Although I don’t necessarily agree with all of it (it seems to point any and all futurists or those interested in technologies potential for liberation as non-libertarian/anarchist) I think it makes this split apparent and its a good one to discuss either way:
There are perhaps two principal, but very different, impulses for an emergent critique of work: firstly, the anti-productivist visions of social relations coming from social movements - most siginificantly ecology - which have encouraged a rethinking of the character of work; and secondly, the cybernetized restructuring of global capital with its jobless recovery and institutionalized levels of unemployment.
As to the appeal of the work abolitionist position and its contents:
The abolitionist appeal is not a project for further integration of the working classes through preservation of jobs at all costs and over-reliance upon parliamentary mediation towards that end. Rather it expresses traditionally anarchic or libertarian sensibilities which journey beyond the reductionist contortion which has seen work come to be equated with jobs. This unconventional approach is made manifest primarily through emphases on creativity, self-determination and conviviality of relations. The category “jobs” is understood as marking a restriction of peoples’ capacities to care for themselves and those within their communal/ecological groupings, and is therefore rejected as a point for radical activist convergence.
Work abolitionism suggests a movement not “of class”, but rather, “against class”, i.e., against the commodification of creativity and performance. Jobs or employment within the “anti-class” milieu refer to the idea that one must sell oneself to any function in order to receive sustenance, i.e., the imperative of wage labor. The category “jobs” speaks to the compulsory character of involvement in production - production enforced via relations of economic and political control and power. Questions of what one is doing are removed given this construction, of course. Work is no longer done for its own sake but for secondary effects, such as wages, which are not characteristic of or inherent to the work itself. It might be said that jobs form a condensation point for complex relations of power around the trading of time for money, or what Zimpel quite poignantly refers to a a “transaction of existential absurdity”.
There is also a discussion of the history of “workers against work” and those who at least sympathized with anti-work efforts:
So, what forms has the organization of “workers against work” taken? Earlier Wobbly (Industrial Workers of the World) demands for a four-hour day may be understood as an expression of opposition to the extension of capitalist control over labor and the reduction of workers to one-dimensional class beings. They suggest a movement for autonomy wherein labor achieves some distance from capital and the extension of control over creativity. The shortened workday might be best understood as the opening of creative time, outside of capitalist discipline and command, and the expansion of time available for such “frivolous” undertakings as bringing about the end of industrial capitalism. In limiting the duration and intensity of the work day, labor asserts its own project counter to that of capital.
The mythic use of the general strike by Wobblies might also be understood in this manner. Anarcho-syndicalists have long argued that for cooperative, community-based ways of living to endure, workers will have to stop producing for Capital and State. Given current political economy, this implies that workers must stop producing, period! In other words, class is only abolished through not working - a general strike. Through the general withdrawal of labor might the megamachine be ground to a halt and left to rust!
Historically, unions had responded to technological changes and increases to productivity with demands for a shortened work week. However, Rifkin reports that the union officials with whom he has spoken are “universally reluctant to deal with the notion that mass labor - the very basis of trade unionism - will continue to decline and may even disappear altogether.” Mainstream unionists have been incapable of any radical rethinking of their politics which might address the crucial transformation in jobs. Such failures to adapt, or even to remember their own radical histories, speak to the difficulties facing workers within traditional unions in the contemporary context.
I don’t necessarily agree with its conclusions which are anti-civilization but I still think the topics that are discussed are worth our attention and its an interesting look at where some of the “greener” folks are coming from. I don’t necessarily consider myself in love with technology (I think Black and others are right to be skeptical of its liberatory potential to some extent though they may go to far in some places) but I do think it has a part to play and perhaps a major part in abolishing work. At least in the long term.
