The Abolition of Work - Bob Black

[Anonymous No.16034483]

"No one should ever work.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child’s play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act. Oblomovism and Stakhanovism are two sides of the same debased coin.

The ludic life is totally incompatible with existing reality. So much the worse for “reality,” the gravity hole that sucks the vitality from the little in life that still distinguishes it from mere survival. Curiously — or maybe not — all the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else."

[Anonymous No.16034488]

"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx’s wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists — except that I’m not kidding — I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work — and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs — they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They’ll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don’t care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

[Anonymous No.16034501]

Is he right /lit/?

https://youtu.be/LgZT0Ws1g3E

[Anonymous No.16034880]

If you don't work, why would the elites need you?

[Anonymous No.16035250]

>>16034880
Voters maybe? Idk i didnt read OPs novelette so I dont actually know the context of this thread.

[Anonymous No.16036710]

>>16034483

If we abolished work we would just find new ways to be miserable.

[Anonymous No.16036724]

>>16034483
Once work is suitably automated, the elites will just kill everyone who isn't part of the clique. You better hope work never goes away.

[Anonymous No.16036759]

I have so many problems in my personal life that I find work to be a pleasant distraction. On my days off I usually feel paralyzed and indecisive. I don't know what to do because I have no friends, no personal life. When I'm working it solves this issue for me.

[Anonymous No.16036763]

>>16034483

You know...work also produces everything we have. Like....literally everything. Like that computer you're reading this on? Guess what, if somebody didn't work, no computer.

[Anonymous No.16036777]

>>16036763
My computer will still be here if I stop working, thanks
But feel free to go back to your job at the tire factoy where you inhale noxious fumes for 10 hours a day, I will be very thankful for your sacrifice when my NEET bucks arrive and I go spend a nice day at the bookstore perusing the classics section

[Anonymous No.16036791]

>>16034483
Very based.

Death before servitude. Work is what happens when you've been *caught.* It is NOT normal.

Work in the ancient world was for those conquered in war. In the modern world work is for three types of people: illegal aliens, parolees, and fallen women.

[Anonymous No.16036796]

>>16036777
>My computer will still be here if I stop working, thanks

No it won't. You going to pay your rent? Taxes? Medical bills? at some point that computer will go.

Unless you're a lazy fuck, who has some other working person to support your ass. Guess what happens if they stop working?

[Anonymous No.16036797]

>>16036777
>computer breaks down
>no one around to fix it

[Anonymous No.16036802]

Is this where we’re dabbing today?

[Anonymous No.16036808]

>>16036796
I own my home, never pay taxes and I don't know what medical bills are. Do Americans really?

>>16036797
I can fix it, and if I'm stumped I can ask my buddy who is good with computers
He will help me because we are friends, not because he's been enslaved by some magnate who lives half way accross the planet

[Anonymous No.16036809]

>>16034483
Change "work" with "Satan" and you have a christian

[Anonymous No.16036815]

>>16035250
why would they care about votes if you do not produce anything that would make you some sort of asset, and therefore, worthy to influence anything in a state.

[Anonymous No.16036816]

>>16036797
well plus, if nobody is working, then there's no power, there's no internet, etc...

Nobody WANTS to get up at 6 am to put up telephone poles, or shove microchips in boards all day, but they do it anyway, the same way everybody has done most everything since the dawn of time. You do the things you don't like, so that you can do the things that you do like.

[Anonymous No.16036824]

>>16036724
literally no reason to do this and also not possible.
Once no one needs to work, the masses are placated forever and that's the end of it. Elites will just chill on big boats and shit, it's not like people can get in their way. Maybe they're push sterilization but if you imagine some weird world where soldiers just start gunning everyone down that's not gonna happen.

[Anonymous No.16036849]

>>16036816
>get up at 6 am
Well yeah, you miss the best part of the day, morning twilight. Sunrise is a finale m8. Imagine being asleep for that.

The best thing about solitude and retirement from the world is you don't have to stay up late.

[Anonymous No.16036853]

Antiwork people in general seem to possess the lowest IQ out of any politically motivated group. It's like a mixture of badly interpreted Marxism, a childish worldview, and 'me no want to work, worky bad'. It's impossible to actually reason with them since they quickly resort to posting silly pictures and calling you a bootlicker. Not even kidding, these people average an IQ of 80-85 I actually think they're anti work because they're too fucking stupid to find a job.

[Anonymous No.16036874]

>>16036853
Why do you want to work?
Protip: putting work into a hobby isn't real work (putting work into a painting when you love to paint isn't actually work, putting work into getting better at a sport when you love the sport isn't work, etc).

[Anonymous No.16036875]

Antislavery people in general seem to possess the lowest IQ out of any politically motivated group. It's like a mixture of badly interpreted Abolitionism, a childish worldview, and 'me no want to work, worky bad'. It's impossible to actually reason with them since they quickly resort to posting silly pictures and calling you a bootlicker. Not even kidding, these people average an IQ of 80-85 I actually think they're anti slavery because they're too fucking stupid to pick cotton.

[Anonymous No.16036883]

>>16036853
>me no want to work, worky bad
implying this isn't the most patrician of all mindsets

[Anonymous No.16036888]

>>16036849

Who gives a shit...?

Why did you even spend the energy to post that nothing?

[Anonymous No.16036903]

>>16036888
Checked but your post is gay. Comfy morningposting is never inapt

[Anonymous No.16036918]

>>16036888
>spend the energy
ragey wagie mindset

[Anonymous No.16036919]

Most jobs are bullshit, the only reason the west hasn't axed a ton of jobs and set up a UBI system is because the idea makes boomers furious.

[Anonymous No.16036944]

>>16036874
I don't work currently (on benefits in the UK, i.e. on government assistance) but I used to. Talking about my personal position is not relevant to the discussion, I'm just here to observe that these threads are filled with some of the dumbest posts I've ever encountered. I'd be willing to bet most people here are underage.

[Anonymous No.16036960]

>>16035250
I’m unemployed and I’ve also never voted. What does that make me?

[Anonymous No.16036972]

>>16034880
Why would I need elites?

[Anonymous No.16036980]

>>16036960
My fat alcoholic girlfriend

[Anonymous No.16036997]

Stop thinking about work if you want.

Here are the facts: you need to eat food, you need to drink water, you need shelter from the elements, and you probably need some friends. There are many, many ways to fulfill these needs depending on your appetite for risk (not just financial risk) and on whatever rules you have arbitrarily imposed on yourself. If you find working for a wage distasteful, try another way of procuring your food, water, shelter, and friends. Consider trying these things a form of play. I've got a good job stealing bread. I've got a good job growing weed. I've got a good job begging on the street. I've got a good job robbing gas stations. I've got a good job selling blood. I've got a good job reselling books that mysteriously disappeared from the library. I've got a good job as a county legislator. I've got a good job living in my car and picking out of the trash. They always say, get yourself a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

[Anonymous No.16037014]

>>16034483
I agree that much work sucks, but I also want to stand by a sort of Protestant work ethos that the right work is ennobling and good for the soul.
We can't all do whatever the fuck Bob Black does to pay the bills and support ourselves. And if no one works, nothing gets produced. One might envision one final push of work where everybody collectively labors toward the singular universal project of full automation to abolish menial labor, but that is unrealistic. And without work--even if it is just a self-directed project work--a man becomes a sloppy, pointless thing.

[Anonymous No.16037020]

>>16036875
>tfw you try to refute a point but prove it

[Anonymous No.16037028]

>>16036980
Hmm

[Anonymous No.16037032]

The kind of work is subsistence labor. Work that stands to advance one's ambition, enhance one's satisfaction and wealth, and so on, is the kind of work that gets people out of bed. The unfortunate reality is that type of work is a privilege and a rarity. By structural necessity someone needs to do the shitty jobs and only some can do the shitty jobs and have no shot at the more meaningful roles.

[Anonymous No.16037038]

Many people ITT are saying we can abolish work because the robots will do the work for us. This is their primary argument when you ask them how the food industry, shelter and infrastructure is going to be built and maintained. I find this strange for two reasons.
The first is that automation is a relatively new thing, which we don't even know works well enough to sustain a whole nation; even granting that it does, surely there have been anti work people for longer than modern technology - how do they answer the challenge without resorting to the robots response?
The second reasons is that these people are not willing to forfeit their video games and smart phones and shit but thing they'd rather go back to living primitively. Ironically these are the kinds of people that would die within a week in the wild.

[Anonymous No.16037039]

>>16037032
>The kind of work
that sucks

[Anonymous No.16037057]

>>16037038
Even in a world where nearly everything is automated, I think manually produced goods will still exist as a luxury item.

[Anonymous No.16037077]

>>16034501
lost

[Anonymous No.16037108]

The best book on work is pic related. Black is a pseud for describing labour with the term work, when they are totally different.

[Anonymous No.16037180]

>>16037038
Most jobs are bullshit in developed countries and they only exist in order to keep society afloat because being employed is tied to your ability to survive in a liberal society. This is the source of conservative rhetoric about job creators and low taxes on the rich come in; if you tax rich people more, they'll stop hiring HR departments, Walmart greeters, all those pointless roles that were invented to keep people from complaining too much and keeping the bootstraps illusion around. Coronavirus did a good job at exposing the mountains of bullshit western society is currently built on. The amount of essential workers is not huge, and that number will only decrease over the years.
The current system desires a significant unemployed population that acts as a reserve army of labor. People are unable to bargain for better treatment if there's always another guy who will go through worse for a paycheck. Globalization made this even worse because they can threaten to give your employment to some guy in Ghana or whatever. So now we have a reserve army of well educated and experienced professionals, and as automation goes on, the competition for the bullshit jobs will get even worse. There are already PhD STEM grads who have to be Walmart greeters.
The anti-work position here would be to give these people a way to live without this reliance on employment. Technocrats like Yang want UBI programs, which would be enough to keep everyone alive and plugged into the consumerist machine, but would not give them a means to move up in society. If you want to move up, you would have to get one of those remaining jobs, so there would still be incentive to do the jobs that are necessary. And there would still be people doing work that they like without having to focus on another job to pay the bills, like artists, cooks, permaculture farmers, teachers, whatever.

[Anonymous No.16037232]

supporting automisation isn't about supporting an end to work, it's a call to allow for new professions to be developed so you don't end up becoming a schizoid in a chicken factory. Working for work's sake is something used by upper classes to guilt the working class for innovative thinking

[Anonymous No.16037272]

>>16037232
This isn't really true anymore though, the automatizing tech of today and tomorrow isn't like industrialization where the old jobs got replaced by newer and more efficient ones. The amount of people needed to keep an automated factory operating is less than the amount needed in a traditional one. If your factory gets automated, it's not like everyone who worked there will find a newer and safer job in the new factory. Most of them will just be unemployed. The mainstream answer here is "teach them how to code!", but the programming world doesn't actually need that many programmers.

[Anonymous No.16037278]

>>16036980
kek

[Anonymous No.16037331]

>>16036724
>>16036824
they are already trying to do it you fool
bill gates and his family going back generations are in eugenics clubs, and his vaccines sterilised people in africa
now hes trying to give us all vaccines and microchips

[Anonymous No.16037366]

>>16037180
Okay even accepting these criticisms (which I agree are fair) the point of contention remains: life is better in all of these liberal democracies with a capitalist economy than anywhere else. No alternative is offered by the work abolitionist other than 'le robots'. The position is not taken seriously because nobody has proposed an empirically sound system where work isn't necessary. You can criticise consumerism, conservatism, neoliberalism etc. but it's futile if you don't answer the basic question of how society is supposed to function (and don't resort to utopian Marxist fantasies).

[Anonymous No.16037403]

>>16037272
Automation is essentially another word for the marxist phrase "the advancement of productive forces" that anticipates a turn toward socialism. If the forecasts about automation are true it will destroy the previous relations of production, which is capitalism as we observe it today. You can't project current conditions onto an automated economy; new productive forces destroy the previous mode of production and therefore the socioeconomic system adapted to it.
As Marx writes,
>1) In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer forces of production but forces of destruction (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society,

This is precisely what would happen under more comprehensive automation, in which case capitalism as we know it would reach a state of unresolvable internal contradiction. I don't commit to the next implication that a violent proletariat revolution would occur, which Marx saw as the only possibility. The transition could be much smoother because the way automation affects the affordability of manufactured goods.

[Anonymous No.16037481]

>>16037403
I think the introduction of micro-fordist machinery to the household like 3D printing will totally undermine current capitalism as the resins become more affordable and mainstream, so too will we see a lego-like approach to newer technologies, this will also mean more easily recyclable materials. I see the future more as a workforce of "key winders" on a larger scale, who will need to be employed on mass scale to properly maintain an infrastructure like Amazon's

[Anonymous No.16037585]

>>16037331
Africa's population is exploding right now. If Bill Gates is a eugenicist, he's not doing a very good job.

[Anonymous No.16037586]

>>16037481
An extension of 3D printing is digital manufacturing , in which the manufacturing specs of every good becomes digitized and machine-readable and can be uploaded to a single integrated machine supplied that reads the commodity schema and constructs it on demand. Some futuristic models of digital manufacturing are far beyond the scope of present technology, but they would essentially be able to construct anything with only a resource base of the constituent atomic elements that go into the product. Give it a bunch of carbon and amino acids and it can produce a heart, for example.

At scale, one could imagine relatively small digital constructors that become household items like stoves. There is a large open source database of various items available that people just produce when they want something.

Digital economics also shows that with digitization comes ephemeralization. It costs basically nothing to share software because it requires no material inputs to produce and it is infinitely reproducible.

This theoretical digital manufacturing economy would still have high paid jobs, because it would still value people with inventiveness who can produce new intellectual properties and innovations. But you would no longer have to pay the price of a smartphone to get one, you'd just have to pay for the access to the intellectual property rights and the price of the product's constituent elements. Which would be much cheaper.

Again this is all very futuristic and not coming in the near future if at all.

[Anonymous No.16037668]

>>16037586
Is there any literature I could read on these concepts? You articulate this very well, and objectively. I'm an idealist by heart, and usually hope to read to bring me back down to earth.

[Anonymous No.16037700]

>>16037586
Also, a turing complete digital constructor would be able to produce a smaller digital constructor, like a Von Neumann universal constructor. I don't really know what that means but it would absolutely change the game.

[Anonymous No.16037705]

>>16034483
Honestly, working 3 days a week would be better than eliminating it or enshrining the status quo. I feel dirty if I dont work but 5 days a week can just be too much. I just wish society would adopt a 3 day work schedule.

[Anonymous No.16037718]

>>16037668
I would recommend this one as a good general introduction. It's more accessible and it's how I learned about the topic. There are textbooks about the subject now too however.

[Anonymous No.16037799]

>>16034483
Yeah y'all let's ludically farm food at at industrial scale. I feel really whimsical, maybe I will produce large amounts of farm equipment today :)! Or maybe after the first icecream of the day I'll get to checking all those antibiotic effectiveness reports ^^. That was such a fun vacation! How lucky I was all those nurses and chemists were at that summer camp... God Becky was so hot, I wonder what she's doing. Maybe I'll call her and postpone all that stuff to tomorrow ^^

[Anonymous No.16037882]

>>16036972
Then it will be a fight, and elites will win since they have more power.

[Anonymous No.16037902]

>>16034483
Got so bored reading this I decided to check out /vrpg/

[Anonymous No.16038676]

Pulchrum paucorum est.

I like to hike up mountains in the morning and watch the wagies on the highway. If no one's around I'll laugh and cry out
>drive, wagies! driiiive!

t. trust fund babby

[Anonymous No.16039002]

>>16034483
If no one worked, no new art would be made.

[Anonymous No.16040490]

>>16036919
it's got a lot more to do with the sign value of simulating work and productivity, like a cargo cult built out of older modes of our own economy. who would've thought that bataille's accursed share would take the form of bullshit jobs

[Anonymous No.16040518]

>>16037014
>if no one works, nothing gets produced
the unspoken corollary is that somebody else needs to be doing the producing. "well, someone has to clean up this mess"

[Anonymous No.16040533]

>>16037586
3D printing is the flying car of the 2010's

[Anonymous No.16040566]

>>16036875
>Not even kidding, these people average an IQ of 80-85 I actually think they're anti slavery because they're too fucking stupid to pick cotton.
Anon, this is hate speech. Who do you think you're fooling?

[Anonymous No.16040648]

>>16034483
That is all good and I also hate my job, but how and where do you plan on getting food, electricity, basic services, who will build the houses etc. Now it may all be automated (very unlikely) but who will maintain the machines? Big businesses with people who still choose to work there? Why would they do that? Provide that kind of service for free? Goverments? Goverments barely even function in this day and age.
What makes you think that competent people won't just fuck off to some country that choses not to follow this leftist utopia dream? And then shoot anyone outside their borders or just straight genocide all the lazy useless bums?

[Anonymous No.16040748]

>>16036980
jej

[Anonymous No.16040764]

>>16036815
Having voting blocks of people dependent on your welfare can ensure your power while seemingly being altruistic and fair.

[Anonymous No.16041658]

>>16040648
>food
just get it yourself
>electricity
just get it yourself
>services
gay
>who will build the houses
you will
People used to do this shit pretty standard pre 20th century. "Employment" wasn't as big a deal pre industrial revolution.

[Anonymous No.16041674]

>>16041658
Having a "high standard of living" also wasn't a big deal pre industrial revolution

[Anonymous No.16041719]

>>16040533
Seems to work fine for guns and with those you can just take whatever you want

[Anonymous No.16041724]

>>16041674
>Having a "high standard of living"
Having a "high standard of living" is gay. I mean that in a totally unironic way. It's totally 100% fucking gay to want to live like a pampered fucking princess with your gay little electric dick razor and your faggy wet wipes. Go masturbate to a supermarket or some shit.

[Anonymous No.16041728]

>>16034483
Based and one my favorite chan pics of all time

[Anonymous No.16041736]

Work is a curse burdened on us by God. You will never escape it in this life

[Anonymous No.16041751]

>>16041736
>you can't even kill yourself to stop working for the Jew
could there be a more dehumanizing LARP?

[Anonymous No.16041764]

>>16041751
Suicide would be an option for escape. I dont really know what would happen to you in death though