this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Antiwork
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For the abolition of work. Yes really, abolish work! Not "reform work" but the destruction of work as a separate field of human activity.
To save the world, we're going to have to stop working! — David Graeber
A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. ...the love of work... Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the economists, and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work. — Paul Lafargue
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. — Karl Marx
In the glorification of 'work', in the unwearied talk of the 'blessing of work', I see the same covert idea as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. — Friedrich Nietzsche
If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves. — Lane Kirkland
The bottom line is simple: all of us deserve to make the most of our potential as we see fit, to be the masters of our own destinies. Being forced to sell these things away to survive is tragic and humiliating. We don’t have to live like this. ― CrimethInc
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That was the default at one point in human history. If you didn't hunt or forage, you probably didn't get to eat. Eventually humans discovered agriculture and figured out a small group of people could produce enough food for a large group of people. You'd assume that would then mean not everyone would need to labour for their food, but you'd be wrong!
How do babys survive? They can not hunt nor forage. Even more so we have remains of a person with Down sydrom who died in his mid 20s having been unable to walk on two legs for at least a decade before he died. So clearly unable to surive on his own. Also hunter gathers ususally work 15 hours a week. At least modern ones do that. Agriculture is able to provide food for more people, but tends to do so with a lot more work until relativly recently
The Problem with things, like the 15 hour per week claim, is that work isn't comparable in different forms of society.
The article for example never specified, what it defines as work. Is only the time spent hunting or foraging 'work' ?
Is making & maintaining tools work? Is learning a new skill from an elder work? Is experimenting with a new technique work? Is keeping the campfire alive work? Is keeping watch for dangerous animals work? All of which are work in today's society. Hell, over half of my work week is spent 'socialising'. Do I only work for 20 hours a week now?
Every article or study, that I know of, that claims that people in the past worked significantly less, fails to specify what it defines as work.