NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE - CRITIQUE OF WORK 328

SOLVENCY: CHARGES OF UTOPIANISM ARE GROUNDLESS

NON-WORK FUTURE IS ONE WE SHOULD ASPIRE TO, A FUTURE WHICH IS POSSIBLE

Steven Rubio, 1997; In Defense of Fucking Off; Bad Subjects, Issue # 32, April 1997 http://freespace.virgin.net/sarah.peter.nelson/menu3a.html// acs

At Bad Subjects we believe that having dreams and fantasies of a utopian future is integral to conceiving of an alternative radical politics.... we want to put utopia back in the future, where it belongs.... we can only see glimpses of it, because it's impossible to imagine a world so completely unlike our own.... But this is what we know. In the future, we will always work in solidarity. No one will compete for jobs. And your work will not be painful, nor will it deprive you of family and friends.... Certainly, there will be death and there will be labor, but we will not see them as being in conflict with life and pleasure.... All work will be freely chosen. And to work at one thing will not be to sacrifice your life to it, for you will work at many different things.

PRACTICAL FORECASTS OF THE FUTURE HAVE BEEN TOTALLY INCORRECT, WE SHOULD TAKE A UTOPIAN VIEW INSTEAD

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

The future belongs to the zerowork movement, should one well up, unless its object is impossible because work is inevitable. Do not even the consultants and the techno-futurolo gists at their most fantastic take work for granted? Indeed they do, which is reason enough to be sceptical. They never yet foresaw a future that came to pass. They prophesied moving sidewalks and single family air-cars, not computers and recombinant DNA. Their American Century was Japanese before it was half over. Futurologists are always wrong because they are only extrapolators, the limit of their vision is more of the same - although history (the record of previous futures) is replete with discontinuities, with surprises like Eastern Europe. Attend to the utopians instead. Since they believe life could be different, what they say just might be true.