Showing revision #7267b1b8 of page anti-work

Kill The God of Work and All His Clergy

I'd say by far the most impactful recent development in anarchy is anti-work - the idea of completely rejecting the notion of work. Anti-work ideas have been steadily gaining traction since the 1980s, starting in small anarchist circles, and now taking off explosively in mainstream culture. Millions of people around the world have suddenly found themselves exposed to this very anarchist concept.

This has especially been evident during the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps because millions of workers have seen first-hand just how disposable their lives are to their employers, who have in countless cases openly sacrificed them to the plague rather than risk putting a dent in their bottom line.

Sadly, like any subversive idea that suddenly finds itself in the spotlight, a lot of opportunists have been willfully misrepresenting what anti-work is and trying to obscure its post-left anarchist roots. A steady line of communists and liberals have been trying to appropriate this very anarchist idea and make it line up with their decidedly pro-work 19th century ideologies.

Anti-work isn't merely the rejection of work under capitalism as the reds would have you believe, or the push for better working conditions and nicer bosses as the liberals are pretending, it's a wholesale rejection of work in all its forms, whoever the boss is, whatever the form of remuneration and whatever the social or economic system in place happens to be.

Anyone who claims otherwise is an entryist trying to water down anarchist ideas until they're so insipid that they become plausibly compatible with the stale ideological dogma of whatever political program they adhere to.

The protestant work ethic has long had a stranglehold on this global civilization, traumatizing all of us into seeing productivity as the universal metric of worth. Those who are perceived to be hard-workers are accepted warmly by society, while those who lack a strong work ethic or the ability to toil away in menial, pointless servitude their entire lives are demonized as "lazy no-good layabout bums" and promptly discarded by their friends, their educators, their families, their government.

Despite common (deliberate) misconceptions, being anti-work doesn’t mean wanting to cease all physical exertion, it means nurturing a new way of life based on play rather than work.

The word "play" has likewise been demonized by workerist society as being an inappropriate activity for anyone of working age, because play eats into our productivity as workers and the potential profits we can generate for our bloodthirsty bosses.

My father started regularly shaming me for "wasting time" playing as soon as I turned 12. Children are expected to immerse themselves in a 12 - 18 year work-training program (school) that comes with daily homework, to ensure everyone is conditioned to see their time not as their time, but as a commodity to be exploited exclusively by their future bosses.

In a world revolving around work, the economy is venerated - treated as a hallowed, godly being. Every moment we spend engaged in play, in idleness or in unprofitable creative pursuits is a penny we steal from the almighty economy. Anyone who lacks the will or capability to keep up their productivity is thus seen as sinning against the true deity of our age. The economy is our one true god and has been for decades. And he's a vengeful god. Anyone who sins against him will be pushed into the gutters of society by his clergymen and left to die.

The anti-work movement was spawned in the late 20th century by anarchist Bob Black. Black spent years of his life pushing back against the conservative 19th century notions of productivity, industrialism and human-commoditization that came from both capitalist and communist (including anarcho-communist) scholars.

Bob Black:

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. [...]

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx’s wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists — except that I’m not kidding — I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work — and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs — they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They’ll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don’t care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.

A workerist is any person who advocates for ideologies, systems and lifestyles that revolve around work. This includes every liberal, rightist, socialist, democratic socialist, social democrat, centrist, communist and fascist in the world. These are all staunchly workerist, industrial ideologies that strive to sell us the idea that humans and other animals exist to work the machines, to extract resources and manufacture goods for the market, to be loyal servants to the revered productive forces. They all see the world through the same productivity-oriented lens, only with the tint slightly altered.

When Bob Black wrote "The Abolition of Work" in 1985 and called for "a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance", he wasn't proposing we give work a glossier tint to make it more democratic or financially rewarding, he was proposing we part with work in totality.

Being anti-work is desiring to bulldoze the offices, warehouses, farms, construction sites, restaurants and supermarkets that hold us all captive, push it all into a giant pile of glittering rubble, light a brilliant bonfire and sing and dance and fuck all night as the sweet fumes of a million copiers and filing cabinets fill the air.

Anti-work is the wholesale rejection of an obscenely traumatic and perverse way of life that we've been collectively conditioned into accepting as normal almost from birth.

So what happens after the bonfire dies down and we depart a work-based existence for a play-based one?

Bob Black:

Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.


Source code

I'd say by far the most impactful recent development in anarchy is anti-work - the idea of completely rejecting the notion of work. Anti-work ideas have been steadily gaining traction since the 1980s, starting in small anarchist circles, and now taking off explosively in mainstream culture. Millions of people around the world have suddenly found themselves exposed to this very anarchist concept. 

This has especially been evident during the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps because millions of workers have seen first-hand just how disposable their lives are to their employers, who have in countless cases openly sacrificed them to the plague rather than risk putting a dent in their bottom line.

Sadly, like any subversive idea that suddenly finds itself in the spotlight, a lot of opportunists have been willfully misrepresenting what anti-work is and trying to obscure its post-left anarchist roots. A steady line of communists and liberals have been trying to appropriate this very anarchist idea and make it line up with their decidedly pro-work 19th century ideologies.

Anti-work isn't merely the rejection of work under capitalism as the reds would have you believe, or the push for better working conditions and nicer bosses as the liberals are pretending, it's a wholesale rejection of work in all its forms, whoever the boss is, whatever the form of remuneration and whatever the social or economic system in place happens to be. 

Anyone who claims otherwise is an entryist trying to water down anarchist ideas until they're so insipid that they become plausibly compatible with the stale ideological dogma of whatever political program they adhere to.

The protestant work ethic has long had a stranglehold on this global civilization, traumatizing all of us into seeing productivity as the universal metric of worth. Those who are perceived to be hard-workers are accepted warmly by society, while those who lack a strong work ethic or the ability to toil away in menial, pointless servitude their entire lives are demonized as "lazy no-good layabout bums" and promptly discarded by their friends, their educators, their families, their government.

Despite common (deliberate) misconceptions, being anti-work doesn’t mean wanting to cease all physical exertion, it means nurturing a new way of life based on play rather than work. 

The word "play" has likewise been demonized by workerist society as being an inappropriate activity for anyone of working age, because play eats into our productivity as workers and the potential profits we can generate for our bloodthirsty bosses. 

My father started regularly shaming me for "wasting time" playing as soon as I turned 12. Children are expected to immerse themselves in a 12 - 18 year work-training program (school) that comes with daily homework, to ensure everyone is conditioned to see their time not as their time, but as a commodity to be exploited exclusively by their future bosses.

In a world revolving around work, the economy is venerated - treated as a hallowed, godly being. Every moment we spend engaged in play, in idleness or in unprofitable creative pursuits is a penny we steal from the almighty economy. Anyone who lacks the will or capability to keep up their productivity is thus seen as sinning against the true deity of our age. The economy is our one true god and has been for decades. And he's a vengeful god. Anyone who sins against him will be pushed into the gutters of society by his clergymen and left to die.

The anti-work movement was spawned in the late 20th century by anarchist Bob Black. Black spent years of his life pushing back against the conservative 19th century notions of productivity, industrialism and human-commoditization that came from both capitalist and communist (including anarcho-communist) scholars.

Bob Black:

>Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.  [...]

>Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx’s wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists — except that I’m not kidding — I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work — and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs — they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They’ll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don’t care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working. 

A workerist is any person who advocates for ideologies, systems and lifestyles that revolve around work. This includes every liberal, rightist, socialist, democratic socialist, social democrat, centrist, communist and fascist in the world. These are all staunchly workerist, industrial ideologies that strive to sell us the idea that humans and other animals exist to work the machines, to extract resources and manufacture goods for the market, to be loyal servants to the revered productive forces. They all see the world through the same productivity-oriented lens, only with the tint slightly altered.

When Bob Black wrote "The Abolition of Work" in 1985 and called for "a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance", he wasn't proposing we give work a glossier tint to make it more democratic or financially rewarding, he was proposing we part with work in totality. 

Being anti-work is desiring to bulldoze the offices, warehouses, farms, construction sites, restaurants and supermarkets that hold us all captive, push it all into a giant pile of glittering rubble, light a brilliant bonfire and sing and dance and fuck all night as the sweet fumes of a million copiers and filing cabinets fill the air.

Anti-work is the wholesale rejection of an obscenely traumatic and perverse way of life that we've been collectively conditioned into accepting as normal almost from birth.

So what happens after the bonfire dies down and we depart a work-based existence for a play-based one?

Bob Black:

>Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.