NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE - CRITIQUE OF WORK 314

SHELL - WORK CRITIQUE

A. AFFIRMATIVE CASE ATTEMPTS TO MAKE THE WORKPLACE MORE TOLERABLE

B. WE SHOULD END EMPLOYMENT

Bob Black, the abolition of work, 1992, FringeWare Review, 01:25 Bob Black, PO Box 2159, Albany, NY 12220; http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/dwu/ // acs

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.

C. HARMS OF WORK

1. THE DISCIPLINE OF THE WORKPLACE IS AS OPPRESSIVE AS THE DISCIPLINE OF THE PRISON AND MENTAL HOSPITAL -- AND REINFORCES OPPRESSION IN ALL OF SOCIETY

Bob Black, the abolition of work, 1992, FringeWare Review, 01:25 Bob Black, PO Box 2159, Albany, NY 12220; http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/dwu/ // acs

The degradation which most workers experience on the job is the sum of assorted indignities which can be denominated as "discipline." Foucault has complexified this phenomenon but it is simple enough. Discipline consists of the totality of totalitarian controls at the workplace -- surveillance, rote-work, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching-in and -out, etc. Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital. It is something historically original and horrible. It was beyond the capacities of such demonic dictators of yore as Nero and Genghis Khan and Ivan the terrible. For all their bad intentions, they just didn't have the machinery to control their subjects as thoroughly as modern despots do. Discipline is the distinctively diabolical modern mode of control, it is an innovative intrusion which must be interdicted at the earliest opportunity.

2. BOB BLACK IS RIGHT - ENDING WORK WOULD UNLEASH CREATIVITY AND CRUSH THE LINCHPIN OF MODERN SEXISM

L. Susan Brown, Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, 1993; Does Work Really Work? Kick It Over #35 // acs

Bob Black has it right when he proclaims that "no one should ever work."(6) Who knows what kinds of creative activity would be unleashed if only we were free to do what we desired? What sorts of social organizations would we fashion if we were not stifled day in and day out by drudgery? For example, what would a woman's day look like if we abolished the wage system and replaced it with free and voluntary activity? Bob Black argues that "by abolishing wage-labor and achieving full unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor,"(7) which is the linchpin of modern sexism. What would a world look like that encouraged people to be creative and self-directed, that celebrated enjoyment and fulfillment? What would be the consequences of living in a world where, if you met someone new and were asked what you did, you could joyfully reply "this, that and the other thing" instead of "nothing?" Such is the world we deserve.

3. END OF WORK WOULD END MILITARISM, AS WELL AS THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY CRISES

Bob Black, the abolition of work, 1992, FringeWare Review, 01:25 Bob Black, PO Box 2159, Albany, NY 12220; http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/dwu/ // acs

Next we can take a meat-cleaver to production work itself. No more war production, nuclear power, junk food, feminine hygiene deodorant -- and above all, no more auto industry to speak of. An occasional Stanley Steamer or Model T might be alright, but the auto-eroticism on which such pest-holes as Detroit and Los Angeles depend is out of the question. Already, without even trying, we've virtually solved the energy crisis, the environmental crisis and assorted other insoluble social problems.

D. TRANSITION TO A NON-WORK ALTERNATIVE IS FEASIBLE

1. WORK AS AN INSTITUTION CAN FALL JUST LIKE COMMUNISM DID

Bob Black, 1992; No Future for the workplace, From Friendly Fire, 1992 (Autonomedia, POB 568 Williamsburgh Station, Brooklyn, New York 1211-0568). // acs

The democracy movements worldwide have swept away the small fry. The only enemy is the common enemy. The workplace is the last bastion of authoritarian coercion. Disenchantment with work runs as deeply here as disenchantment with Communism: in the East. Indeed many were not all that enchanted to begin with. Why did they submit? Why do we?

2. FREE WORK USING PLAY ELEMENTS CAN REPLACE WORK

L. Susan Brown, Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, 1993; Does Work Really Work? Kick It Over #35 // acs

Free work, therefore, is a combination of voluntary play and self-assumed obligations, of doing what you desire to do and co-operating with others. It is forsaking the almighty dollar for the sheer enjoyment of creation and recreation. Bob Black lyrically calls for the abolition of work, which "doesn't mean that we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play... By 'play' I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensuality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that as. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance."(5)