…Or something like that.

Not long after my original linking of this site on my Facebook a friend of mine on there who sees himself an anarcho-capitalist (no, I’m not getting into that) decided to respond (in his own way) to the site:

This website has a stupid title, subheading, given definition of work, use of the word “capitalism” (on the introduction page), and probably premise (what exactly is the premise, if it’s not literally that work is unnecessary and that no one should do it? Work should be reduced to very low levels because it’s icky?).

You can see the thread linked above to see where it went from there and where it is at currently. At the time of typing this sentence I have made several large (dare I say unwieldy) responses to Daniel and others in the thread. As such you can judge for yourself how I did. Get involved if you feel so inclined but try to keep it civil.

Regardless of my disagreements with Daniel (and as the thread proves, there are many) Daniel did raise some valuable points. Such as the lack of more exhaustive definitions and frameworks that I am coming from. Though as both he and I point out, the introduction post wasn’t meant to do that. It was meant to be a quick one-stop post that’ll more-or-less explain things and orientate the reader to what is going on. So I guess an exhaustive account of capitalism and its historical atrocities just wasn’t in the cards at the time.

But that got me to thinking that perhaps it’d be valuable for some here to understand a bit more where I am coming from. I repeat, I am coming from. I’m not speaking for the site or the anti-work position as a whole or the other contributors who will be gracing the site with their words, etc. I only claim these terms, ideas, influences, conclusions and so on for myself and only myself.

With that said, I think a few more terms should be laid out a bit more explicitly.

First, I will address the “given definition of work” part , then “capitalism” and finally a larger case against work (“icky”ness and all).

Given Definition of Work:

First off, I obviously didn’t intend for a rigorous definition by only giving a one-liner and then linking to Bob Back’s The Abolition of Work which was serving as the place from which the definition came from. But let’s look at the definition again and see what we can do to make things clearer:

“…activity that is compulsory via economic and political structures…”

This was, actually just a cheap rip-off of Black’s (probably better, but hey, that’s why it’s a rip-off, right?) definition:

When I say I want to abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimum definition of work is forced labor, that is, compulsory production. Both elements are essential. Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick.

Now, if Daniel had read the link (if you see later on in the thread he claims that it is harder to argue with someone who keeps throwing links at them, so this clarification is for people who feel the same) you would see in the immediate paragraph above the previously quoted one that Daniel’s idea that anti-work may mean anti-effort isn’t credible:

The alternative to work isn’t just idleness. To be ludic is not to be quaaludic. As much as I treasure the pleasure of torpor, it’s never more rewarding than when it punctuates other pleasures and pastimes. Nor am I promoting the managed time-disciplined safety-valve called “leisure”; far from it. Leisure is non-work for the sake of work. Leisure is the time spent recovering from work, and in the frenzied but hopeless attempt to forget about work many people return from vacations so beat that they look forward to returning to work so they can rest up. The main difference between work and leisure is that at work at least you get paid for your alienation and enervation.

So when this site talks about abolishing work, resisting it, envisioning a better world we’re not imagining a life time of being idle and nothing else. What we want isn’t tantamount to nothing ever being built or things not being done. It’s for the concepts of idleness, leisure, play and the ludic life being respected as both concepts and in practice.

What does this mean? In short it means having the time to ourselves to not only reflect on our lives but also having the time to just do nothing. But it’s not nothing forever. We’re not Bartleby, the Scrivener. I don’t think abolishing work will all be fun and games (sadly though it should be, imagine defeating the ruling class through a game of battleship! …No? Okay, moving on then…) and it’ll surely be work at some points. I won’t deny that at some book fairs or during a meeting or something like that it sometimes feels like work. But perhaps a better form. One that is much more guided by our own values (it’s more “honest” to borrow terminology from Daniel) and typically isn’t as tedious.

But still, what are we to do with this seeming contradiction? Well abolishing work also doesn’t mean abolishing effort so thankfully it’s just what effects this effort has on us, the culture’s ideas on effort, what sort of effort we’re giving and so on. It isn’t effort per se’ but certain contexts or situations that lend to over-extension of will or the mind. And when you have societies that are so obsessed with everything being quick, fast, automatic even then you may not get much leisure.

I have taken extra days of leisure after big events if I have the time. Typically after a few days of extra-sleep, extra-slacking and an extra heaving helping of being a do-nothing-particularly-useful I feel better energy-wise.

None of this explains the compulsion involved in the definitions given here though. So to briefly elaborate on that, I believe that the forces of the state and capitalism (more on that here) collaborate in various ways to make it harder for people who want to organize their own lives. People who want to be self-employed, in collectives or co-ops or something else. Which isn’t to say any of these structures or contexts can’t be bad either because they definitely can be. But in any case these are some of the situations or structures I’d rather people have than the current state and corporate mess.

This mess causes lots of artificial barriers to entry such as IP laws, licencing, paying tribute to patent trolls, going up against mega-corporations like Walmart that frequently drive smaller businesses out of town, etc. And not only that but there’s a lot of lobbying from big business to get regulations that’ll benefit them and in effect typically harm the worker’s chances of autonomy.

So that is just a few ways the labor market is artificially constricted and controlled. Particularly in a way so as to make work so much more common than it really should be in better conditions.

To wrap that up I hope that what I have said about what abolishing work is and is not as well as the supposed contradictions that some raised has answered some questions and raised more.

For more on defining work I highly recommend (good parts will be highlighted, fear not, fellow slackers) The Crisis of Work which is a chapter in his book Critique of Economic Reason: A Summary for Trade Unionists and Other Left Activists.

I recommend it because of the most memorable thing that the essay has going for it for me (at least right now before I indulge in a re-read some day perhaps…) is its distinction in different types of work that I find useful.

Here is the first term:

Work for economic ends

This is work done with payment in mind. Here money, that is, commodity exchange, is the principal goal. One works first of all to `earn a living’, and the satisfaction or pleasure one may possibly derive from such work is a subordinate consideration. This may be termed -work for economic ends.

Here we have a fairly obvious definition of work as it stands. Most work that I have done in my life as a 22 year old has been this sort of work. I have labored only to get the money and almost never for the pleasure or enjoyment of the thing itself. Typically I actually despise the thing involved or, at the very least, have only begrudgingly done it as a means to an end. Never as an end itself and certainly not something I would do in my spare time.

Many people, I think, especially in the economy (the US economy that is) probably have this sort of work. This is the work I want abolished on the wholesale. I want working for economic ends alone completely and utterly eradicated inasmuch as abolishing the state and capitalism will get us there.

However strong a stance I am taking here do not confuse it with dogmatism or absolutism. I am open to the possibility of not only being wrong but there being temporary paying activity in a free society that would be used not only for money but would be way more pleasurable relative to today.

On the whole however I find such a scenario very unlikely.

Not only due to the fact that I think free societies tend to have an equalizing factor, it also emphasizes mutual aid and real social-safety nets that are built around individuals in their community who will need. This, as opposed to the bureaucratic and paternalistic government programs. This would make it unlike folks would at the very least subject themselves to such situations.

So while it is possible these sorts of jobs could exist on the margins in a free society, if they ever constitute the majority of a given economy, then I’ll pretty quickly assume something wrong is going on.

Let’s move on to the second term:

Domestic labour and work-for-oneself

This is work done not with a view to exchange but in order to achieve a result of which one is, directly, the principal beneficiary. `Reproductive’ work, that is, domestic labour, which guarantees the basic and immediate necessities of life day after day - preparing food, keeping oneself and one’s home clean, giving birth to children and bringing them up, and so on - is an example of this kind of work. It was and still is often the case that women are made to do such work on top of the work they do for economic ends.

This one is a bit more tricky.

Unlike the other one I could see this form of work existing and to some degree. Though I believe the degree would be reduced due to more equality between what it means for someone to do this type of labor (i.e. a lot of this work is done disproportionately by women). As such I think that this sort of work nominally is okay. With this sort of work its the conditions or context upon which it is taken that really counts.

If people just need to do something that they need to do to survive and it’s just a part of life and not caused by external force and oppressive cultural factors than typically I won’t judge harshly. Perhaps it’s the case that could probably be improved in some way but it’s probably not gonna be as pressing to me as the first form of work if it still existed.

So like I started out saying, this is a bit trickier for me to figure out which way I should definitively feel about it. Here, case studies are crucial and so is the context. Otherwise I will typically feel ill-equipped to criticize or suggest alternatives and improvements (which will probably be the best-case scenario for this sort of work, okay but needing better).

Now for the main event:

Autonomous activity

Autonomous activities are activities one performs freely and not from necessity, as ends in themselves. This includes all activities which are experienced as fulfilling, enriching, sources of meaning and happiness: artistic, philosophical, scientific, relational, educational, charitable and mutual-aid activities, activities of auto-production, and so on.

Here’s the big one folks. This is what I am after. I think a society filled with autonomous activity is the final goal. You could also describe what I desire for a better world in more of Bob Black’s terms, which is to say something like, “productive play” :

…combine the best part (in fact, the only good part) of work — the production of use-values — with the best of play, which I take to be every aspect of play, its freedom and its fun, its voluntariness and its intrinsic gratification, shorn of the Calvinist connotations of frivolity and “self-indulgence”…

I want a society full of that kind of stuff. Gorz has some examples:

Indeed, the same activity - bringing up children, preparing a meal or taking care of our surtoundings, for example - can take the form of a chore in which one is subject to what seem like oppressive constraints or of a gratifying activity, depending on whether one is harrassed by lack of time or whether the activity can be performed at leisure, in co-operation with others and through the voluntary sharing of the tasks involved.

Gorz’s focus on the sharing of tasks to maintain autonomous activity isn’t something I’d necessarily emphasize as much but that’s a minor squabble. In the end Gorz knows what it’s all about.

Take us home, Gorz:

All these activities require `work’ in the sense that they require effort and methodical application but their meaning lies as much in their performance as in their product: activities such as these are the substance of life itself. But this always requires there to be no shortage of time.

(Phew! That took longer than I thought it would just to finish that. So in the interest of whatever brevity I have left look for the second part, “Use of the Word Capitalism” to be forthcoming in a few days!)