<sarcasm>Yes, it's true: before work was invented everyone lived in their own filth and starved all the time because work hadn't been invented yet. </sarcasm>
Beyond jokes, my intention here is to clarify what is meant by antiwork. Antiwork does not mean that a world that has abolished work would see people live in filth and starve. In a world that has abolished work, people will still farm, clean, teach, provide medicine, take out fires, et cetera. Antiwork means the revolutionary abolition of the world of work and all that entails: a waged-labor, a division of labor between waged work and house work, alienation, bullshit jobs, a division between leisure and waged work, compulsion to work or starve, et cetera. Some people call this degrowth, others communism, still others anarchy.
So:
What is work?
Work is a lot of things. For starters, it developed historically from feudal times and had since evolved in its current form in the capitalist mode of production. Within the context of the capitalist mode of production work is waged-labor or reproductive (or house) work and is defined by divisions and alienations. These include a division of labor between waged work and house work, alienation, a division between leisure and waged work, and a compulsion to work or starve. That last one is important. Working people today are free to not work, or starve. This is the freedom that work grants us.
Will people starve and live in filth?
No. Antiwork does not mean that a world that has abolished work would see people live in filth and starve. In a world that has abolished work, people will still farm, clean, teach, provide medicine, take out fires, et cetera.
Will people be bored without work?
I think it's more accurate to say people will be bored by work. A world that has abolished work will still see people that keep themselves busy. Historically speaking, during the Age of Enlightenment, it was the leisure class that didn't do work that was able to make all sorts of exciting and revolutionary ideas about science and art. They won the right to not work because they were privileged due to their wealth. If everyone was able to free themselves from the drudgery of work, what wonders could they achieve?
I expect this post to be a sort of living document. Please feel free to ask questions and I'll try to answer it in the post. ___
Australia gives workers right to ignore bosses’ after-hours calls, emails
Australia gives millions of workers 'right to disconnect'
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-australia-millions-workers-disconnect.html
Australia gave millions of workers the legal right to "disconnect" on Monday, allowing them to ignore unreasonable out-of-hours calls, emails and texts from their bosses.
corporations colluding to raise prices = freedom, workers organizing to raise wages = socialism
Bromley: Cleaner 'wins' holiday after bosses ban fundraiser cash
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clywd1l0j58o
He was not allowed to accept a GoFundMe reward of £3,000 raised by members of the community.
Error - Invidious
https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=kehnIQ41y2o
Why work is so terrible and why it must be destroyed before it destroys us
https://theslowburningfuse.wordpress.com/2024/07/20/why-work-is-so-terrible-and-why-it-must-be-destroyed-before-it-destroys-us-2/
It has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself; a convenient belief to those who live on the wealth of others —William Morris, Useful Work vs Useless Toi…
David Graeber on a Fair Future Economy
David Graeber on a Fair Future Economy
https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=7YynqVvgZYI
David Graeber is an anthropologist, a leading figure in the Occupy movement, and one of our most original and influential public thinkers. He comes to the RSA to address our current age of ‘total bureaucratization’, in which public and private power has gradually fused into a single entity, rife with rules and regulations, whose ultimate purpose is the extraction of wealth in the form of profits. David will consider what it would take, in terms of intellectual clarity, political will and imaginative power – to conceive and build a flourishing and fair future economy, which would maximise the scope for individual and collective creativity, and would be sustainable and just. Follow the RSA on Twitter: twitter.com/thersaorg Like the RSA on Facebook: facebook.com/thersaorg
Writer Alarmed When Company Fires His 60-Person Team, Replaces Them All With AI
https://futurism.com/the-byte/company-replaces-writers-ai
As the last man standing, he was tasked with fixing-up all the AI-generated articles that once would've been composed by dozens of writers.
