this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
254 points (88.5% liked)
Antiwork
498 readers
2 users here now
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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
Sure, Linux is used in super computers, but there's only around 500 of them.
Linux only has around 4% install base compared to Windows.
And I disagree on the not needing ass in seats metaphor you used; plenty of people who create FOSS do so because of a need/desire, yes, but also because that knowledge helps them make money afterwards.
Would you work your whole life to just create FOSS?
Making free software is a means to an end, and that end means recognition and eventually a well paying job.
yes, if it has social value and brings meaning to my life.
you can drop the word 'just': i wouldn't just do any one thing, and neither would most people if given the opportunity to do more than just their 9 to 5.
there is more to life than feeding the mute compulsion for private wealth and fame. the driving force of most people is to be comfortable and to belong, and the two are intertwined. in our current society, private wealth and fame are the path to comfort (it's debateable whether the wealthy have any sense of 'belonging').
a lot of people really do want to do things just for the joy or intellectual stimulation of doing it, and to do so without having the joy sucked out of it by economic imperatives enforced from on high by a nepotic sadomasochist in a suit. there is nothing more humiliating than being forced to play a game you had no part in making, that you can't say say no to, and that exists only as a form of power imposed on you.
I agree that most of us are used and abused by the rich pricks, it's why I joined this community in the first place.
But it's taken to an aburd extreme here where it seems people want to live a care free happy life without burdens, yet at the same time expect life to continue as it currently is with all the benefits we all receive.
Fact is, it won't. If people don't bust their ass, and get paid well for it, most would not do anything of value (I know you said you would work for free, but you're a very very small minority).
Holy cow batman, I appreciate the details, but please don't type novels for responses.
I disagree with your sentiments however, and we'll leave it at that.
So you're including supercomputers and desktops. What about servers and embedded devices? No kernel is more ubiquitous than Linux.
Enterprise servers? Use Unix, which isn't free
Go ahead and Google server OS market share. Educate yourself, I'm not interested in arguing with someone who isn't interested in reality over winning an argument. Sincerely, fuck off.
Lmao... You must be a leftist if you insult people when they don't say anything towards you.
Grow up, kid.
You're the petulant child here. He gave you good points and you hand waived it by saying inane shit.
Linux is powering a great number of servers and embedded devices. It is a fact .
But I get it, you are just a troll and whatever will be said, you'll just ignore and continue to spout bullshit.
So go pay for Unix servers and fuck off.
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.
Well if you're going to pay, might as well use Unix server os
That's the thing though, you don't have to pay, but you have the option on certain distro to have a professional support for your business.