cross-posted from: https://wolfballs.com/post/9743
It's a short interview if you haven't seen it, I can sum it up without you watching probably: basically the (transgender I guess) lead mod of the antiwork subreddit is a part time dogwalker who "aspires to teach philosophy" and basically gave an interview a lot of reddit judged to be not what they wanted and made them look like stereotypically not as good in the public's eye.
But many of the redditers are confused, antiwork is based on anarchist / individualist (?) / anarcho-primitivist Bob Black's essay "Abolish Work", which more or less was calling for work reform but thinking itself to be "abolishing work" - acknowledging there was necessary labor, but was in favor of making work as voluntary as possible. Not necessarily a bad idea, or I think there's something that can be salvaged from that. But reddit wanted antiwork to be for work reform outright while antiwork was more for finding ways to do the least amount of work possible, and then conservatives wanted to be against the work reform, and "Doreen" just rebelled against both. Kind of refreshingly consistent to me, in a way.
So some redditers are mad because "Doreen" only works part time, and is not as "gainfully employed" to lead their "movement". The problem is, those redditers are of a different movement - the work reform movement, so a workreform subreddit gained a lot of subscribers. Antiwork is more about "abolishing" work - Bob Black has written positively about the hunter-gatherers who supposedly only worked 20 hours a week according to some modern anthropology. So "Doreen" probably feels their few hours of work is closer to this ideal.
I argue this view of hunter gatherers is revisionist and such conditions never existed, I argue literally Adam and Eve were created with some civilization and so there were no "original hunter gatherers" as Sahlins has argued there were in the 1970s (this anthropological view is recent, about how "great" hunter gatherer life apparently was). Anprim John Zerzan was dismissive of my argument via email, although strictly speaking it cannot be disproven as their theory cannot be proven. So I believe they have faulty anthropological assumptions which make "anarcho-primitivism" and working less seem more attractive.
As an anarchist, "Doreen" doesn't care about making eye contact, looking presentable, cleaning up the room, etc. that redditers were complaining about. Really is influenced by the old punk movements which have all but died today in my opinion. A lot of "libertarians" are basically conformists who want to dress up and play the part - which isn't really all that pro-freedom, for people who don't want to do all those things. So part of me likes this part of "Doreen's" nonconformity (while I don't really like the "transgender" part for example), although I can understand that other people were looking for more polish on a seeming "official spokesperson".
There's an enormous amount of waste that some people have been able to find ways to live off of, and "Doreen" strikes me as being part of this movement (see for example "freeganism", the idea of gift economics, etc.). The math seems somewhat sound that there's so much waste or productivity gains that people could, in theory, if it was all divided up equally, work a few hours a week if they wanted, which "Doreen" wants and lives a bit. But of course we know in practice the world is simply an unfair struggle at times and these "fair distributions of wealth" will not take place except for whatever we can figure out to create.
The source of outrage is basically a mismatch between these two philosophies of work reform and work abolition. As Bob Black wrote, as an analogy to slavery, he was not for "slavery reform" but "slavery abolition". They think work is slavery - but necessary work is ok. At the end of the day in my estimation they're still basically for work reform, but want to think of themselves more as abolitionists.
Bob Black is an academic I believe, so it's no surprise that "Doreen", looking up to him, wants to be a philosophy teacher as well. Zerzan is a professor, anyway, and they've had similar views.
Anyway, any thoughts on these related topics of anti-work, post-left, anarcho-primitivism, etc.?
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 3 years ago
I'll preface this by saying I don't have any problems with the labor movement itself existing and fighting for better conditions for workers, since I'm a worker. None of this is aimed at stuff like "don't be a jerk to your workers and pay them what you promise to and don't make your workplace a deathtrap"
Hunter gatherer life is really hard. You need a huge amount of food to live, particularly if it's vegetarian. The food we have right now is ridiculously calorie dense as well because we can process special foods from all over the world, and most of our fruit and vegetables are genetically engineered (through agriculture) to be massively filled with energy. In nature, most animals aren't cows, most fruits aren't our apples and strawberries and bananas. You're trying to kill another animal while it tries to either not die or kill you back, and you're trying to gather vegetables and fruits that just give you a tiny amount of food in exchange for spreading seeds and you're competing with everything else for that tiny amount of food. I've written at length about the fact that the primary export of humanity has been suffering for the majority of our history. Life was so hard for humans that at one point we all descend from one woman, that's how narrow our species got. People romanticize dying as a hunter gatherer, but dying isn't a fun theme park ride, and most people would probably agree they don't want to die, and don't want their bloodline to die out.
That's why even though agriculture is really hard work, people chose to do it, because it meant you didn't need to pray to the sun god that you find berries, you found a way to make berries come back every year. It meant you had a better chance to survive, that you could have kids, that your kids would have a better chance of surviving, that's why we don't do the hunter gather life anymore. Because hard work works.
That's what's so absurd to me that the anti-work movement(as a literal "end all work" movement) would point to that. Life has never been easier to survive in. You can easily get housing. You can easily get food. The jobs out there are easier than they've been for most of history. Give those same people a hunter gatherer life for 2 months and if they're not just dead they'll be begging for their horrible capitalist life back immediately.
The other thing is that most people don't want to just survive. Look to the native reserves in Canada for people who are given enough to survive (the idea that they'd be off living a hunter gatherer life on reserve). They have food, shelter, heat -- exactly what they need. And they're miserable because it's a hellish, meaningless life. They don't own anything, the communities are communally owned. There's no benefit to sticking your neck out, taking risks, trying to achieve because anything you achieve will be taken by the community elites. Lots of problems with drug use, alcohol use, sexual assault, suicide. Of course there is. What's the point of being alive if you're trapped in a grey mush forever?
For the "no work except what's required", I can't help but think that there's another big problem: A bunch of people have to sacrifice and work. Someone needs to sacrifice to grow your food. Someone needs to sacrifice to pull iron ore out of the ground. Someone needs to sacrifice to drive iron ore by truck or by train to a smelter. Someone needs to sacrifice to drive the groceries to the processing facility. Someone has to sacrifice to work in the smelter. Someone needs to sacrifice to work in a smelter. Someone needs to sacrifice to work in a processing facility. someone needs to sacrifice to work in the tool factory. Someone needs to sacrifice to work in the food factory. Someone needs to sacrifice to drive the tools to a wholesaler. Someone needs to sacrifice to drive the food to a wholesaler. Finally, someone needs to drive the food or tools to the store, someone needs to stock the shelves, someone needs to run the till. These "abolish work" folks are going to rely on a massive infrastructure involving thousands of people who need to work, but they don't intend to do any work themselves. In a sense that sounds like slavery, but at the very least it sounds a lot like an aristocracy -- you've got the proles who work and the aristocracy who sit in their towers enjoying the spoils of labor they didn't contribute to.
That's part of my problem with a lot of this stuff. "I shouldn't have to do anything to live!" has to be paired with the obvious counterpoint "well someone has to something for you to live, and in fact a lot of people need to do a lot of things for you to live. Why should they do what you need them to do in order for you to live if you're not planning to contribute?"
This is not a left vs right thing. Jesus said "he who does not work shall not eat", and so did Lenin! It's just common sense.
Some people might say "It'll get paid for by taxes!" but where do those taxes come from? They'll come from the toils of those who work! Again, how is this not slavery, and also how is it sustainable? You tax the minority who work in order to pay the same minority to work so the majority who do not work can sit back and live lives of leisure?
It's morally repugnant. A good example of how a gentle tone of voice and pretty words can make horrific things sound palatable and even desirable. Pretty words won't put a roof over people's heads or food in their bellies, only rubber meeting road and people doing work can do that.
squashkin@wolfballs.com 3 years ago
Except society is a big prison, so freedom is traded for these securities. Some people don't like that. They believe that wars and slavery and all kinds of things were only made possible by the development of technology, which is somewhat true.
they want to automate it all away, or do without
well they're ok with doing some stuff to live, but just don't want it to be a "work or die" arrangement, which may be possible to some extent but then it introduces dependence (on a collective, government, machines, etc.)
Some of them are just disillusioned with the false promises of work, that we aren't living in a techno-utopia, but that a lot of the same stuff continues on and gets worse, and indeed some of this is just due to a kind of theft by elites through various different schemes.
I guess I kind of agree with antiwork to some extent on diagnosing problems or having a desire for leisure but disagree with their means to get there - well, I'm not sure much is defined regarding means to get to people having to do less work or no work or for work to be on a volunteer basis. I suppose it's ultimately an ideal - but the analogy used is slavery which is abolished in a lot of places today, they think work is often "wage slavery" that they want to abolish
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 3 years ago
People who think we can "automate it away" don't know how much damn work automation is. Human beings are actually really incredible, which is why they're still used despite needing to be constantly paid, fed, trained, allowed to sleep and rest more often than not, insured, taxed, kept safe, supervised, managed, and so on and so forth. In a lot of cases that so-called "automation" takes more humans than just doing it ourselves!
Probably a good thing would be to actually teach young people economics so that they can start making better informed decisions. I see a lot of people who go apply for incredibly popular jobs and are shocked that they don't get paid very much for it, are people who choose to live their lives in very popular ways and are shocked to find those ways of living are very very expensive. If people's eyes could be opened to the reality of market forces, then a lot of wage slavery could be reduced in my opinion.