The Abolition of Work

Like most social and political theory, the story Hobbes and his successors told was really unacknowledged autobiography.

Forty percent of the workforce are white-collar workers, most of whom have some of the most tedious and idiotic jobs ever concocted.

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.

Finally, we must do away with far and away the largest occupation, the one with the longest hours, the lowest pay and some of the most tedious tasks around. I refer to housewives doing housework and child-rearing. By abolishing wage-labor and achieving full unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor. The nuclear family as we know it is ... See more

Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship.

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.

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.