this post was submitted on 29 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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Reminds me of this bit from an interview with Jimmy Carr.
I think Jimmy's right. Personally I think Maslow's pyramid is backwards, it's exactly the struggle for the bottom tier that fills out the top as a consequence.
In a world where the ground levels of Maslow's hierarchy (physiological needs and safety) are not a given you absolutely need your peers to attain them. Love, esteem and self-actualization follow from it; you work together to achieve a goal and by achieving it you gain connection, (self) respect and the ability to live in accordance with your nature.
Ironically, by having all of your needs taken care of almost by default, life becomes devoid of meaning. We are robbed of the ability to gain self-reliance; any and all prerequisites that deliver what takes care of your needs are outside of our control entirely. How well we are off is mostly a matter of things like happenstance of birth, the current economy, the decisions the company you work for makes, whether or not the bank approves you for a loan, gas prices, food prices, electricity prices, none of which you have any control over.
Before the industrial revolution life was not a cake walk. Even basic things like having enough to eat, basic medical care, clothes, warmth and light were HARD to come by, but it's the struggle that makes it worth it. I realize I'm saying this as a white, heterosexual, pudgy, Western European male. In terms of material and societal wealth I might as well have won the lottery.
In terms of the meaning I find in my life I have lost.
Not even "a charity" but those are fine. A mutual aid network is fulfilling. My community has formed an informal, unorganized mutual aid of sorts. We don't necessarily agree with politics or personalities but when we have something to share, time, labor, food, ideas, a few of us are very responsive. The rest work and have children so they're kind of already plates full, thanks.