NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE - CRITIQUE OF WORK 326

ANTI-WORK FORCES ARE A SOCIAL MOVEMENT WAITING TO BE AWAKENED BY OUR CRITIQUE

ANTI-WORK FORCES ARE READY TO MOBILIZE AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT, BUT THE UNCRITIQUED CONCEPT OF WORK AS INEVITABLE STANDS IN THE WAY -- WE MUST BREAK DOWN THESE CONCEPTUAL BARRIERS NOW

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

Many workers are fed up with work. There are high and rising rates of absenteeism, turnover, employee theft and sabotage, wildcat strikes, and overall goldbricking on the job. There may be some movement towards a conscious and not just visceral rejection of work. And yet the prevalent feeling, universal among bosses and their agents and also widespread among workers themselves, is that work itself is inevitable and necessary.

I disagree. It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free activities. To abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being done. At present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand -- and I think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure -- we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that wouldn't make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other.

ANTI-WORK IS GROWING AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT

S.L. Lowndes, [British] Sunday Times (8/8/1982) "Why Work?";

http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~sfraser/cat/dwu/whywork.htm // acs

I though for a long time I was alone with this attitude towards work, success etc. However, on talking to friends I have discovered what could be a whole new social movement.

There is a swing towards the opinion that work is for donkeys and cowards. Only fools work volountarily, all the rest are bribed or blackmailed.