Critique of work

Last updated
Since 1870 the amount of hours of waged work have decreased and GDP per capita has increased. Hours of work vs. GDP per capita, OWID.svg
Since 1870 the amount of hours of waged work have decreased and GDP per capita has increased.

Critique of work or critique of labour is the critique of, and/or wish to abolish, work as such, and to critique what the critics of works deem wage slavery. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Critique of work can be existential, and focus on how labour can be and/or feel meaningless, and stands in the way for self-realisation. [1] [4] [3] But the critique of work can also highlight how excessive work may cause harm to nature, the productivity of society, and/or society itself. [5] [6] [7] The critique of work can also take on a more utilitarian character, in which work simply stands in the way for human happiness as well as health. [8] [2] [1] [9]

History

Many thinkers have critiqued and wished for the abolishment of labour as early as in Ancient Greece. [1] [10] [11] [12] An example of an opposing view is the anonymously published treatise titled Essay on Trade and Commerce published in 1770 which claimed that to break the spirit of idleness and independence of the English people, ideal "work-houses" should imprison the poor. These houses were to function as "houses of terror, where they should work fourteen hours a day in such fashion that when meal time was deducted there should remain twelve hours of work full and complete." [11]

Views like these propagated for in the following decades by e.g. Malthus, which led up to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. [11]

Paul Lafargue Lafargue 1871.jpg
Paul Lafargue
Bertrand Russell, writer of In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays Russell1907-2.jpg
Bertrand Russell, writer of In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

The battle of shortening the working hours to ten hours was ongoing between around the 1840s until about 1900. [10] However, establishing the eight-hour working day went significantly faster, and these short-hour social movements aligned against labour, managed to get rid of two working hours between the mid-1880s to 1919. [10] During this epoch, reformers argued that mechanization was not only supposed to provide material goods, but to free workers from "slavery" and introduce them to the "duty" to enjoy life. [10]

While the productive capacity rose enormously with industrialization, people were made busier, while one might have expected the opposite to occur. [10] This was at least the expectation among many intellectuals such as Paul Lafargue. [10] The liberal John Stuart Mill also predicted that society would come to a stage where growth would end when mechanization would meet all real needs. [10] Lafargue argued that the obsession society seemed to have with labour paradoxically harmed the productivity, which society had as one of its primary justifications for not working as little as possible. [1]

Paul Lafargue

In Lafargue's book The Right To Be Lazy, he claims that: "It is sheer madness, that people are fighting for the "right" to an eight-hour working day. In other words, eight hours of servitude, exploitation and suffering, when it is leisure, joy and self-realisation that should be fought for – and as few hours of slavery as possible." [1]

Automation, which had already come a long way in Lafargue's time, could easily have reduced working hours to three or four hours a day. This would have left a large part of the day for the things which he would claim that we really want to do – spend time with friends, relax, enjoy life, be lazy. The machine is the saviour of humanity, Lafargue argues, but only if the working time it frees up becomes leisure time. It can be, it should be, but it rarely has been. The time that is freed up is according to Lafargue usually converted into more hours of work, which in his view is only more hours of toil and drudgery. [1]

Bertrand Russell

Russell's book In Praise of Idleness is a collection of essays on the themes of sociology and philosophy. Russell argues that if the burden of work were shared equally among all, resulting in fewer hours of work, unemployment would disappear. As a result, human happiness would also increase as people would be able to enjoy their newfound free time, which would further increase the amount of science and art. [2] Russell for example claimed that "Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish". [13]

Contemporary era

David Graeber

The anthropologist David Graeber has written about bullshit jobs, which are jobs that are meaningless and do not contribute anything worthwhile, or even damage society. [14] Graeber also claims that bullshit jobs are often not the worst paid ones. [15]

The bullshit-jobs can include tasks like these: [16]

Man with sign that roughly translates to: Bullshit job example from nature: President of the Republic of Slovenia Napisi na protestih v Ljubljani 27. 8., 3. 9. in 10. 9. 2021 34.jpg
Man with sign that roughly translates to: Bullshit job example from nature: President of the Republic of Slovenia

Frédéric Lordon

In Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire , [17] the French economist and philosopher Frédéric Lordon ponders why people accept deferring or even replacing their own desires and goals with those of an organization. "It is ultimately quite strange", he writes, "that people should so 'accept' to occupy themselves in the service of a desire that was not originally their own." [17] Lordon argues that surrender of will occurs via the capture by organizations of workers' "basal desire" – the will to survive.

But this willingness of workers to become aligned with a company's goals is due not only to what can be called "managerialism" (the ways in which a company co-opts individuality via wages, rules, and perks), but to the psychology of the workers themselves, whose "psyches… perform at times staggering feats of compartmentalization." [17] So consent to work itself becomes problematic and troubling; as captured in the title of Lordon's book, workers are "willing slaves."

Franco "Bifo" Berardi

Franco Berardi, an Italian Autonomist thinker, suggests in The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy, [18] that capitalism has harnessed modern desires for autonomy and independence:

No desire, no vitality seems to exist anymore outside the economic enterprise, outside productive labour and business. Capital was able to renew its psychic, ideological and economic energy, specifically thanks to the absorption of creativity, desire, and individualistic, libertarian drives for self-realization.

Knowledge workers, or what Barardi calls the "cognitariat" are far from free of this co-option. People in these jobs, he says, have suffered a kind of Taylorization of their work via the parceling and routinization of even creative activities.

George Alliger

In the 2022 book Anti-Work: Psychological Investigations into Its Truths, Problems, and Solutions, [19] work psychologist Alliger proposes to systematize anti-work thinking by suggesting a set of almost 20 propositions that characterize this topic. He draws on a wide variety of sources; a few of the propositions or tenets are:

Alliger provides a discussion of each proposition and considers how workers, as well as psychologists, can best respond to the existential difficulties and challenges of work.

Guy Debord

One of the founders of the Situationist International in France (which helped inspire the student revolt of 1968), Guy Debord wrote the influential The Society of the Spectacle (La société du spectacle). [20] He suggested that since all actual activity, including work, has been harnessed into the production of the spectacle, that there can be no freedom from work, even if leisure time is increasing. [21] That is, since leisure can only be leisure within the planned activities of the spectacle, and since alienated labour helps to reproduce that spectacle, there is also no escape from work within the confines of the spectacle. [21] [22] Debord also used the slogan "NEVER WORK", which he initially painted as graffiti, and henceforth came to emphasize "could not be considered superfluous advice". [23]

Anti-work ethic

History

Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche187c.jpg
Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche rejected the work ethic, viewing it as damaging to the development of reason, as well as the development of the individual etc. In 1881, he wrote:

The eulogists of work. Behind the glorification of 'work' and the tireless talk of the 'blessings of work' I find the same thought as behind the praise of impersonal activity for the public benefit: the fear of everything individual. At bottom, one now feels when confronted with work—and what is invariably meant is relentless industry from early till late—that such work is the best police, that it keeps everybody in harness and powerfully obstructs the development of reason, of covetousness, of the desire for independence. For it uses up a tremendous amount of nervous energy and takes it away from reflection, brooding, dreaming, worry, love, and hatred; it always sets a small goal before one's eyes and permits easy and regular satisfactions. In that way a society in which the members continually work hard will have more security: and security is now adored as the supreme goddess. [24]

Buckminster Fuller BuckminsterFuller1.jpg
Buckminster Fuller

The American architect, philosopher, designer, and futurist Buckminster Fuller presented a similar argument which rejected the notion that people should be de facto forced to sell their labor in order to have the right to a decent life. [25] [26]

Contemporary era

Particularly in anarchist circles, [27] some believe that work has become highly alienated throughout history and is fundamentally unhappy and burdensome, and therefore should not be enforced by economic or political means. [28] In this context, some call for the introduction of an unconditional basic income [29] and/or a shorter working week, such as the 4-day workweek. [30]

Media

The Idler is a twice-monthly British magazine dedicated to the ethos of "idleness." It was founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney with the intention of exploring alternative ways of working and living. [31]

The largest organized anti-work community on the Internet is the subreddit r/antiwork on Reddit [32] with (as of November 2023) over 2.8 million members, [33] who call themselves "idlers" and call for "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!". [34]

In art

The Swedish Public Freedom Service is a conceptual art project which has been running since 2014, promoting an anti-work message. [35] One of the artists involved argued in relationship to the project that "changes in the last 200 years or so have always been shifts in power, while not much that is fundamental to the construction of society has changed. We are largely marinated in the belief that wage labour must be central." [36]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labour economics</span> Study of the markets for wage labour

Labour economics, or labor economics, seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for wage labour. Labour is a commodity that is supplied by labourers, usually in exchange for a wage paid by demanding firms. Because these labourers exist as parts of a social, institutional, or political system, labour economics must also account for social, cultural and political variables.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Situationist International</span> International organization of social revolutionaries (1957–72)

The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. The intellectual foundations of the Situationist International were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism. Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into a modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sweatshop</span> Workplace that has socially unacceptable working conditions

A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, illegal working conditions. The manual workers are poorly paid, work long hours, and experience poor working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, or uncomfortably/dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging, or underpaid. Workers in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits. The Fair Labor Association's "2006 Annual Public Report" inspected factories for FLA compliance in 18 countries including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, China, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and the US. The U.S. Department of Labor's "2015 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor" found that "18 countries did not meet the International Labour Organization's recommendation for an adequate number of inspectors."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guy Debord</span> French philosopher and Marxist theorist

Guy-Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International. He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.

<i>The Right to Be Lazy</i> 1883 book by Paul Lafargue

The Right to Be Lazy is a book by Paul Lafargue, published in 1883. In it, Lafargue, a French socialist, opposes the labour movement's fight to expand wage labour rather than abolish or at least limit it. According to Lafargue, wage labour is tantamount to slavery, and to fight as a labour movement for the extension of slavery is preposterous. In the book Lafargue proposes the right to be lazy, in contrast to the right to work, which he deems bourgeois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Busy work</span> Work that creates only an illusion of value

Busy work is an activity that is undertaken to pass time and stay busy but in and of itself has little or no actual value. Busy work occurs in business, military and other settings, in situations where people may be required to be present but may lack the opportunities, skills or need to do something more productive. People may engage in busy work to maintain an appearance of activity, in order to avoid criticism of being inactive or idle.

<i>Dérive</i> Unplanned urban exploration tour

The dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, in which participants stop focusing on their everyday relations to their social environment. Developed by members of the Letterist International, it was first publicly theorized in Guy Debord's "Theory of the Dérive" (1956). Debord defines the dérive as "a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances."

Refusal of work is behavior in which a person refuses regular employment.

<i>The Society of the Spectacle</i> 1967 book by Guy Debord

The Society of the Spectacle is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord where he develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle. The book is considered a seminal text for the Situationist movement. Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Graeber</span> American anthropologist and activist (1961–2020)

David Rolfe Graeber was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wage labour</span> Relationship where a worker sells labour to an employer

Wage labour, usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labour market where wages or salaries are market-determined.

A make-work job is a job that is created and maintained at a cost not offset by the job’s fulfilment. Usually having little or no immediate financial benefit such roles can be said to exist for other economic or social-political reasons, for example simply to provide work-experience or maintain a ceremonial function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spectacle (critical theory)</span> View of media, markets and commodities as sovereign, central to Situationist thought

The spectacle is a central notion in the Situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle. In the general sense, the spectacle refers to "the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government which accompanied this reign." It also exists in a more limited sense, where spectacle means the mass media, which are "its most glaring superficial manifestation."

<i>Report on the Construction of Situations</i>

Report on the Construction of Situations is the founding Manifesto of the Situationist International revolutionary organization. The pamphlet was published by Guy Debord in June 1957, and the following month the organization was founded in Cosio d'Arroscia, Italy.

<i>Bullshit Jobs</i> 2018 book by David Graeber

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history and proposes unions and universal basic income as a potential solution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roland Paulsen</span> Swedish sociologist and author (born 1981)

Roland Karl Oscar Ericsson Paulsen is a Swedish author and sociologist. His thesis Empty Labor: Idleness And Workplace Resistance is about people who devote more than half of their work time to private activities, so-called "empty work". The dissertation was published at Cambridge University Press and received international attention from among others The Atlantic, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal.

The six-hour day is a schedule by which the employees or other members of an institution spend six hours contributing. This is in contrast to the widespread eight-hour day, or any other time arrangement. It has also been proposed as a better alternative to the four-day week, another proposed way to reduce working time.

David Graeber was an American anthropologist and social theorist. Unless otherwise noted, all works are authored solely by David Graeber.

A bullshit job or pseudowork is meaningless or unnecessary wage labour which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose. Polling in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands indicates that around 40% of workers consider their job to fit this description.

r/antiwork is a subreddit associated with contemporary labor movements, critique of work, and the anti-work movement. The forum's slogan reads: "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!" Posts on the forum commonly describe employees' negative experiences at work, dissatisfaction with working conditions, and unionization. Various actions that have been promoted on the subreddit include a consumer boycott of Black Friday as well as the submission of fake jobs applications to the Kellogg Company after the company announced plans to replace 1,400 striking workers during the 2021 Kellogg's strike. The popularity of r/antiwork increased in 2020 and 2021, and the subreddit gained 900,000 subscribers in 2021 alone, accumulating nearly 1,700,000 subscribers by the end of the year. It is often associated with other ideologically similar subreddits such as r/latestagecapitalism. r/antiwork has been compared to the Occupy Wall Street movement due to the subreddit's intellectual foundations and decentralized ethos.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lafargue, Paul (2018). The right to be lazy : and other studies. Franklin Classics Trade Press. ISBN   978-0-344-05949-0. OCLC   1107666777.
  2. 1 2 3 https://libcom.org/files/Bertrand%20Russell%20-%20In%20Praise%20of%20Idleness.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  3. 1 2 Frayne, David (2011). Critical Social Theory and the Will to Happiness: A Study of Anti-Work Subjectivities. School of Social Sciences Cardiff University. p. 177. Thinkers such as André Gorz, Bertrand Russell, Herbert Marcuse, and even Marx, in his later writings, have argued for the expansion of a realm of freedom beyond the necessities of labour, in which individuals have more liberty to transcend biological and economic imperatives and be 'free for the world and its culture'
  4. ↑ "Meningslösheten breder ut sig". flamman.se (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-02-10.
  5. ↑ Patrick, Ruth (2012-03-30). "Work as the primary 'duty' of the responsible citizen: a critique of this work-centric approach". People, Place and Policy Online. 6 (1): 5–15. doi: 10.3351/ppp.0006.0001.0002 .
  6. ↑ Weeks, Kathi (2011). The Problem with Work Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Duke University Press. p. 153. [...]it was the successes of the proletarian struggle for shorter hours that provoked capital to mechanize production[...]
  7. ↑ Nässén, Jonas (2012-03-30). "Would shorter working time reduce greenhouse gas emissions? An analysis of time use and consumption in Swedish households". Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. 33 (4): 726–745. doi:10.1068/c12239. S2CID   153675794.
  8. ↑ "Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs". The Guardian . 2018-01-19. Retrieved 2022-03-11. Unsurprisingly, work is increasingly regarded as bad for your health: "Stress … an overwhelming 'to-do' list … [and] long hours sitting at a desk," the Cass Business School professor Peter Fleming notes in his new book, The Death of Homo Economicus, are beginning to be seen by medical authorities as akin to smoking.
  9. ↑ Frayne, David (2011). Critical Social Theory and the Will to Happiness: A Study of Anti-Work Subjectivities. School of Social Sciences Cardiff University. p. 177. Gorz, for example, pointed to the irrationality of a society that strives for full-employment in spite of having developed the technological means to conquer scarcity.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cross. G. social research,Vol 72:No 2: Summer 2005
  11. 1 2 3 Foster, John Bellamy (2017-09-01). "The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society". Monthly Review. 69 (4): 1. doi:10.14452/MR-069-04-2017-08_1. ISSN   0027-0520. [...] Italian cultural theorist Adriano Tilgher famously declared in 1929: "To the Greeks work was a curse and nothing else," supporting his claim with quotations from Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Cicero, and other figures, together representing the aristocratic perspective in antiquity.4
  12. ↑ Lafargue, Paul (2017). Rätten till lättja (in Swedish). Bakhåll. p. 63. ISBN   9789177424727. Antikens filosofer trädde måhända om idéernas ursprung, men de stod enade i sin avsky för arbetet. English: "The ancient philosophers had their disputes upon the origin of ideas, but they agreed when it came to the abhorrence of work."
  13. ↑ Frayne, David (2011). Critical Social Theory and the Will to Happiness: A Study of Anti-Work Subjectivities. School of Social Sciences Cardiff University. p. 177.
  14. ↑ Graeber, David (2019). Bullshit jobs : a theory. Penguin Books. ISBN   978-0-14-198347-9. OCLC   1089773163.
  15. ↑ "5 tecken på att du har ett poänglöst "bullshit-jobb"". Chef (in Swedish). 21 November 2018. Retrieved 2022-02-09. "Struntjobb är jobb vars existens inte kan rättfärdigas ens av dem som utför dem. I stället måste de låtsas att jobbet har någon sorts mening. Detta är strunt-faktorn. Många förväxlar struntjobb med skitjobb, men det är inte alls samma sak. Dåliga jobb är dåliga för att de är tunga eller innebär hemsk arbetsmiljö eller för att lönen suger, men många av de jobben behövs verkligen. Faktum är att ju nyttigare ett jobb är för vårt samhälle, desto lägre är ofta lönen. Medan struntjobben å sin sida ofta är högt respekterade och välbetalda men fullständigt poänglösa. Och människorna som utför dem vet om det", säger David Graeber till amerikanska nättidningen Vox.
  16. ↑ "'I had to guard an empty room': the rise of the pointless job". The Guardian . 2018-05-04. Retrieved 2022-02-09.
  17. 1 2 3 Lordon, Frédéric (2014). Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire. London: Verso. ISBN   978-1781681602.
  18. ↑ Berardi, Franco (2009). The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Semiotext(e). ISBN   978-1584350767.
  19. 1 2 Alliger, George (2022). Anti-Work: Psychological Investigations into Its Truths, Problems, and Solution. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN   978-0367758592.
  20. ↑ Debord, Guy (2002). The Society of the Spectacle . Black & Red. ISBN   978-0934868075.
  21. 1 2 Debord, Debord. Society of the spectacle. Zone books.
  22. ↑ https://ia800506.us.archive.org/11/items/zinelibrary-torrent/ImbecilesGuide.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  23. ↑ "Never Work by Guy Debord 1963". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
  24. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, p. 173
  25. ↑ "The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In". New York: 30. 1970.
  26. ↑ Graeber, David (2018). Bullshit jobs : a theory. London: Penguin. pp. 238–239. ISBN   978-0-241-26388-4. OCLC   1037154843.
  27. ↑ Ford, Nick. "7 Key Concepts for Understanding Anti-Work Theory". Films For Action. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  28. ↑ Peters, Adele (2015-02-02). "Work Is Bullshit: The Argument For "Antiwork"". Fast Company. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  29. ↑ "A Universal Basic Income Is Anti-Work". The Daily Signal. 2016-02-26. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  30. ↑ Lashbrooke, Barnaby. "The 'Anti-Work' Movement Is A Sign Something's Rotten In The Workplace". Forbes . Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  31. ↑ "About". Idler. 2014-08-22. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  32. ↑ Schofield, Daisy (2021-02-15). "Inside the Reddit community calling for the abolition of work". Huck Magazine. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  33. ↑ "Inside the Online Movement to End Work". www.vice.com. 22 December 2021. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  34. ↑ "r/antiwork". reddit. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  35. ↑ "Handelsnytt testar förmedlingen för frihet – Handelsnytt" (in Swedish). 15 April 2019. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  36. ↑ "Frihetsförmedlingen". issuu. Retrieved 2022-02-08.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.