Human Robots

Life in a capitalism is contradictory. We work not enough and we work too much. Millions of people cannot find work, or cannot find as much work as they would like. At the same time, millions of workers say they would like to work less and have fewer hours than they do now. In today's world those workers, now defined by a few as the precariat; temp and casual agency-workers with zero-hour contracts who are encouraged to celebrate unstable jobs and uncertain income as forms of freedom rather than insecurity.

During recessions when work is scarce, questions about the quality of work gives way to a desperate search for work of any kind.  The Left begins to romanticise workers as noble toilers. The Right blames the failings of the economy on workers, lazy and over-paid.

Oscar Wilde sought to liberate the individual from work. Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue in his 1883 pamphlet The Right to Be Lazy describes “a furious passion for work.” as “a strange delusion” that afflicts the working class. This furious passion for work is not a constant of human nature but rather something that must be constantly reinforced by various means of conditioning and discipline. Some such as Murray Bookchin argue that socialists should be asking workers to give up not just their chains but their identities as workers.

The allure of reformism is that it is always easier to pose demands on the terms of the enemy than it is to reject those terms altogether. Erich Fromm argued that “the self realization of man...is inextricably linked to the activity of work,” which will again become authentic and fulfilling once it is freed from capitalist control. Instead of demanding more work, the call should be for better work. Fromm also wrote of the "fear of freedom." It is  easy enough to say that in the future I will be what I am now—a worker, but perhaps with a bit more money and a little more job security and control over my work with some extra leisure time. It is something else to imagine ourselves as different kinds of people altogether.