It is unfortunate that this anti-work rhetoric often comes off as outrageous, when in reality it isn’t. I don’t know if the people doing it are intentionally trying to be controversial, or if they just are not good at communicating.
When we complain about work, this doesn’t mean that we are asking for a world where we lounge all day at home, and expect that food, shelter and entertainment are magically delivered to us without any regard to how it happens. No, anti-work is not about a blind sense of entitlement. But that is how a lot of these posts come off as, even if their authors don’t intend it.
Anti-work is a recognition that the working class works way too damn much; so much more than we need to to have a functioning society with everyone living happily and having their needs met. There’s so much inefficiency in capitalism, with aims to drive more capital to the wealthy, and working around other stupidities of capitalism (check out the book “Bullshit jobs” for examples). The ruling class holds hostage the world’s resources, and requires you to give them a large portion of your life to get even the minimum needed to sustain your living. Now that is outrageous.
I think a lot of people have trouble understanding the difference between “I don’t want to contribute anything to society” and “I don’t want to spend half my waking life laboring for peanuts so that my boss can get rich”.
Obviously, we should contribute according to our means, but we need to be compensated for those contributions accordingly.
…but we need to be compensated for those contributions accordingly.
This is the part they object to, thanks to the proliferation of Econ 101 thinking. Market wages are, after all, competitive by definition. For someone that hasn’t gone beyond basic economics, what you’re paid for the work you do is fair compensation.
The anti-work rhetoric is, first of all, incredibly misleading for people who take things at face value. But more important, the underlying theory for why market wages aren’t fair is different for each person you talk to. There is no coherent, rhetorically forceful reasoning for why people should be paid more. And separate messages that arrive at the same conclusion aren’t really effective at scale.
Getting paid better would be nice, but that will just bring the middle class closer to poverty. I’ve been a part of this community for a few years now and I have been fighting for better wages this whole time. But the biggest pain to me is inflation. Things keep costing more and more, but I keep making the same amount of money. Wouldn’t price regulations be a better solution to all of this to all of this? Not trying to start a fight, but looking for a slight skew from the topic.
You are responsible for negotiating your compensation. You allow yourself to be paid peanuts.
I was born in a comunist society and can wholeheartedly tell you (I presume you are from US or a western country): you don’t even know or can imagine what inefficient is :)
A good start might be not calling the movement Anti-work, as that seems to be an all or nothing type of negative name, to those who feel everyone should put in their fair amount of work to earn the rewards from society.
Perhaps smart-work or fair-work or right-work would have been a better name for the movement, less of a blockage / hurtle for others to get over.
The thing of such names is they cannot be hijacked as fas as I know. You simply can’t do anti-work-washing or create yellow anti-work union. Distorted anti-work is worse for capitalism than real anti-work because supporter of distorted anti-work will not agree to work at all.
You have a good point. Although I doubt it’s worth the trade off. I think pirate party movements vs environmental movement is a good comparison. Pirate party-ism kind of died. Environmentalism lives on. Not saying it’s necessarily because of naming. But, I don’t think sounding like you’re “pro theft” helped.
The thing of such names is they cannot be hijacked as fas as I know. You simply can’t do anti-work-washing or create yellow anti-work union.
Actually that’s usually the number one way if somebody combating you where they want to “kill the messenger”, they hijacked a term and make it mean something different than it should be.
For example being a liberal used to mean one thing and then conservances painted it in a different light, and now it has a negative connotation in our society to centrists.
Distorted anti-work is worse for capitalism than real anti-work because supporter of distorted anti-work will not agree to work at all.
I honestly read this four times, and just literally do not understand the point you’re trying to make.
If you can elaborate on it so I can see what you’re trying to tell me I’d appreciate it.
Fundamentally the point I was trying to make is that “anti-work”, when people hear that they think “this person doesn’t want to work for their living and carry their weight in our society”. It’s a very strong negative connotation, and usually it shuts somebody down from listening to you and to your ideas right at the start.
If your goal is a fair work philosophy then you should state that in the tldr name for it. If otherwise you truly mean no work, then ‘anti-work’ has a tldr name that matches that philosophy better.
I certainly agree. I never liked the term anti-work at all. I prefer to just cut to the chase and explain what I’m about. Or call myself a socialist. That may have its own baggage to unpack as well, but at least its not a core semantic flaw in the term.
Anti-work is extremely unfortunate. We really named a movement after a strawman criticism of leftists by boomers.
Good lord this community is cringe most of the time.
I don’t get all the people who are here that clearly aren’t anti-work.
like why are they here? Isn’t this a community for anti work and not against it?
IMHO there’s two main groups
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“Wage labor is inherently unfair, we need to build a new economic system.”
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“fuck work amirite guys?”
The former moved to “workreform”, at least on Reddit. The latter group are the dog walkers that stayed put.
Yup, they want to live in fantasy land where they benefit from other people’s work, but do none themselves. They’re still children, but most of them will eventually grow up.
The rest will become communists, which is something I’ve been seeing a lot of on Lemmy.
Let’s not forget that communists do work. Not saying you said otherwise, just a reminder.
Someone should tell the wannabe communists that they’d still have to work.
Yeah the 40+ hours of manual labor I do producing 3 $25,000 machines in a week while being paid $1000 is totally not work at all.
Critiquing a system of exploitation is only possible if one is lazy and worthless, not something that typically and historically comes from those most oppressed under a given system.
Refusal to blindly submit to coercive hierarchies is a sign of immaturity, while blind obedience to that system makes you a real man. Only people who blindly accept their and the exploitation of their friends and family are adults.
So go start your own business producing these $25,000 machines if it is that easy. Go on then. Clearly you have everything figured out. Your are supposedly worth $75k a week but you’re only getting paid $1k a week. Start your own company and even if you have yourself 10x the salary, you’d still have one of the most profitable companies on the planet.
If it’s that easy, then why aren’t you doing it?
Is it maybe because there are dozens of other people involved in building these machines? It is because the labor to build something doesn’t cover the cost to design and engineer it. And test it. And logistics. And the costs for any regulator certification these machines must go through.
Loving hearing people with all the answers only to find out they really have no answers.
I love to sit around every once in a while, nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I sit in quiet contemplation for days at a time, other times I just go golfing or fishing or take a vacation to Bora Bora to sit on the beach and drink. If you want to do these things it’s not hard, start a successful business or make a smart real estate investment!
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live without working. I already do this as a landlord and a business owner/investor. Maybe when you grow up you will be successful like me and understand the virtues of not grinding away all day to make somebody else rich, instead, let other people make you rich.
Id love life if I could work 4 or 3 days a week. I’m mostly productive for 3 days anyway
One main reason for keeping the pressure in the system is that whichever global superpower exploits their population the most effectively has the upper hand in most fronts. If there wasn’t a competition for world dominance then we could all relax a bit more. Til then we are forced into vigilance.
This sounds like something I would hear in Russia. Those who have at least fraction of functioning brain will ask question “If every citizen will be grinded in name of superpower then what everyone will get? 2 by 2 in the nearest forest and a wooden cross.”
When state acquires its own will that contradists of majoroty of own citizen, it is not a state. Maybe it is Prutin’s mafia, maybe it is China’s puppet, but not a state.
When I say I’m tired of working for a living I don’t mean that I don’t want to work, I meant that I don’t want to work for other people doing something I don’t care about so someone I don’t care about can better achieve something I don’t care about just so they pay me money for it. I’m happy to work when that goes directly goes toward my own well-being and that of my family and local community. I just get so tired of doing work that I have no personal investment in beyond “it makes me money so I can then give that money to other people.”
So I play Rimworld and dream of what it would be like to have a role in a small community where everyone does their part for the direct benefit of the community and it isn’t all just about money.
“Hello, I would like to benefit from society without contributing to it”
The AntiWork movement already peaked so I’m not sure what the Lemmy instance is trying to accomplish.
If your position is simply that people need to work less, you’re doing a very bad job of relaying that, and thus shooting yourself in both feet.
I hate to admit this, but I agree. My qualm isn’t with the message that we ought to work less. That’s smart. Why shouldn’t we live in a society where we can have a fulfilling lifestyle without endless soul crushing work?
My qualm is with the wording. The implication is that one should consent to work, but really work is a fundamental truth. Take away the facade of society and all we have is our struggle to survive the elements and find food, i.e. work.
It is very unfortunate that posts like the OP portray the anti work movement in that way, but anti work does not mean that. I think this other commenter summarized it better: https://lemm.ee/comment/3155176
