this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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Antiwork

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  1. We're trying to improving working conditions and pay.

  2. We're trying to reduce the numbers of hours a person has to work.

  3. We talk about the end of paid work being mandatory for survival.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 7 months ago (7 children)

I mean... probably originally, but that's not all that it is, nowadays. Some people really do unironically mean the former, in that sub on the social network that shall not be named (though I haven't checked it for... hrm, almost a year now!:-P).

[–] [email protected] 48 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

You mean that sub that saw a huge surge in subscribers, increased bad faith actors, and general chaos ahead of the infamous mod schism that shredded any credibility that might have been hanging on?

As someone who watched it happen in real time, no one will ever be able to convince me that all of that was a coincidence.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

I didn't go into the details, but yeah you got exactly what I meant:-). 💯

Some of them were probably even real.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Represented by the dogwalker in the famous interview

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I do feel like the former or something close to it should be our goal as a society.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

Um... you probably meant the latter, as in the second one, right? Eating Doritos while slaves do all the hard work - presuming we aren't talking about non-sentient robots but actual people - sounds kinda selfish to me:-P.

Edit: to clarify, I'm down with the live like a King 👑 and eat Doritos 🔺 parts, it's only the pesky slavery 🤕 part that I'm against!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Lol, I did mean the former, but yes, I was imagining automation/etc taking over the role of most jobs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

Best I can do is bad AI art and music to take away the hobbies of a lot of people and to stop paying people who do that for a living.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I can't speak for living like a king but we were able to recently confirmed again the whole lazy proletariat myth is a capitalist fiction. During the COVID-19 lockdown we had furloughed workers with a perfect opportunity to just lounge for months, and they just couldn't. Healthy adults just can't couch potato and watch TV for two weeks. When they try, they get cabin fever and start leaning how to ~~widdle~~ whittle wood into bear sculptures. The Great Resignation was driven partially by lockdown hobbies that became lucrative,

I, personally, can couch-potato out for weeks, but at my worst, I have slept for months, getting up only to eat and excrete. I didn't sleep always; sometimes I'd lie there awake but my inertia would be so great I couldn't lift a hand. This is avolition a symptom of mental illness, such as major depression. When doctors noticed that I can make like a log for almost a year, I was diagnosed and qualify for disability.

When all your workers are lethargic or crabby or stealing all the nitrous canisters, maybe your workplace is toxic. Maybe the managers aren't actually managing but acting like children who need to be handled. Or maybe you're not paying them enough to get out of precarity, which is a major cause of chronic mental illness like major depression.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Work as capitalism defines it is alienating. I am very much against unfulfilling drudgery.

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[–] Kecessa 53 points 7 months ago (3 children)

What? A left wing movement that uses the wrong name to make people understand what they truly mean? Really? Nah, that would never happen!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Adversaries to a movement will split hairs and redefine a movement anyways.

That's all we are seeing here. Look at now they tried to frame Black Lived Matters, something quite clean cut.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (6 children)

No. We suck at naming things. And communication in general.
"Black Lives Matter Too" would have been more clear.
"Replace the Police" would have been better also.

Even mainstream Democrats suck at it. They should be shouting every day, how they're taking on big corp's, going after antitrust abuses and unpaid taxes; While refusing to audit anyone making less than $250,000. But instead they just keep saying some variation of "The economy's great, stupid."

[–] explodicle 6 points 7 months ago (5 children)

They would have willfully misinterpreted both of those alternatives and convinced you they were poorly named anyways.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Law enforcement based on the Peelian principles is not a tennable thing. Sure, every US beat officer will learn it in training but they also learn the public is the enemy, which has been the way of things for over a century.

if we could imagine a new age of policing, it would involve much less enforcement and much more prevention, mostly disincentivising people from engaging in desperation crime. Heck, we might even end retributive sentencing for a more restorative system.

If we dropped our current law enforcement -- the whole thing -- and turned to investigating and intercepting elite deviance (white collar crime) we would save more lives, prevent more damage and more cost by orders of magnitude. Not that law enforcement actually does much to reduce crime.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, but that interview on Fox News really killed the movement pretty hard lol

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Why? An interview with any right wing idiot doesn't dent their movement

[–] explodicle 9 points 7 months ago

Because their movement is idiots.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Because they lost all credibility that day

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Is that right? To the average person, "Anti-Work" sounds like you're straight up against working, and unless you want to explain this to every single person individually, Fox News is going to keep having a field day misrepresenting your movement.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, "Work Reform" is much better. There's this weird trend of massively exaggerating a talking point, as the echo chamber seems incapable of thinking about any kind of optics or moderation

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Honestly that mod torpedoing the whole movement with a dumb interview and forcing the rebrand to work reform was probably one of the best things that could've happened.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

Leftists really suck at marketing. Between that, antifa, and defunding the police, they really don't seem to know how to put a name to an idea that can't be misconstrued by an opponent with the maturity of a 5 year old (which, as luck would have it, is most opposition). I'd even argue BLM should be on that list.

Edit to add: global warming.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

We're really good at marketing exclusively to other leftists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

The real problem is that big media (and therefore the prevailing narratives) are all controlled by the authoritarian corporate establishment.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I believe it stems from Liberalism. Class consciousness is on the rise, but newly-class aware liberals aren't yet aquainted with Leftist theory. These ideas are popular among liberals that are becoming more familiar with leftism but are disconnected from the centuries of leftist progress.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago

Once I saw a guy arguing for pure capitalism because otherwise the state would have to force people to work with threats of incarceration or whatever.

It's like some sort of trolley problem delusion. It is fine shoving desperate people into whatever jobs they can get, but only if the Invisible Hand does it. It's fine if the threat is homelessness and starvation, but only if the Invisible Hand does it.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago

Why the hell haven’t you guys shifted the movement name over to work reform after what happened on tv? It’s not helping

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)
  1. 60 seems optimistic
  2. Plenty of "antiwork supporters" do believe option 1
  3. Your stance is valid
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

They may think they believe it, but the lockdowns of 2020 showed otherwise. Unless you're one of the "lucky" nonneurotypical people with a disorder that makes it possible to just lay around and do nothing, people go stir crazy. Feeling productive may as well be on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's one of the reasons the great resignation happened. Way too many of us are working bullshit jobs, and we got to face that reality head on, and didn't like it one bit.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

Exactly! I have a genetic illness that caused congenital deformities and injuries and disability later in life, starting around my teens thanks to puberty.

From an early age my relationship with work was distorted because I found myself trapped in the gap between two pathways. I was obviously capable of work, with the right treatment and support I had a lot of potential. But I was disabled, and I required expensive supports and medical intervention, and under the public healthcare system there reaches a point of disability and limitations in capacity that you are written off by the system. Shoved in a residential group home, given a pension below the poverty line, and expected not to try. (genuinely, we're expected not to try, if someone on a disability pension works a job, they can loose their pension, which is many cases is also tied to housing and access to medical services)

I'd flip between the two systems, I'd have a great few months with regular access to treatment, I'd get a job plan from the dole office, I'd sit through work readiness courses, I'd be getting healthier and looking forward to working and being a good little contributor to society. Then I'd hit a waiting list for my medical care, my health would slip, I'd be re-assessed by the welfare department and deemed too disabled to work, my job plan would be shredded and I'd get a pension support plan. Then I'd get to the top of the wait list, resume treatment, and get back to getting to work.

I didn't start a "real job" until I was 24, it was a call centre gig and I near killed myself trying to do it.

It wasn't even hard. It was a true 9-5 (no overtime, no bullshit) and you mentally didn't need to bring any of it home with you. It was easy for me, but my body decided it was too much. My health suffered and it took years to fully recover, with me barely pulling myself together here and there for gig work in between being bounced on and off the disability pension system.

The whole endeavour was far more expensive to tax payers than a system like UBI. Processing my case 70 times because the disability support, and employment support eligibility requirements are so strict and the lines between streams so black and white took a lot of administrative resources.

I've been in my current industry for 10 years this November. I work part time, 12-20 hours a week depending on my health. I'm highly successful in my field because I'm working within my body and mind's means and playing to my strengths. I'm a whole person with a life outside work and I bring that range of experiences to my job, enriching what I bring to my organisation - which is good, because my job is a mutual exchange between me and my employer, it's not exploitive towards me the worker, which further prevents burn out for me.

But we exist within the capitalist system of funding and our wages are set by the department of health and human services. I make $34,000AUD a year and it's not enough to survive.

But if I work any harder my body will not survive.

I'm asking to do what I can do for my community, while living a safe existence.... Not being forced to choose between litteraly breaking my back working for someone else's greedy profit, or starving in a tent (though realistically, a lot of people are doing both)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Anti-work is anti-exploitation.

It's not about people wanting to be lazy yet still have all the niceties, it's about not being coerced into a lifetime of labor to enrich the ones coercing you. A person's labor should enrich themselves and those they choose.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (17 children)

If everyone here, as they claim, is not against work, then why call it anti work? Why not call it anti labour exploitation?

For all the claims made in this post, I see a hundred saying that wage labor is the same as slavery, so this is a bit hard to believe

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Yeah no.

That is not what most here say when they talk about it. It's immediately "working for a salary is slavery!" (Literally that I've been told literally dozens of times now here)

Everyone can agree with the second paragraph, most people here subscribe to the first paragraph, though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's weird how the name doesn't break down to what it really means.

If only there was a word that meant forced labour that injured the worker.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Personally I am in favour of the former definition, just substitute "othet people" with "automation"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Didn't they have a whole civil war over that in the Reddit sub? Some genuinely thought the sub was for people who just don't want to work at all and some were more thinking of work reform

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