“Why I hate work -and everyone who tries to convince me that’s not normal
Lately I’ve been feeling shocked by the reactions of those who feel shocked when I say that I don’t want to work. They act almost as though I’m insulting them personally, as though I’m raising a prohibited subject, as though my words have the power to summon dark forces. No, no, they say reassuringly, you don’t hate work, you just hate your job. Maybe if you change your profession, company, organisation, department, industry, country, continent, you’ll find something that suits you better. And then you’ll enjoy working.
But my job is fine, one of the best jobs I could possibly find. I just hate working, I insist. It’s usually at that moment when they start looking at me with suspicion and ask me: “So what would you like to do, just sit around all day?” And, look, I’m not going to hide it. YES! I would love to sit around all day -if “sitting around” means that I could rest, sleep as much as I need to, spend time with people I love, read, write, socialise, concern myself and be involved with politics.
None of this moves them, though. For them, work is something good, something that completes you, something that you have to do for the common good and anyone who doesn’t love work is morally suspicious. After all, sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, which is a huge victory for the bosses lobby, who are usually the ones who work the least as they have others working for them.
Work in capitalism is seen as something inherently good or, at the very least, as a necessary evil in order to achieve collective prosperity. The irony is that a large percentage of jobs has actually nothing to do with the common good but instead with helping companies make larger profits and perpetuates the system. Many positions are what Graber calls “bullshit jobs” (https://www.vox.com/…/bullshit-jobs-book-david-graeber… ), that is, unnecessary jobs that have absolutely no point and seem to have been invented solely to keep us busy. But for some reason, it’s considered better for society to have one of these stupid jobs than to have none at all.
It is sad, however, to see even anticapitalists endorsing labour ethics as though labour is something that builds character. A communist friend of mine, whom I particularly respect, asked me last year (when I was not working and was literally having the best year of my life) “Aren’t you afraid of getting depressed?!” ignoring the huge rates of depression due to stress or disdain within the workplace. Behind the question, however, lurked a moral judgement, perhaps a bit of envy too (a “ressentiment”) in a way that was provoking me to feel remorse that I could survive without a job. Well, here you go, now I have a job. Now I wake up at 7.30 every morning, spend an hour to get to work and, once I arrive, stoically wait for 8 hours to pass, even when I have absolutely nothing to do, so that I can arrive back home exhausted, hungry, drowsy. Are you satisfied? Am I a better person now? Do you respect me more? Ancient Greeks believed the exact opposite, by the way: they had no appreciation for work, especially manual labour. Socrates said that labourers become bad friends and bad citizens because they do not have time to fulfil the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship.
If a large percentage of depression is due to work, an equally large percentage is caused by unemployment. But not (as supporters of work ethics would have us believe) as a result of the boredom that can be caused when you have every day for yourself, but because of the stress of unpaid bills as well as the collective devaluation of unemployed people as FAILURES. The concept of success, after all, is subtextually identified with the concept of professional success.
I am so disgusted with this definition of ourselves by work that not only do I not ask new acquaintances if and where they work, but I also avoid answering when others ask me. My job doesn’t define me and, in fact, I feel it makes me seem rather boring. It’s literally the least important, least interesting thing I do all week. When asked what it is that I do, I prefer to say “memes and feminism”.
Of course it could be that I’m using anticapitalist discourse as a pretext to cover my laziness. Maybe I’m one of those who would rather be societal parasites feeding on unemployment benefits without doing anything at all and adopt communist or anarchist ideologies in order to rationalise their laziness. But have you seen anarchists organise financial support parties by volunteering work and endless hours of their lives? If you’ve ever wondered “But who will pick up the rubbish” if the threat of starvation and unpaid bills can’t be used as motivation for doing these unpleasant tasks, your answer may be there: in those who take turns working at the bar, carrying stuff, picking up rubbish without coercion, simply for the benefit of the community they have entered into voluntarily. Proof that things can be done without them being “our job”.
It’s possible, of course, that I’m just really lazy and I’d rather just spend daddy’s money. It is well known that I’m too bored to even proofread and edit my own texts. However, I write consistently and maintain a facebook page and website which I update regularly for the past 7 years, having more followers and better engagement than professional electronic media. If I did the exact same thing for a company that paid me, that would be a job. But now I do it as a hobby and that’s obviously not enough to wash away the stigma of laziness on me, even though I put the same, if not more, amount of energy.
In order to not be considered lazy, my effort should produce profit for a company within capitalism, someone should reap the surplus value of my work and neoliberalism should absorb every ounce of joy and spontaneity in me. Alternatively, I would have to show “entrepreneurship spirit” and find a way to turn followers into potential consumers and make money from ads. In this respect, however, it’s somewhat ironic to be called lazy on my own page by people who’ve landed there precisely because of my hard work.
So many people suffer and hate their jobs, so many people look forward to their days off so that they can feel like themselves again, so many people hate Sundays because they remind them of what they’re missing out on, so many people get literally sick from stress, ruin their backs and get killed in work-related accidents. Why, then, are there so many who admonish me when I insist that I don’t want a better job and I’m only happy when I’m not working? Well, because they fail to accept that they are wasting their lives in exchange for the bones capitalism throws at them. Because they have convinced themselves that their work is really worth their time, energy and health, if they’re able to consume a bit more in their free time. We consider it a good deal, 5 days of work in exchange for a fancy outing on Saturday night, 4 weeks of work in exchange for a weekend on an island, when our lives could be made so that we wouldn’t have such a desperate need for a vacation.
Of course our free time is much less than promised, starting as early as school. Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, eight hours of fun, they triumphantly inform us we’ve earned . But in the classic anti-work text “Abolition of Labor” (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/…/bob-black-the…/), B. Black observes: “The only thing “free” about so-called free time is that it doesn’t cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor, as a factor of production, not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace, but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair. Coal and steel don’t do that. Lathes and typewriters don’t do that.”
That work is a necessity for our survival in capitalism is its basic condition -which is why we’re talking about “wage slavery”. But there’s something very perverted when we’re called to declare our love for this slavery, to demonstrate our servitude even when our boss is not present. Our attachment to the glorification of work is simply slavery with extra steps.”
