NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE - CRITIQUE OF WORK 319

IMPACT: END OF SEXUAL OPPRESSION LINKED TO WORK

END OF WORK WILL LIBERATE HOUSEWIVES AND END SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION IN LABOR

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

Finally, we must do away with far and away the largest occupation, the one with the longest hours, the lowest pay and some of the most tedious tasks. I refer to housewives doing housework and child-rearing. By abolishing wage-labor and achieving full unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor. The nuclear family as we know it is an inevitable adaptation to the division of labor imposed by modern wage-work. Like it or not, as things have been for the last century or two, it is economically rational for the man to bring home the bacon, for the woman to do the shitwork and provide him with a haven in a heartless world, and for the children to be marched off to youth concentration camps called "schools," primarily to keep them out of mom's hair but still under control, and incidentally to acquire the habits of obedience and punctuality so necessary for workers. If you would be rid of patriarchy, be rid of the nuclear family whose unpaid "shadow work," as Ivan Illich says, makes possible the work system that makes it necessary.