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Title: If not now, then when? Author: Anonymous Date: January 12, 2022 Language: en Topics: anti-work, COVID-19, subsistence, labor
It is as clear as it has ever been, if not more, that none of us like
work. Many of us in a US context went back to work after the winter
holidays last week or are going back next week. Many more of us worked
through the winter holidays without a break. While any given Monday may
be an occasion to “hate work,” being forced to return to work into the
highest rates of covid infection that we’ve seen while also experiencing
the dark, cold seasonal depression of any winter, heightened by the
realization that indoor gatherings are once more off limit, plus the
existential incomprehensibility of the end of the world that we face as
a result of industrial civilization, capitalism, and human greed, all
make the brief break of the national holiday-from-work season seem
not-long-enough if one got any time off work at all.
Personally, my uncle got diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer over
“break.” He’s younger than my dad, and they both recently retired. My
uncle was an MTA maintenance worker who already fought (legally) to have
the MTA cover the hearing aids he needed as a result of the daily sounds
of the subway that caused his hearing loss. He smoked, and he worked
under ground and on the 9-11 site. My uncle is going to die early in his
retirement—a member of the generation “lucky” to have had a life-long
career with retirement—his body having been systematically degraded
through the technology of profit and civil function that is work.
If not now, when will we act on what we all know—that work is both
killing us and even if it weren’t we just don’t want to be doing it?
Laboring activity is not the same as work. This is one of those massive
gas-lighting tactics that people throw in your face when you silently or
verbally yell at them through your whole gut, “FUCK WORK!” And you
should yell this at them. You know their rebuttals are just their own
distorted avoidance tactics. Work is abstract labor directed not at
one’s own subsistence, meaning, social relations, etc. Work is doing
what “needs” to be done according to outside standards, for abstracted
reasons, in order to generate profit somewhere down the line for someone
else, but more directly so that you can get the wage that you need to
live. And that is real. But only in our historical, social order where
food and land are private property and self-maintenance, dreaming, and
social relations are either instrumentalized or undervalued. Don’t let
them tell you that people would be lazy fucks if they didn’t work.
People clearly act in all sorts of ways that are not waged work—this is
what the neoliberal technology of extracting value from the precariously
employed “human capital” subject relies upon after all.
I just want to do what I want. I’ve been working overtime for 24 years
at this point, have literally 4 higher education degrees, and still
somehow don’t have a securely employed job. I think my CV is 11 pages
long. I really don’t care any more about meeting deadlines to produce
writing that no one needs, wants, or will read. Honestly, why the hell
does that matter. I will not apply for a job that requires me to move.
Really, look at the fucking situation we are in. If I get sick, who will
take care of me? I’ve lived in enough cities, I’ve moved enough for work
and school. Why are we still pretending this expectation is a “normal”
and reasonable demand?
No one likes working under some one else’s direction. No one likes
giving over all the hours of so many of their days to things that really
mean so little to the direct needs and wants of their lives beyond
needing money to literally be able to live. It is so clear in covid how
fucked this whole system of work is. We need to stop believing in work.
It is nowhere near worth believing in. It literally is about producing
other people profit. It literally is killing us and taking time away
from rest and relationships.
Stop going to work.
Share money. Steal Food. Don’t pay rent. Fuck debts. Fuck money.
The system as we know it has not always existed. People really did once
just do activity—making food, hanging with friends, taking care of
health, repairing shelter, preparing for winter, etc, whatever—that had
nothing to do with this thing we call work.