Work as Life, Life as Work: Rethinking the Limits of Work–Life Balance in the Twenty-First Century
Short Abstract
This study argues that work and life are inseparable under late capitalism. By examining the quantity, intensity, and quality of labour, it critiques the concept of “work-life balance” and reimagines work as a site of dignity, capability, and human flourishing.
1. The Indivisibility of Work and Life
The distinction between work and life is, in reality, far less clear than popular discourse assumes. It is not merely that I cannot divide them neatly; rather, this indivisibility reflects a structural tendency - albeit differentiated across sectors, classes, genders, and regions - within capitalist modernity, where labour increasingly permeates not only the temporal but also the qualitative and affective organisation of everyday existence (Harvey 2005; Standing 2011). Importantly, the issue is not simply one of working hours but also of labour intensity - the pace, pressure, and density of tasks - which often render shorter hours equally, or even more, exhausting. Moreover, the quality of work - best understood through established criteria such as autonomy, skill use, task complexity, and growth opportunities (Hackman & Oldham 1976; Green 2004; Burchell et al. 2002) - cannot be collapsed into the mere quantity of hours. Recent comparative studies confirm that even where working-time reduction has been legislated, intensification has offset much of the intended benefit, leaving subjective well-being stagnant or even declining (Gallie 2013; Eurofound 2021).
As Marx argued in his early theory of alienation, labour under capitalism estranges the worker not only from the product and process of labour but also from their species-being and from other workers (Marx 1975 [1844]); yet in Capital his analysis pivots toward accumulation and surplus value, although the underlying themes of estrangement continue to surface in his account of the degradation of the labour process (Braverman 1974). Weber’s notion of the Beruf (vocation), meanwhile, shows how Protestant asceticism and rationalisation invested labour with moral significance beyond economic necessity (Weber 2002 [1904]), though Weber’s wider analysis also underlined how bureaucratic rationalisation extended globally, embedding work into structures of discipline not confined to Europe. Importantly, both Marx and Weber continue to influence present-day analyses of work. Neo-Marxian critiques highlight how digital platforms replicate alienation by fragmenting control through algorithms (Fuchs 2014), while neo-Weberians emphasise how credentialism and bureaucratic forms still underpin labour markets, constraining mobility and freedom (Collins 1979; Brown 2013). Taken together, these perspectives suggest that alienation and rationalisation are not relics of industrial capitalism but enduring features of contemporary labour regimes, refracted through new technological and organisational forms.
Contemporary debates echo these insights: Sennett (1998; 2006) documents how flexible capitalism corrodes long-term identity, while Standing (2011) argues that precarity defines twenty-first-century work. These dynamics are visible today: platform workers in the gig economy, such as Uber drivers and food-delivery couriers, find themselves unable to ‘switch off’; nurses and care workers carry emotional and unpredictable burdens into private life; and remote working, intensified during COVID-19, has dissolved spatial and temporal boundaries, creating an ‘always-on’ culture where quantity, intensity, and quality blur together. Even if one assumes a six o’clock end to the working day, it is naïve to suppose that a wholly autonomous self, disengaged from labour, suddenly begins. The reality is that surveillance, algorithmic control, and the moral/emotional demands of care have rendered the supposed line between ‘life’ and ‘work’ a conceptual fiction.
2. Labour, Alienation, and the Conditions of Flourishing
Work constitutes the activity to which individuals devote the greatest proportion of their time and the most repetitive part of their daily existence. If one expends a third of life in labour, yet regards it in purely instrumental terms - as a means of earning money, as time to be endured rather than lived - while reserving the remaining third as the sole site of authentic life, then the possibility of flourishing in a eudaimonic sense becomes profoundly compromised. The problem lies not only in how long one works but also in how intensively, and in whether labour affords qualitative enrichment or mere endurance. Clark (2015) finds that workers who enjoy autonomy and recognition of skills report levels of satisfaction equivalent to significant increases in income, suggesting that qualitative dimensions of work may outweigh quantitative measures. Conversely, Eurofound (2021) documents how intensification undermines psychosocial well-being across Europe, even in areas where working hours have declined. Thus, to treat work as expendable time to be endured impoverishes human flourishing and narrows the scope for self-realisation.
As Adorno and Horkheimer argued, instrumental rationality reduces lived experience to functional survival; while their critique was directed at the culture industry, its extension to the labour process - though interpretive rather than explicit - helps reveal how efficiency logics constrain emancipatory possibilities (Adorno & Horkheimer 2002 [1944]). Likewise, institutional economists remind us that labour is socially embedded, not a mere economic exchange: for Veblen, it expressed both workmanship and pecuniary competition (Veblen 2009 [1899]); for Polanyi, it was a “fictitious commodity” whose commodification threatened the fabric of social life (Polanyi 2001 [1944]). Braverman’s (1974) classic study of scientific management shows how rationalisation stripped labour of skill, reinforcing alienation, while more recent analyses (Thompson and Vincent 2010; Budd 2021) demonstrate how control and surveillance in digital workplaces similarly undermine autonomy. This suggests that alienation today is less about sheer hours than about dispossession of agency, a theme increasingly corroborated by ethnographies of gig and platform labour.
Later theorists expand this: Fraser (2014; 2018) highlights the systemic undervaluation of reproductive labour; Graeber (2018) contends that much contemporary employment consists of “bullshit jobs”; and Gorz (1999) envisioned a post-work society via working-time reduction, though this vision remains contested. Hochschild (1997) shows how emotional labour colonises the private sphere, while Federici (2012) and Weeks (2011) emphasise the politics of unpaid and reproductive labour as central to freedom. In line with Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities approach, the challenge is to treat labour not merely as endurance but as a domain where agency, creativity, and human flourishing can be realised (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000). Empirical studies show that when organisations integrate participatory decision-making and invest in skills development, workers experience heightened purpose and resilience (Gallie 2013; Budd 2021). Conversely, precarity prevents long-term planning and corrodes social reproduction, particularly along gendered and class lines. Thus, the horizon for flourishing requires reconceiving labour in distributive and qualitative terms - not just a matter of productivity but of justice, recognition, and dignity.
3. Beyond Balance: Capabilities, Policy, and Future Directions
While the modern ideal of work–life balance is important, it cannot alone resolve the deeper dilemma. What matters is not simply separating working hours from personal time but cultivating capabilities and enhancing one’s state of being within, and not merely outside, labour. This requires recognising work not only quantitatively (time spent) but qualitatively (nature, intensity, autonomy). To reimagine labour as more than a commodity is to reclaim it as a sphere of freedom, creativity, and dignity. Here the capabilities approach provides a normative anchor, stressing that labour should be evaluated not only by market productivity but by the substantive freedoms it enables - self-respect, affiliation, imagination, and the capacity to plan one’s life (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000).
Policy responses illustrate both potential and limits. France’s 2017 “right to disconnect” obliges large firms to negotiate digital disconnection policies - though it constitutes a duty to bargain rather than a direct right to switch off, and enforcement remains uneven (Hopkins 2024; Dima 2020). Germany’s Kurzarbeit subsidises wages during reduced hours, addressing both quantity and intensity - but it is primarily designed for cyclical downturns rather than a structural reorganisation of labour (OECD/IMF 2021; Casey 2023). The EU’s 2019 Work-Life Balance Directive mandates paternity leave, carers’ leave, and flexible working - though transposition varies (EU 2019). Japan’s 2018 Work Style Reform Laws cap overtime and mandate rest intervals to curb karoshi - a culturally specific crisis of death by overwork, though enforcement remains weak (Matsumoto, Kaneita, Itani, Otsuka 2023). Nordic parental leave and care infrastructures valorise reproductive labour, though tied to high-tax, welfare-based regimes not easily generalised globally. These reforms demonstrate partial progress but do not dislodge the deeper commodification of labour that underpins modern capitalism.
In this light, Bauman (2000) on liquid modernity, Boltanski
and Chiapello (2005) on capitalism’s new spirit, and Hardt and Negri (2000;
2004) on immaterial labour - albeit contested - demonstrate how transformations of
work blur boundaries between production and life, making the rethinking of
work-life relations more urgent (Fraser 2014; Weeks 2011). Taken together,
these examples show that policy can mitigate excesses but cannot by itself
overcome structural contradictions: only a normative shift toward capabilities
and human flourishing can achieve a sustainable resolution. Recent
contributions reinforce this claim: Huws (2014) demonstrates how digitalisation
reconfigures value extraction into everyday life, while Srnicek (2017)
highlights platform capitalism’s tendency to colonise personal time. Meanwhile,
De Stefano (2016) argues that the “gig economy” institutionalises dependency
without security, exacerbating precarity. Ultimately, the challenge is not just
managing work-life balance but redefining labour itself as a constitutive
element of life, embedded in human dignity and collective justice.
End.
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Kho, Mu-Jeong. (2025, August 18). Work as Life, Life as Work: Rethinking the Limits of Work–Life Balance in the Twenty-First Century [Blog article]. IPEAD Insights: Letters on Economics, Politics, and Philosophy [online]. Series 2025-04. Retrieved from https://mujeongkho.blogspot.com/2025/08/work-as-life-life-as-work-rethinking.html [PDF download]
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