THE ABOLITION OF WORK
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.
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 k ...