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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Mambabasa@slrpnk.netOPMtoAntiwork@slrpnk.netSome clarifications on antiwork
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    7 months ago

    The reason why it is called antiwork is because the goal of the socialist movement from 200 years ago is the self-abolition of the working class through self-liberation. Antiwork means workers against their own workerness, “anti-workerness” if you will, hence “antiwork.” And what does anti-workerness mean? It means workers against wage-labor, division of labor, alienation, et cetera. Hence antiwork is a shorthand for anti-workerness and all that that implies.


  • Mambabasa@slrpnk.netOPMtoAntiwork@slrpnk.netSome clarifications on antiwork
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    7 months ago

    If you ask me, I’m an anarchist and communist, so I’d advocate for building workers’ power in a struggle against their workerness. In prerevolutionary situations, that means building capacities of workers to struggle on their own behalf. This means strikes, occupations, sabotage, etc. In a revolutionary situation, these capacities transforms into crisis activity that has the capacity to transform social life and abolish work. In such a revolutionary situation, people take over their workplace, and resumes activity under their own control and willpower. In such cases, production is radically transformed into meeting needs rather than profit. Without the profit motive, people don’t need to produce as much and various forms of alienations and divisions can be overcome.



  • Mambabasa@slrpnk.netOPMtoAntiwork@slrpnk.netSome clarifications on antiwork
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    7 months ago

    Maybe they won’t and for a time they’ll live in their filth and starve. But who wants to live like that? Since time immemorial people have been finding ways to feed and clean themselves and others without notions of profit, wages, division of labor, mute compulsion of work or starve, etc. People have figured this out before and we can do so again.

    Surely you clean your own house and stock your own food, if not cook it yourself? The same compulsion that drives one to clean their own homes and feed themselves will continue to exist on a societal scale even after work has been abolished.

    Antiwork does not mean unpleasant tasks will disappear, rather that these will vs collectively managed in a way to maximize leisure. In the book The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, a book that has a lot of antiwork themes, people take turns cleaning and dedicate 1 day out of 10 to take their turn doing chores in their community. Every other day they’re free to self-actualize in whatever way they see fit. There are some parts of the book that isn’t antiwork, like a machine that sometimes assigns people to only manual labor when they’d rather write, but generally the book isn’t a model for antiwork and that plot point was part of the central drama of the text.

    What if people refuse to help clean or take turns doing unpleasant jobs if they are able, however minimized it has been made? In the The Dispossessed, this is mentioned. In the book, those people are treated differently, and people regard them less. Think of it if you had a roommate who is a slob. You’d be contemptuous of them. But who wants to be held in contempt? People want to be liked. The cost of these tasks is no longer “work or starve” but “help out or you’ll be disliked.”

    There will be other ways to persuade. I cannot recount them all. And if they persist? Let them. It is better that a few freeloaders live than everyone live under a regime of work.



  • You know the meme where in this society it’s like “oh no! A robot took my job! I’ll starve!” Under conditions wherein work as we know it is abolished, it is instead, “a robot took my job, I’m free to enjoy what I want to do!” Of course there will be people taking care of automotive tasks, but again, this kind of labor is vastly different in a world without wages, alienation, division, et cetera. People enjoy making robots and making automation. It’s like a game or a challenge to them. So it can be after work is abolished.