Today’s work promises the experience of togetherness, of being part of a collective, but typically delivers something much more competitive and individualistic.

Other conditions applied to the behaviour of claimants: this could mean compulsory unpaid work, or sanctions for missing appointments; in some cases, sanctions can mean losing eligibility for benefits for up to three years.15

It’s not that pre-industrial life was idyllic, peaceful, or non-exploitative. That most people no longer know how to make fabric or sew clothes is not something bad, except perhaps insofar as it makes people more reliant on the market. New technologies and labour-saving processes can be good things: the problem is who owns the technology required

Generally, the underlying intention seems to be showing that a given activity requires effort in cases where that effort is hidden.

When I was ill, I saw quite how much people wanted to care for each other and how much those desires for care were frustrated by the way our society is set up.

People, he argues, express themselves and create the world through creative and collective activity. This natural tendency is twisted into something unrecognisable in work under capitalism.

Just as Marx called into question the naturalness of work under capitalism – showing it not as a natural attribute of humanity but a historically specific and violent arrangement – women associated with the Wages for Housework movement sought to show that the unpaid work women did in the home was not out of a natural feminine benevolence, but

the arcane and ritualised customer service practices that shape a great deal of contemporary work leave people detached from the tasks their jobs involve or should involve, and from their own selves. No wonder so many of today’s workers are so miserable.

Through feminism’s theoretical and practical mobilisations, the category or concept of ‘work’ itself was called into question.