative and enthusiasm for change—not just to do their jobs reliably but to create new opportunities for themselves and for others. Our culture of work today is more demanding than ever, even though workers haven't seen commensurate rewards.

Make Your Own Job explains how this entrepreneurial work ethic took hold, from its origins in late nineteenth-century success literature to the gig economy of today, sweeping in strange Marcus Garvey and Henry Ford, Avon ladies and New Age hippies. Business schools and consultants exhorted managers to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit in their subordinates, while an industry of self-help authors synthesized new ideas from psychology into a vision of work as “self-realization.” Policy experts embraced the new ethic as a remedy for urban and Third World poverty. Every social group and political tendency, it seems, has had its own exemplary entrepreneurs.

Historian Erik Baker argues that the entrepreneurial work ethic has given meaning to work in a world where employment is ever more precarious––and in doing so, has helped legitimize a society of mounting economic insecurity and inequality. From the advent of corporate capitalism in the Gilded Age to the economic stagnation of recent decades, Americans have become accustomed to the reality that today’s job may be gone tomorrow. Where work is hard to find and older nostrums about diligent effort fall flat, the advice to “make your own job” keeps hope alive.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Labor, Economics, Business, Sociology

352 pages, Hardcover

Published January 14, 2025

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding critical history of one of Capitalism's most seductive and damaging ideological constructs: Entrepreneurialism. Baker methodically works through the ways the entrepreneurial work ethic has emerged from economic crises, adapting itself to the ever changing composition of the working class under capitalism. Since this is one of the most powerful forms of capitalist ideology that gets workers to resist solidarity and collective struggle in favor of individualist striving, this study is immediately relevant. Also it's a great read! Never a chore, full of some of the wildest American charlatans of the past century, really overall I can't recommend this enough.

[Kenny Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be shocked if this isn't my favorite book of 2025. It's magnificent -- the kind of intellectual history that makes you reconsider many of your assumptions. Required reading for surviving the Trump era.

[Judi]

It’s not fair to say I read this book, because I only read selected parts of it. I am long retired from my job as professor, where I taught extensively about the workplace, so I’m pretty familiar with industrialization and the history of work. What I did find enlightening, however, was reading about the entrepreneurial mindset, especially because I read this at the precise moment Elon Musk and his band of merry boys were playing in the national treasury. What I never understood about that mindset was that entrepreneurs like Musk really think of the rest of us as drones, and that our jobs really aren’t important in their grand scheme of things. No wonder they’re destroying government agencies; it’s not for plunder, but rather driven by utter disdain. They’re rich, they’re haughty, and they have total control right now. Heaven help us, because Congress sure as shit won’t.

[Derek Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Next time someone tells you about the power of positive thinking you should punch them in the face

[空 · Rating 3 out of 5]

…Either the socialists were right, and class struggle and state planning were more promising avenues to rectify poverty and global inequality; or the hardline conservatives were right, and the kinds of people who were poor were simply unequipped, at some fundamental level, to engage in entrepreneurship on a sufficiently widespread scale.

Baker traces the “entrepreneurial work ethic” through American history as it replaced the “industrial work ethic” and ultimately came to dominate all facets of American life, expanding from the workplace to ultimately becoming a measure of a person’s worth.

It’s just amazing how Baker can be both interesting and boring at the same time. The content is interesting, but the way it’s written almost obscures the content’s interesting-ness by making sure it’s stated in the most boring way possible. Baker doesn’t talk down to the reader, but he certainly never makes things easier to digest. His writing style just doesn’t jive with what I consider “interesting”.

He has a lot of interesting and salient points, but they’re difficult to remember because you have to wade through a lot of other words just to get to them: for example, he loves to extensively quote people — which I get, but for the love of God please just summarize!!!!! Bruh.

Anyway:
✦ It now makes sense to me why capitalists keep calling for more deregulation every time there’s an economic downturn — they think having more entrepreneurs (or entrepreneurial activity) will kickstart the economy.

And what gets in the way of would-be entrepreneurs, these innocent babes in the wood who are just slavering to have their own jobs that they would absolutely love?

That’s right — regulations!! So complicated!!! Taxes? Pensions? Safety regulations? Pfft, get outta here so I can start a-sellin’! Yeehaw!! And of course the fact that deregulation will help their multi-billion-dollar businesses is not central but merely icing on the cake,,, I promise sir,,,,,...

✦

The promises of entrepreneurialism may be empty, but they respond to profound and ineradicable needs among working people that remain persistently unfulfilled under capitalist social relations. The entrepreneurial work ethic feeds on its own failure.

It’s ironic that since the labor laws in America are unable to protect workers from the ravages of “entrepreneurialism”, a lot of workers want to become entrepreneurs so they can “be their own boss” and “escape from a toxic, oppressive mainstream work culture” — instead of, say, dreaming of stronger worker protection, aggressive wealth distribution, or punitive labor laws against abusive organizations/corporations.


Some other bits from Baker I want to keep track of:

▬

If the entrepreneurial work ethic can accommodate both conservative visions of tradition and liberal visions of progress, the one thing it can never make peace with is a politics of class conflict. It must frame the hierarchy of capitalist labor relations as synergistic rather than antagonistic … or else obscure it entirely, so that hierarchy doesn’t come to appear as an external constraint on one’s ability to make one’s own job. But as E.P. Thompson argued long ago, class is not a thing; it is a historical process. (Emphasis mine)

▬

In unions of healthcare workers and rideshare drivers, in urban spaces discarded by capital and reclaimed for the work of mutual aid, in all those places where the poor and precarious organize to give themselves a foretaste of utopia—here we can glimpse, in an inchoate stage, a form of social life impervious to the demand to be entrepreneurial.

[Max Rohde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Make Your Own Job is an interesting book, which I would describe as anti-entrepreneurship propaganda.

I found this perspective very refreshing because, in today's world, we often assume anything related to entrepreneurship is inherently good.

Entrepreneurs are seen as the ones who make the world a better place, create jobs, act as change makers, and are considered the architects of tomorrow.

Erik Baker examines this notion and questions whether becoming self-made and rich through funding one's own business is as beneficial as it is often portrayed.

He presents compelling arguments about the issues associated with this mindset. Specifically, he critiques the shift in responsibility from the collective to the individual.

This shift might work well for those who are strong, talented, hard-working, or privileged, possessing the time and resources to succeed. However, it doesn't work as effectively for those who require more support to lead a good life and might need a helping hand.

The idea of granting individuals the freedom to forge their own path can theoretically sound appealing. However, it places an immense amount of stress and responsibility on the individual, which does not necessarily contribute to a better life.

Baker also illustrates how this entrepreneurial mindset has permeated the corporate world. Companies, particularly General Electric under Jack Welch, embraced the idea that everyone within the company should act like an entrepreneur, despite the corporate environment not traditionally being entrepreneurial.

This places a lot of responsibility and stress on individuals. There are certainly ways for us, as humanity, to work together and care for each other that do not involve entrepreneurship. While entrepreneurship is one strategy and tool we can use, it is not always the best option. There are alternative approaches we should consider as well.

I also found it quite interesting that he focused a lot on multi-level marketing and similar concepts, such as franchises. These often exploit the dream of being one's own boss but typically result in making a few people rich while failing to provide a net positive impact for the majority involved. They may not significantly benefit individual lives or society as a whole.

Entrepreneurialism, I argue, is a work ethic. It enjoins us to work more intensely than we need to and leaves us feeling devoid of purpose when we don’t have work, or the right kind of work, to do.

Entrepreneurialism, essentially, adds another set of obligations to the work ethic: creation as well as execution, passion as well as perseverance.

As in so many magic tricks, there is sleight-of-hand involved, concealing the fact we have gone through exactly this same cycle before. The bad sort of work that entrepreneurship is supposed to sweep away today was the fruit of the entrepreneurial revolution of yesterday.

[Francisco Verón Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intellectual history of the entrepreneurial work ethic in the US, covering the idea of industriousness, human relations theory, New Thought, Harvard Business School's MBA, intrapreneurialism, Third Wave politics, and the influence of all those popular psychology books we know all too well (Think and Grow Rich, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Richest Man in Babylon, Flow, Grit, #Girlboss, etc). It really pulls the curtain on the insidious nature of "entrepreneurialism" to pop out every time things are going bad for the economy. Can't find a job? Just make your own job! Business going bad? Tell your employees to be more entrepreneurial! As an immigrant to the US, I often forget that this country has a whole different history when it comes to work, which shapes how this universal activity is seen by this specific society and how it is performed by its members. This book will open your eyes to the source of some of the most mainstream ideas in business (in America) to this day.

[Richard Baudouin]

Really good read that traces the idea of a work ethic in the US. Also, beautifully written. It does seem a little disjointed at times. It is mainly a history of ideas, and does not really tackle the state of the American worker now. Anyone who has a career as an office professional will recognize a great deal.

[Alexander Stemer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Educational, insightful, and depressing. For some reason, I imagined (or rather hoped) that this would be a different kind of book. It was still a good read, but it painted a rather bleak portrait of the American employment system with nary a hint nor a suggestion as to how to overcome it.

[Thomas Ray]

Library-of-Congress HD4905.3.U6 B36 2025 College Library Rm. 1191

[Mr T · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best history of ideas book I've read this decade.