featured essay from: <a href="http://www.whywork.org/">CLAWS</a> -- Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery "Someday, there will be no workers, only artists." Bob Black: Abolitionist and Archestrator of the Slack Revolution by Steve Mizrach, aka seeker 1 After all these years, and after reading Bob Black's The Abolition of Work, I have finally realized just what was wrong with Marxism. Oh, the Marxists talked a good game - working in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, lounging around to watch the sunset; 20-hour workweeks; month-long vacations; etc. But when you get down to it, they are still drawing from the same poisoned well that has parched Western civilization for the last 500 years: the Protestant Ethic, which freed Europe from Catholic voodoo only to feed its heads with doodoo, such as "work is the outward sign of moral perfection." While Luther was telling people that what counted was faith and the Holy Spirit, not work and deeds, Calvin helped spread silly ideas, like the one that people had to be at constant physical labor or idleness would tempt them to sin. Deep down, this is the root of the Puritan Ethic: why even today the neo-Puritans hate Hollywood with such passion: they feel that if we are not kept busy with mindless, rote work, then we will be seized by the carnal passions and led to sin. Marxists claim that workers are overexploited. So what is their solution? Have the workers take over the factory to "restore the dignity of work." Make everybody do manual labor, like the Pol Pot regime did in Cambodia and the Incas did in Peru - as Mao said, "let there be no separation between the work of the hands and the work of the mind." Our goal should be to increase production. Deep down Marxists, while despising capitalism, only want to hijack what they see as its main notable achievement, accomplished through the Industrial Revolution: mass production. They do not want to abolish the assembly line, only bring more of us to its trough. Let the elite fat cats sweat with the so-called "working class." Rather than wanting us to all enjoy the life of leisure led by the fat cats, the Marxists' main goal is motivated by envy - they want to force the fat cats to suffer as the "working class" has suffered. I finally saw through the Marxist illusion when I realized the deep-set opposition to automation of mass production. Marx could not have predicted the development of robots, and yet his so-called followers oppose them with tooth and nail. Why should we force people to do machine-like rote work? Why not have machines do the work of machines? Marxists fight automation because they claim it threatens jobs. You remember what "jobs" are, right? They are the things that society tells us we have to work 9 to 5 at and be "productive," right? Marxists deep down view people as units of production. They hate people who refuse to be productive, who will not work, the so-called "lumpenproletariat" who refuse to be a part of anybody's 'productive forces.' Marxists do not have a true liberatory vision. They want to "liberate" the working class from its exploitation by the finance class. But they do not want to liberate everyone. They want to turn us all into "workers." Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, and other anarcho-syndicalists, libertarian-socialists, and anti-technocrats at the International realized that this was the fatal flaw of Marxism. "Work" as we know it should be abolished - that is, the requirement that all of us "mass produce" things that other people need - and taken over by robot labor. This is the promise of post-industrial society, and yet some Marxists greet it with horror. After all, even capitalist industrialism raised the standard of living of the working class to an incredible degree. Yet, things like nanotechnology and the miniaturization revolution have abolished the fundamental assumptions of Marxism and of economics in general. There will be no more scarcity. More and more can be produced with less and less - of energy, capital, resources, and, yes, human labor as well. People can and always will produce the things they or those they know want with their own hands, or, if they are skilled artisans, the things that others want, but with time, precision, and care. But there will be no more mass production. If you understand Black, Bookchin, Fuller, Henderson, or others, then you know that the industrial revolution is at an end. The Modernist assumption, that the way our lives could improve was through industrialization and urbanization, is at an end. Industrialism is a massive roaring engine, to whom we have sacrificed so many human lives, and whose appetite threatens to consume and poison the world today. But if we "downsize" and "localize" what we make - Schumacher's "small is beautiful" - and do it with robots, we will not need industrialism anymore. There is nothing radical, revolutionary, or liberatory in the industrial vision. Putting more of us into the factories will not accomplish anything. No matter how "friendly" you make the factory - slow down the assembly line, improve worker safety, give hour-long coffee breaks, have ten people doing the job of two - the factory remains a factory. A place where workers' safety, health, and mental well-being is challenged each and every day. Marxists are still hung up on this concept of "use value." Something is only worth as much as the amount of "work" - mindless routine labor - that went into its making. They react with horror to the way the economists have been 'brainwashing' us with the silly notion of "exchange value" - i.e. that something is worth as much as you or I are willing to pay for it - because it does not attach any value to the "work" of the robot-human who produced it. Marxists hate artists - at least, those who do not practice social realism - because they produce things that have no "use." You cannot "use" a painting or sculpture, any more than you can a smile or a rainbow. The value of art does not come from the hours of sweat the painter put into the canvas. No, it comes from how much someone enjoys the painting. Yes, you heard me right. Enjoyment. Pleasure. It doesn't fit into the dim, dingy workers' universe of the Marxists. That people might want things not so much that they can use them, but simply because they enjoy having them. An artist is sharing his creative vision with you, and you pay him as thanks for that. Someday, there will be no workers, only artists. Like the artisans of old, the only things people will make will be the things they want to. Everything else, especially the thing that everybody needs - food, clothing, shelter, and so forth - will be made by robots, who can make them more efficiently. Robots do not complain, do not have "health" to be insured or threatened by industrial processes, do not make mistakes (if programmed correctly), and do not need to be paid. The "bosses" have known this for thirty years. Only the "workers," those neo-Luddites, seem to want to protect their neat unionized niche in the assembly plant from the new technology of automation. They do not realize that the boss is their liberator. He has liberated them from the factory. Marxists call this "unemployment," and treat it as a tragedy, because in our society someone must somehow be "employed" in order to have the things they need to feed themselves and their families. The truly humane, post-Marxist society will be one in which no one needs to have a "job." The idea is an obsolete concept. For the so-called "middle class" the idea is an especial absurdity. These people get in their polluting cars, wait in traffic jams, and search frenetically for parking, all so they can go to an "office" where they do things that could just as easily be done at home with a computer and a modem. But we seem fixated on this idea, that we must go somewhere else, "work" for eight hours, and then come home again. The "work" of the middle class may not be as physically exhausting as that of the "working class," but it is as equally rote, boring, repetitive, and unoriginal, focusing on the copying and recopying of information. That is something that could be done much better by artificially intelligent computers. As one writer once put it, 95% of people move matter from one place on earth to another, and 5% keep track of where they put it. In our post-industrial society, there is no need for either "labor" or "management." Both have become equally obsolete. People somehow react with horror to the idea that we might be becoming a "leisure society." They point to the statistics which suggest that Americans are not getting enough exercise and that, as a nation, obesity is literally killing us. All these things are true. But why do we have to "work" in order to get "exercise"? It seems to me that there are many kind of "recreation" - climbing, hiking, biking, running, walking, skiing, bungee jumping, etc. - which use as many calories as "working." And are a helluva lot more fun. We are obese as a nation because for recreation we accept mass-produced "entertainment" rather than really going out and having fun. The Situationists understood that. We no longer have to hunt for our food and other basic necessities of life. But we still have an "economy" where we must accumulate "money" to "purchase" those necessities. We call this the "market." The hunt has been replaced by the rat race for money, but the rat race has now become as obsolete as the hunt. Why can't we accept that? For thousands of years, people have utilized various means to lessen the amount of work that they themselves had to do. As Marxists well know, the cleverest ones found ways to get other people to do work for them, and became things like kings, priests, scribes, mandarins, and bureaucrats. I.e., the "ruling class." In turn, they exploited the labor of animals and other human beings. In some cases, they made other human beings do endless amounts of work - often to the point of exhaustion or death - utilizing the lash, thereby creating the institution of slavery. Slavery has been abolished, although as the Marxists remind us, it has been replaced by wage slavery. Workers are still slaves to their paycheck. But, their true master is even more harsh and unforgiving. It is the time clock. In the truly liberated society, we will no longer be slaves of the clock either. Only the anarchists are bold enough to announce that programme. No more deadlines, no more schedules, timetables, punchclocks, 5 o'clock whistles. Machines can be held to those things, since they do not suffer and are incapable of complaining. And even the most "artificially intelligent" machine will ever be human enough to ask for "time off." Our technology has not freed us from the clock- not yet. "Time-saving" devices in the home (like dishwashing machines, irons, etc.) and in the office (like computers, faxes, and photocopiers) were supposed to free us from the burdens of the clock. But we are now more overworked than ever, for more hours, for less pay. The new humane society will free us from the taskmaster of the timepiece. It will enable human beings to listen to their biological clocks rather than the mechanical ones which are so indifferent to the natural rhythms of life. Ultimately, there will be opponents of the abolition of work. They are the Puritans and Calvinists who have waged war on freedom in the name of the "Protestant Work Ethic," because leisure allows the imagination to roam, the mind to question authority, and the self to contemplate true pleasure. These are things that the Puritans hate, fear, and try to destroy - such as they sought to ban dramatic theatre, carnivals, festivals, and holidays in Britain under their dour and repressive regime. They only want us to have one day out of seven where we can rest, and that day is to be filled with the requirements of "prayer" and obedience to their taskmaster deity. Why not seven out of seven? There is nothing dignified about work for its own sake, nothing in it that contributes to the body or to the spirit. Creation is what human existence is all about - the making of new things. Not the constant remaking of the old: the mediocrity and the bottom line and the common denominator of mass production. A recent author has told us that economic growth is effectively at an end. We cannot increase our standard of living beyond where it is already. Americans are underemployed because there simply are no more things to be done. "Job security" no longer has any meaning, with the average "worker" switching his job an average of five times in his lifetime. There are no more linear "career paths" to pursue. But the end of economic growth comes at a perfect time. It means we can begin concentrating on human growth, by improving human beings and human lives, and focusing on threats to our planet, like war and the desolation of the environment. It is in the nature of human existence to always want to grow. One cannot imagine, explore, create new ideas, improve oneself, or penetrate the horizons of this material world to the subtler ones beyond, if they are kept at "work." In the Garden of Eden, that Golden Age where there was no work and no death, the serpent whispered in Eve's ear. It said that there was a way in which she could be as gods - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In punishment, Adam and her were told that they and their descendants would have to toil ceaselessly, living by the sweat of their brow. But the tree of knowledge, at long last, has yielded its boons. Adam's descendants now have a way in which they can lift their sentence of toil. And then concentrate on discovering the fruits of that second tree, the one which gives eternal life, guarded by the cherubim with the flaming sword. It is time for man to abandon the false grail of economic growth and find the true grail of human growth. We can do this if we SMI2LE (space migrate, exponentiate intelligemce, and extend life), use our HEAD (Hedonic Engineering for Advanced Development), and get RICH. But we cannot do these things as long as we waste our time doing things as useless as "work." In some ways, the Slack Revolution has already begun. The hyperaccelerated "Generation X" - call them slackers, or whatever - have discovered new ways to find slack. People laugh at this generation and its refusal to "work." But, unlike the hippies of the 1960s, who declined "jobs" to wander the countryside in VW microbuses and expand their consciousness with acid, and then joined the ranks of corporate America, this "New Edge" of cyberpunks are technologically literate. They use "hardware" (brain machines) to stimulate their "wetware" (brains.) Most importantly, they have declared open rebellion on the 9 to 5 world and the corporate establishment, but their war is information war. They want to jam the 'signal' of corporate disinformation - "work 9 to 5 so you can enjoy our society's false mass-produced leisure" - with their 'noise.' The Slack Revolution is taking place where all rebellions occur - at the edge, where no one is looking. Bob Black, Abolitionist and Archestrator of the Slack Revolution, Steve Mizrach. Home | Why work? | About CLAWS | Contact <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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