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The mythlogy of work and other thoughts on the growing anti-work movement
Link information
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- Title
- The Mythology of Work
- Authors
- CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective
- Published
- Sep 3 2018
- Word count
- 3330 words
I'm sympathetic to the anti-work movement. I certainly receive my share of stress and anxiety from the daily grind. I would love to walk away from it to pursue my passions, art and discovery and travel and leisure. I'm a "knowledge worker" — I sit at a desk and write software that doesn't particularly enrich the world. Nothing would collapse if I were removed from the equation (apart from my own livelihood).
But what I don't understand is how anti-work advocates like CrimethInc. expect essential infrastructure to function in the absence of extrinsically motivated hard manual labor. If we all quit our jobs to pursue nobler ideals, who will unclog sewage lines? Who will collect trash and maintain landfills? Who will clean public restrooms and slaughter livestock and fill potholes? Why would anyone choose these vocations in the absence of the profit motive?
Try as I might, I can't envision any great anti-work revolution resulting in less than societal collapse. I'm all for smaller, tight-knit communities where people grow their own food and share resources. But personally? I'm not going to break my back building a house for somebody, and I don't want some unskilled volunteer crew improvising a construction project for me either. If I'm quitting my job to pursue a better life for myself, the life I'm seeking does not involve gardening, plumbing, electrical maintenance, or any of the other tasks that I'm happy to pay professionals to do on my behalf today. If the cost of leaving work is that I end up doing different, harder, work out of new necessity, that is a major step backwards as far as I'm concerned.
I think the anti-work mindset undervalues the enormous collective effort required to keep society functioning. If that effort stops, everything stops. It would not be a gradual decline, it would collapse rapidly like a house of cards. Frankly, for all its faults (and they are legion), capitalism has greatly elevated the quality of life of the vast majority of people. I don't see a way to throw out the bathwater without losing the baby too.
I see your point about the functioning of society, and I don't disagree entirely. That said, the /r/antiwork wiki's frequently asked questions section offers the following in relation to work and societal function:
"If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure. That's not how we define it though. We're not against effort, labor, or being productive. We're against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state: Against exploitative economic relations, against hierarchical social relations at the workplace.".
Granted, this is very broad and doesn't explicitly address the points you made about the "undesirable" work (which I think is a valid criticism), and I'd like to dive deeper into anti-work theory about this because it does address this. Bob Black argues in his essay, The Abolition of Work,
"Third — other things being equal — some things that are unsatisfying if done by yourself or in unpleasant surroundings or at the orders of an overlord are enjoyable, at least for a while, if these circumstances are changed. This is probably true, to some extent, of all work. People deploy their otherwise wasted ingenuity to make a game of the least inviting drudge-jobs as best they can. Activities that appeal to some people don’t always appeal to all others, but everyone at least potentially has a variety of interests and an interest in variety. As the saying goes, “anything once.” Fourier was the master at speculating how aberrant and perverse penchants could be put to use in post-civilized society, what he called Harmony..." "...Small children who notoriously relish wallowing in filth could be organized in “Little Hordes” to clean toilets and empty the garbage, with medals awarded to the outstanding. I am not arguing for these precise examples but for the underlying principle, which I think makes perfect sense as one dimension of an overall revolutionary transformation. Bear in mind that we don’t have to take today’s work just as we find it and match it up with the proper people, some of whom would have to be perverse indeed. If technology has a role in all this it is less to automate work out of existence than to open up new realms for re/creation."
From the positions of individualist anarchism and post-Situationist theory, Black posits that when we abandon the capitalist model of work, the nature of work will change. The nature of work changing removes the dominating features found in capitalist modes of production, and can transform work into what Black would call a "ludic conviviality, commensality".
A more digestible explanation of this is as follows:
"A time-and-motion engineer watching a bear near a berry patch would not know when to punch his clock. Does the bear start working when he walks to the berry patch, when he picks the berry, when he opens his jaws? If the engineer has half a brain he might say the bear makes no distinction between work and play. If the engineer has an imagination he might say that the bear experiences joy from the moment the berries turn deep red, and that none of the bear’s motions are work."
-- Fredy Perlman
Furthermore, in Black's essay For a World Absolutely Other:
"When asked, “But if we destroy work, how will we eat?”, all one can say is, “We will figure that out as we go along.” And, of course, that is not satisfying for those who want easy answers. But if our desire is to make our lives our own, and if this requires a world that is absolutely other than the social world in which we live, we cannot expect to have the words for that world. Where would we find them here, where even the primitivists must resort to economic comparisons and an accounting of hours of work to valorize their utopia? As we destroy the old world and experiment with new ways to live, the words will come, if they are desired. Their shadows are sometimes visible in poetry, but if we realize our lives poetically, will we even still desire the words?"
This is a common retort in revolutionary politics, it's nearly impossible to project how society will form around a system we have yet to see implemented. That said, I don't agree with Black's assertions here. I believe that societal infrastructure and systems are needed to keep some basic utilities functioning. I also believe that we need to take all of those roles out of the hands of capital, and place it into the hands of the people. Hand-in-hand, I also think that in an effort to address climate change, this socialist state could whittle away at unnecessary work. This is addressed in the aptly named essay, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
From a socialist, anti-work perspective we can transform the manner of work in the same vein as Black, but also incorporate a civic duty element into the societal structure. More practically, we can offer more pay, better benefits, and more time off.
I'm pretty sure lots of people will jump right through this comment, interpret antiwork literally and pose objections in the vein of but how can anything get done without work? The term "antiwork" is catchy but I wonder if it creates more trouble than it helps. How many people will just look at it with disgust and run away?
Many, many people will do as you say. :) We can't help people who don't read past the headlines, but some will read the comment. Branding is important, and we (Leftists) need to embrace eloquent messaging, but Leftist thought is also deeply rooted, storied and heavily debated. Getting too specific risks being secular and segmenting a big-tent movement like this one.
We can only hope that folks like @lou outnumber the others :).
Edit: @lou, how would you change the messaging of the anti-work movement?
I was thinking about this. A name change would go a long way. The problem is coming up with something that is more accurate, while preserving the punch and subculture aspect. Something like "work reform" kinda sounds like an improvement of work instead of rebuilding from the ground up. I don't think I'm competent enough for this. But antiwork inevitably sends the message that they oppose progress and productive activity as a whole. Which is, of course, absurd, and not what antiwork is really about.
The article I linked is an excerpt from CrimethInc.'s Work, a "376-page analysis of contemporary capitalism." This is a good synopsis of anti-work thought from the Anarchist, anti-Capitalist perspective, and strives to refute the most common responses from reactionaries. Furthermore, it is relatable for the average wage laborer; the mentioned myths are persistent.
Anti-work ideas (and Leftist ideas in general) are experiencing a renaissance; social media is enabling workers to share in common struggles. The subreddit /r/antiwork is at the center of this revival, and has accumulated over 1.2 million subscribers. "Inhabit: Territories" recently published a piece that does a decent job explaining how /r/antiwork has enabled a swelling community to lament and search for answers and action in response to their disadvantaged position. The subreddit (along with the movement in general) has also received coverage from mainstream outlets including Business Insider and Slate. Most recently, the anti-work movement has received coverage for allegedly accessing or hacking internet exposed receipt printers to print anti-work propaganda.
The concept of anti-work is a more "radical" extension of the "Great Resignation", both of which emerged through the catalyst of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the anti-work crowd, the emergence of anti-work ideas has been a long time coming. Proponents for direct action (or inaction) against the capitalist class point to decades of increasing income inequality, wage stagnation, union busting, and other maladies of the wage economy.
I'm of the opinion that the anti-work movement will continue to grow, even as wages "correct". Workers saw the true possibility an unburdened life offers, and they've found ways to preserve that position. It just so happens that Capitalism robs people of this. I don't agree with all tenants of the anti-work movement. It's a big-tent anti-Capitalist movement so Socialists and Communists are more than welcome, but the Anarchist roots do clash with other Leftist thought. I personally hope that this movement continues beyond the digital realm and inflicts real change rather than reformism and "progressive improvements" that only serve to strengthen the capitalist class.
What are your thoughts on the anti-work movement?
I think a "mythology of work" that this article buys into is that it's all or nothing, starting with the opening question: "what if nobody worked?" This seems like too binary a way to think about it.
The article also ignores history: "everything got done without work." Oh really? You think farmers didn't work? What do you think "women's work" was? (Not to mention ignoring slavery.)
It seems better to think about this as a choice between paid and unpaid work, and it's one everyone makes all the time, at least implicitly. For example, you could go to a restaurant, you can buy prepared food at a grocery store, or you could buy ingredients and cook for yourself. If you don't depend on someone else's paid labor, you or someone in your family will end up doing it. (Or for non-essentials, maybe you go without.)
Similarly, there is day care, there are stay-at-home parents, and sometimes there is grandma. (That is, there are informal childcare arrangements, but they depend on family or close friends, since it's a high-trust job.)
It seems like the long-term trend has been moving away from unpaid work? Two-income households became more common than one-income households among married couples. (At least, younger ones.)
Will we see more stay-at-home parents? I think a reversal would be against current trends, but it's possible. More traditional housework could be done at home. And this isn't going full Amish, either. Cooking yourself isn't growing food yourself. You can garden as a hobby without relying on it for most of your food. In a rural area, you could have a hobby farm but still use a tractor. There are a lot intermediate points where some work is paid and some is unpaid.
Some kind of intermediate point seems more likely than an extreme. Giving up the benefits of modern civilization is too tough, even for people into that sort of thing. You can go off grid but you're not going to make your own electronics. Farmers need hardware stores and, usually, gasoline. (I guess they're starting to make electric tractors?)
And there's a basic contradiction here. Do you want to give up paid work in order to work harder? Most people aren't into that. Doing farm work as a kid is a good argument for going to college.
The most common way to get to a zero-income household is retirement. When to retire is a complicated decision depending on wealth, health, how you feel about your job, how handy you are and how willing to do your own housework and maintenance, how your other family members feel about working, your willingness to accept a lower standard of living, and so on.
To me this suggests that working when you're young is unlikely to go away. But hopefully more people will retire earlier because they want to, rather than because of health problems or because they can't find paid work that suits them? We can hope.
I did retire early, and one reason I support universal basic income is that I know I've been lucky and it seems inconsistent not to support that for other people. But I expect that would mean most people keep working while they're young (perhaps taking breaks) and hopefully get to retire earlier, after they've saved up enough. The idea is to turn hard choices about working into easier ones.
I think you're framing your initial premise with the capitalist concept of work. Leftists argue that without a dominating structure for work to form around, the nature of work is starkly different. Farming, "women's work", and staples of pre-industrial and pre-capitalist societies don't conform to the work that anti-work opposes.
Sure there was feudalism and other societal or market forms that society functioned on, but before that, where were the bosses? The managers? The whip crackers? Anti-work does not mean being anti-effort, idleness isn't bad, but anti-work prescribes a life that isn't subordinated to wage slavery in order to simply survive.
We can differentiate between paid vs unpaid labor until we are blue in the face. The distinction is not the pay, it is the form of work. All of your (valid in their own frame) anecdotes are rooted from a Capitalist perspective in a Capitalist system. Anti-work is anti-capitalist and seeks to abandon this framework which is exploitative and oppressive. Anti-capitalism and much of Leftist thought in general is binary, because the current system would not permit its implementation. Revolutionary politics tends to be absolute.
As I stated in another comment, from /r/antiwork's FAQ:
"If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure. That's not how we define it though. We're not against effort, labor, or being productive. We're against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state: Against exploitative economic relations, against hierarchical social relations at the workplace."
Okay, I get that they have their own meaning for "work," but this seems like a step towards having an ideological jargon that ordinary people won't understand, and I think might lead to some confusion, even among advocates, to the extent it disagrees with the ordinary idea of "work." (We see that in physics where "work" has a specialized meaning and educators need to spend time making its meaning clear.)
Even if you want to stick with the jargon, for clarity, technical terms should be explained. In this specialized usage, what kinds of (ordinary) work do they object to? I looked at the FAQ and it doesn't specifically say, but I think "paid work" might be close? You can bake a pie for yourself or your family or for strangers in the marketplace, and if you're doing it for the market, it's usually for pay.
Edit: by the way, having an FAQ is a very good thing. I think it might be fleshed out a bit, though.
I spoke about the branding issues in another comment and I agree, jargon can be detrimental. :) So, if you apply the prior mentioned definition, we can infer that the anti-work movement objects to jobs that are structured under Capitalism and the state. You don't need either of those to bake a pie or sell it. Production doesn't end when work (according to this definition) ends. Perhaps I'm not understanding your question or hangup? Addressing the last part, being paid doesn't mean Capitalism, selling or trading your pie doesn't mean Capitalism. So we can do all of that while abolishing domineering structures with Capitalism.
Well, this is getting deeper into jargon. I think most people would say that markets are pretty central to capitalism? You have money, supply and demand, and so on. All that economics 101 stuff is present in a farmer's market. I guess, really technically, owning a kitchen means you have a form of capital that you can use to bake a pie. This has been probably been discussed for hundreds of years, but as with other philosophical terms, if you have your own take on it then you can always define it for clarity.
But I think that instead of defining abstractions in terms of other abstractions, giving examples of what kinds of work people are against and what kinds are okay would work better. Would it be more accurate to say they are against people having jobs? Are all jobs "domineering structures" or just some of them?
I've defined the anti-work movement's take on work a few times now. If you're looking for concrete in the abstract of philosophy, politic, and economics you're not going to find much. Anti-work calls for the abolition of all work. Work in Capitalism exists in an exploitative, oppressive system. I'm not sure I can break it down much more than that. I feel you're being overly simplistic and somewhat diminutive when you assert that anti-work thought is just against "having jobs" after I've explained in several comments, in detail, the ideals of anti-work. I am just repeating myself at this point so I'll end it here. If you have any more questions about anti-work concepts, the /r/antiwork library has a ton of reading materials to indulge. :)
For this I have two questions:
"Sure there was feudalism... but before that, where were the bosses?" Which feudal system are you referring to in which part of the world? Do you mean European style feudalism? (And even then, do you mean the style of the Late Roman Empire/Early Eastern Roman Empire? Carolingian feudalism? Holy Roman Empire?) Chinese Feudalism? South Asian Feudalism? American Feudalism? African Feudalism?
Which earlier system is this in reference to, in what location, in what time period?
When I speak of feudalism, I speak of the Marxian definition. Generally, "the power of the ruling class (the aristocracy) in their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom and principally by means of labour, produce and money rents." Marx drew these conclusions from European style feudalism, I'm not sure if he would be one to specify though. I'm not sure the bearing of your line of questioning? Is this significant?
As for the earlier system, I refer to the hunter-gatherer society prior to the further development of the division of labor and the creation of surplus value. There's a lot more than just feudalism and hunter-gather, but from a Marxist-Leninist perspective any market that accommodates the creation of surplus value (post hunter-gather) is some form of feudalism or another.
Each of these different feudal systems had different ways of defining work and different ways to define hierarchical power relationships. The South Asian/Middle Eastern world, for example, largely defined power through religious authority, while Chinese power derived roughly through the Mandate of Heaven. This affects the idea of employment and labor, mostly because in each of these systems surplus labor was allocated differently by different guiding philosophies.
Division of Labor and the creation of surplus value occurred in many societies throughout the world independently of each other. I hesitate to reach back to hunter-gatherer societies myself, or that far back at all, to advance any cause. That said I am not a Marxist.
Thanks for taking the time to break that down, and I'm going to do some reading on other historical economic forms.