💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › ediciones-ineditas-ultra-left-faq.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 09:36:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Ultra-Left FAQ Author: ediciones ineditas Date: July 25th, 2019 Language: en Topics: communization, anti-work, ultra left, communism Source: Retrieved on 2019-11-20 from https://web.archive.org/web/20191120040804/https://ediciones-ineditas.com/ultra-left-faq/ Notes: [last updated July 25th, 2019; 2:53PM PST]
We often get similar questions in regards to what our positions are in
terms of organization, work, communization, the self-abolition of the
proletariat and our experiences with our own activity within this
milieu. In this FAQ we hope to give some quick answers to these
questions. This will continue to be a work in progress.
The negation of work is the name of the process which abolishes work.
The conversation around the abolition of work can get confusing because
different theorists who write on this subject sometimes use the terms
labor & work interchangeably, while others have specific definitions for
each term.
Though this is a problem specific to English since in other languages
there is often only one word, not two, for work. (Spanish: trabajo;
French: travail).
The ultra-left generally sees the abolition of work as 1) a necessary
part of the process of the self-abolition of the proletariat, 2) since
to free the proletariat from capitalism it is necessary for the
proletariat to self-abolish via revolution.
An aside, the proletariat is not just ‘the workers’ but EVERYONE that
needs money to get by, whether legally or not, whether directly or
through someone else, to live. So this includes those who are an unable
to work, the unemployed, caregivers with no direct wage, sex workers,
etc.
3) What the abolition of work fundamentally points to is the reality
that work, as we know it, is a product of history and has not always
existed. Just as wage labor & capitalism has not always existed. So for
the ultra-left, the abolition of work is necessary for the creation of
communism since work, as we know it, is something which arises from
capitalism itself. It is a social category specific to it. 4) For the
ultra-left, communism is not just having what you want and/or need, but
also completely getting rid of our condition as proletarians. So
communism will be the abolition of the work / non-work binary, since
even under capitalism non-work time (leisure) is seen as a part
necessary to work, where we recover from the day’s, week’s, month’s work
(in Marxian terms: the recovery of our labor-power). 5) So how is this
binary abolished? By collapsing the false division of our activity
between work & non-work. This does not mean that all of our time becomes
ONLY work, or ONLY non-work, but rather our lifeway(s) will no longer
see it necessary to divide our time into such categories.
An example sometimes used: A bear is tromping through the woods,
scratching itself against trees, swatting at bugs and then comes across
a creek with fish. The bear feels hungry and decides its time to catch a
fish. It dives in and after a few tries it catches one. It enjoys its
meal as the sun starts to set. Now, at one point does the bear decide it
is working? Is catching a fish fun? Or is it work? Or does such a binary
not even make sense?
This may sound utopian, since human communities are often much more
complex than the life of a bear, but there was such a time where human
activity was not so uniquely guided by the false capitalist scarcity we
live under. 6) If the activity we needed to do so that we can live was
directly tied to our real needs & desires then it ceases to be work and
not another timecard to punch, another imposition, but rather just doing
the things that need to be done so that we can lead the lives we desire.
This is part of the process of ceasing to be workers and starting to
reconstitute the human community(-ies). Even Karl Marx, who many
Marxists see as a champion of labor, and not necessarily its abolition,
notes in the German Ideology that one of the features of communist
society would have our sphere of activity drastically broadened and we
would no longer hold hyper-specialized roles as we do under capitalism.
Of course, this does not mean that housework magically becomes
not-housework, but rather housework would cease to be just something
that happens at the home and falls along gendered lines. A fair amount
of pre-figuration would have to occur to destroy the patriarchal (&
often racialized) gendering of the activity necessary to our homes. But
this activity would, by necessity, become communal and not just reliant
on highly-socially isolated people and not passed along to those of
lesser social status (i.e. racialized immigrants, etc.)
7) This points then to another important feature of communism. Communism
is not a mode of production as capitalism is. Rather, it is a lifeway(s)
that collapse the social categories of production & consumption. So it
is not just another way to manage the world of work, as some communists
& anarchists view it. These social categories, production & consumption,
exist under capitalism since ALL production & consumption is centered on
the extraction of surplus value from the work of the proletariat and not
the direct needs and/or desires of those who are compelled to work. This
accounts for this social division within capitalist time & space, where
we go to the store to consume and we go to work ‘to produce’. Much of
the destructive aspects of industrial society would likely disappear
since the vast majority of work is based on turning a profit and not
fulfilling human needs or desires. And who wants to sit on a shopfloor
making trinkets no one really needs unless your getting paid so that you
can get by under capitalism? 9) Communism is then about the
re-integration of the human with the natural world and not dominion over
it. A collapse also between town & country. And to accomplish this work
would, by necessity, need to be abolished so that our social relations
are fundamentally changed and not just managed in a different way.
8) So then, what is anti-work? This is a term we use to describe our
position when it comes to work and capitalism. Bruno Astarian wrote a
long essay on the history of anti-work as well as its differentiation
from refusal of labor. You can find it
. Saidiya Hartman has also written a speculative historical essay around
a young black woman, Esther Brown, that sheds light on a racialized &
gendered refusal of work – where work is seen the opposite of a
directly-lived, un-alienated life. You can find it
(pdf).
Of course the horizon of a communist future feels incredibly distant and
far off, but it was only a few generations ago that humans, across the
world, lived in communal, non-capitalistic societies.