this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Antiwork
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For the abolition of work. Yes really, abolish work! Not "reform work" but the destruction of work as a separate field of human activity.
To save the world, we're going to have to stop working! — David Graeber
A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. ...the love of work... Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the economists, and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work. — Paul Lafargue
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. — Karl Marx
In the glorification of 'work', in the unwearied talk of the 'blessing of work', I see the same covert idea as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. — Friedrich Nietzsche
If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves. — Lane Kirkland
The bottom line is simple: all of us deserve to make the most of our potential as we see fit, to be the masters of our own destinies. Being forced to sell these things away to survive is tragic and humiliating. We don’t have to live like this. ― CrimethInc
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So you want no one to work? What do you think will happen to the world if everyone stops working?
Not sure if this is the original intent, but I personally see it as not requiring individuals to work a standard work week to survive. None of this nuance is here so I can't say for sure, but those wanting a minimal life can spend time on skills development, personal endeavours, teaching, volunteering*, occasional gig work, or just vibing with little and being content with getting by.
Those who want more than getting by, which I can only speculate is a lot of people, and those driven to work, can work. The value proposition of work would change drastically, though, as value for types of labour change drastically.
Right now, many of the most well paid jobs are the cushiest. People want them not just because they are the highest paid with best benefits, but because they are low physical labour, flexible, "clean". Meanwhile the jobs people argue nobody would do - customer service, waste management, line work (which very well might be mostly replaced with automation in the next 20 years) - the incentive would need to be way higher because now you aren't working it to live, you're working it to live better.
I know it isn't apples to apples by any stretch, but some of the biggest software used today was made by volunteers working alongside their jobs. A huge part of university teaching is done by contractors with terrible wages and precarious conditions because they just love teaching (and of course other pretty awful reasons for many).
A combination of flipping to worker owned co-operatives to minimize administrative/BS-job waste and give labourers ownership over their labour to keep them invested, alongside a minimum income and regulations to flip wages so that the less desirable the job, the higher the financial incentive, forcing companies to actually cut waste and reduce excess production because labour won't be as ubiquitous, firm regulations to prevent mass wealth accumulation and ensure fair wealth distribution among labourers and allocate funds to industries that meet basic human needs, and embracing automation rather than rejecting it to make up the labour shortage.
All this said - I have no idea if this will work out positively, highly doubtful it could happen at a large scale, recognize there is likely 1000 holes here and new problems to arise, and don't fully believe it's feasible nor that I'm remotely intelligent enough to claim this has any real grounding. Speculative, hopeful, a worthwhile thought experiment to mine for ideas, a place to avoid black-and-white thinking on issues like a 0 hour workweek.
Edit: oh yeah, I asterisked volunteering because many of the volunteer efforts we have now are really extremely valuable for survival and I can't imagine what we see as volunteering now would still be freely provided labour, but I have no ideas what industries would and wouldn't be volunteer driven (I mean, we likely didn't anticipate the biggest and most ubiquitous software projects being entirely volunteer based)
good post. two notes:
that is what antiwork — and thus the meaning of this community — is: the critique of work, where work refers to wage labour and performative toil, as this wholly separate sphere of/from life, and its origins as a system of control, and the psychological, physical and environmental harms it brings. it is not against labour conceptually; it is fundamentally anticapitalist.
this community has a way of ragebaiting bad faith, law-and-order liberals browsing All; who don't read the sidebar, who have fully internalised the Protestant work ethic, and who think 'work' refers to both 'all labour' and 'wage labour', and who think dispossession and wage labour are necessary to prevent everyone from getting depression or turning into Fallout raiders.
political imaginaries don't need to be completely fleshed out ten steps in advance. it's enough just to identify a problem. it's more than enough to start imagining the first steps to solving those problems. you don't need anyone's permission to imagine.
the implementation details are not important at an abstract level. those would reveal themselves as a natural consequence of implementation, and the details would be unique to every social and cultural environment.
I'm a professor so I caveat quite a bit when I'm outside my domain out of habit, I appreciate the notes here and definitely see how folks could come in with highly skewed perspectives against what's possible or what's meant there. The terms here help, thank you!
Alright, I see what you don't want as a community, but what do you want then?
Let's assume for a moment that nobody has to work, so my guess is that most people won't work. How is that society designed? I'm not saying it isn't possible, I personally can't imagine it... mainly because I have never put too much thought into the matter. But I see you have, so I'm curious to learn how you imagine that society.
What are some of the biggest software that we use today that was produced for free?
Do you mean FOSS? Where is that used as a top contender?
Linux powers the majority of servers, supercomputers and embeddeds. Apache HTTP Server and nginx power over 70% of websites, and used to account for almost 100% of all web servers. PHP is used by 80% of websites. MySQL is most likely the datastore for those websites. Git, Subversion, and Mercurial make up the majority of version control systems used for software and research. Python is the language of choice for machine learning and other data sciences. chances are that most websites you connect to via HTTPS are using OpenSSL. Hadoop and Kubernetes powers 'big data'. core protocols like DNS, HTTP, SMTP, TCP/IP were developed as FLOSS. in their respective industries, there's also Android, Audacity, Blender, Firefox, GIMP, InkScape, Krita…
i'm going to preëmpt your use of the word 'free' here. all of this required a great deal of time, effort and infrastructure. developers still need to eat, and that means the money came from somewhere. it is 'free' in the sense that: it is given, not sold; that it was a collaborative volunteer effort; and that you can do whatever you want with it. just because some developers receive some sort of compensation — or work a dayjob and have to survive in a capitalist system — does not mean we need fixed-schedule, ass-in-seats, top-down hostage wage labour to accomplish anything valuable at scale.
Nodejs is a great example of FOSS and a good part of the modern internet is built on that.
Linux as well. You can pay for support, but the software itself is FOSS. It might not have a big share of desktop use, but it's a mainstay on servers.
People can finally work on things that interest them! No more corporate overlords telling you what to produce.
No one WANTS to clean toilets or pick up trash every day, and yet it still needs to be done.
Too bad we don't have any millionaire toilet cleaners or garbage collectors, even though we NEED them.
But that's an entirely different premise than "nobody needs to work"...
Who said "nobody needs to work"?
The actual premise is that your labor shouldn't be exploited to produce products for the sole purpose of producing products, which make a few people rich while you get nothing. If we're working to keep necessary services functioning, thats a different story. We can all do that as a society without a business/corporation telling us to do it.
Literally the post.
Can you screenshot and circle that quote in the OP?
You can't read the title of the post?
"We want the zero hour work week!" Vs "nobody needs to work"
"We want the zero hour work week!" implies a desire to reduce the standard work week to zero hours. It suggests people still want to work and contribute value through their work, just with fewer required work hours.
"Nobody needs to work" is a broader statement that questions whether work itself is necessary. It could be interpreted as meaning that people should not be obligated or required to work at all, and that their basic needs should still be met without contributing labor.
Overall, the first sentence focuses more on reducing work hours while still valuing work itself. The second calls into question whether work is inherently needed for people to live and thrive. Both discuss reducing the role of work, but they have slightly different philosophical implications.
You asked what was said, not what what was implied.
If everyone is entitled to a 0 hour work week, that means they are entitled to do 0 hours of work.
Yes. There are zero places in the original post where it says "nobody needs to work" It says "We want the zero hour work week!".
Thats a totally different thing than "nobody needs to work".
No it isn't.
If everyone is entitled to work 0 hours, then nobody is required to work. They are equivalent.
I guess if nobody wants to do it, the market would have to price that labor much higher to make that happen due to a low supply for a high demand service.
The problem is that companies have more leverage than individuals. How many minimum wage protests have we seen over the years, and they are still getting paid for that. A company is probably going to find someone desperate enough to fill any gap. A person needs to survive, and without an income they become desperate enough to fill any gap.
Usually people with high salaries can bargain and use leverage because they aren't desperate to get a job to survive.
But that's what these antiwork posts are about. If people weren't desperate to survive a lot of problems would sort themselves out.
Please see our FAQ and feel free to ask more questions.
Please see our FAQ and feel free to ask more questions.
everyone would have more time to support each other, pursue their interests, and do other things that really matter.
don't conflate 'work' with 'labour' or 'doing literally anything'.
Um... You wouldn't be able to enjoy anything, you know that right?
Your electricity? Wouldn't work. Your water? Would stop functioning or be poisoned within a week. Uber eats? Lmao, forget about it.
EVERYTHING would grind to a halt.
I don't know why you are being downvoted - the world doesn't magically turn over from volunteering.
Seems people don't understand how the world works and instead believe in a fantasy bubble world where everything works as it currently does with no one needing to bust their ass.
Ive only ever used Uber Eats while working. Without work I'd have more time for gardening
Your water wouldn't work so your garden would die
Can you garden a cow?
Can you garden a doctor?
You'd be surprised ... but cows actually do grow on fields. Just like a lot of medicinal herbs.
oh no! my treats! /s
so, if people don't have the conditions of life held hostage by labour-buyers, the world would end? …why would the water be poisoned? what did i say about conflating 'work' with 'labour' or 'doing literally anything [at all]'?
there would still be people who want to operate public utilities[0]. there would still be electricians. and plumbers. and what about microgrids?
this also wouldn't happen overnight, which you make it sound like it would. or is this like when someone suggests phasing out fossil fuels? and some lemmy.world username says 'if we suddenly abruptly instantly instantaneously directly rapidly CTRL+A-CTRL+X'd all oil in the world right now it'd be just like in the Mad Max!'
less than 27% of paid labour is serving real needs[1]. there is a lot of shit that we don't need, that provides no social value, and that we could do without[2]. the individualist ratrace separates us from our communities, which are perfectly capable of taking care of us, even and *especially* in a crisis[3],[4],[5]. a managerial class is not necessary to operate public utilities[6].
if people want electricity, or running water, they will arrange for it. if absolutely nobody in the community knows how, they find someone who does and they make a deal.
most 'work' would probably be automated. automation is really more viable in a postcapitalist setting because there is no profit incentive getting in the way of the time for innovation to make reliable, longevous systems that aren't intentionally cheap and intended to break within 2 – 5 years.
so, i don't really see how 'EVERYTHING would grind to a halt' unless 'EVERYTHING' is 'precisely the way things are now in whatever the present moment is'.
How is Uber Eats up in there next to electricity and water?
Please see our FAQ and feel free to ask more questions.
All the replies remind me of the WKUK anarchy sketch