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comment by mk
mk  ·  4060 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Work Ethic v. the Ethics of Work

    Why not say there are no natural needs, and that our freedom is partially expressed in the increasing sophistication, development and refinement of consumption?

I find the framing of the post-work question to be fascinating. TCM seems to be saying that the post-work society can take a lesson from the wealthy in Capitalist society. IMHO much confusion comes from definitions. As long as we call labor-for-survival and labor-for-pursuit by the same name, there is going to be all kinds of confusion. A post-work society is actually a post-labor-for-survival society.

    It is here that Frase and other post-workists miss a major opportunity, unnecessarily constraining themselves. There is more than one source for the value of work. In the name of criticizing a mindless productivism they walk past other ways of thinking about work, productivity and human creativity. Insodoing, they cancel an important way of making sense of widely shared aspirations and how they are organically connected to left-wing politics. There is, in fact, no reason to abandon giving work a value, and we suspect that freedom in and through work is a condition for freedom from undesirable work. Instead of rejecting work better to celebrate it but reject its alienated form.

Interestingly, leftist politics are deeply rooted in the notion that the labor-for-survival question is a shared one, and rightist politics in the belief that the labor-for-survival question is an individual one. Not only will post-work disrupt our economics, but it will disrupt our politics. IMHO post-work doesn't present so many pragmatic problems as it does existential ones.