The Abolition of Work

Work makes a mockery of freedom.

the only occasion on which man realizes his complete humanity by giving full “play” to both sides of his twofold nature, thinking and feeling.

Workers of the world... relax!

Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price.

There was a time in our own past when the “work ethic” would have been incomprehensible, and perhaps Weber was on to something when he tied its appearance to a religion, Calvinism, which if it emerged today instead of four centuries ago would immediately and appropriately be labeled a cult.

To take only one Roman example, Cicero said that “whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.”

The only thing “free” about so-called free time is that it doesn’t cost the boss anything.

Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital.

On the other hand—and I think this the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure—we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products.

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.