this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Antiwork
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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
The new place for c/antiwork@lemmy.fmhy.ml
This server is no longer working, and we had to move.
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Subscribers: 2.1k
Date Created: June 21, 2023
Library copied from reddit:
The Anti-Work Library 📚
Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
c/Antiwork Rules
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3. Post must have Antiwork/ Work Reform explicitly involved
Post must have Antiwork/Work Reform explicitly involved in some capacity. This can be talking about antiwork, work reform, laws, and ext.
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It is impossible to list every example or variation of the rules. It is also impossible to word everything perfectly. Players are expected to understand the intent of the rules and not attempt to "toe the line" or use loopholes to get around the intent of the rule.
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I never inserted an appeal to nature, as you have insinuated.
I only asked you to consider the particular social organization in the particular societal context, and to consider how constructs and terms originally emerge and become entrenched.
I also asked you to consider that while social organization is supported robustly by natural antecedents, any particular social organization is not particularly natural, but rather produced from historical antecedents.
How is labor organized in our society?
Which group dominates the culture and language, relating to labor, and to other processes and systems, in our society?
Who benefits, and who is harmed, within our current social organization, from our current social organization?
Is our social organization collective, as you have asserted, or is it rather dominated by one particular group?
What particular practices would be better suited for organization of labor that is authentically collective, with effects more transformative than effects of mere quibbles?
I'm cutting myself off here regardless of response for my own health, though I'll respond in good faith. Albeit with a bad attitude at this point.
The appeal to nature was implied. Don't bring it up if you don't want it to be part of things. Your argument would be better suited by saying "labor and terminology are socially constructed". Bears no implicit baggage. Also, see how I inserted something constructive? Arguments are not always to be won, but are often better for enhancing understanding, even if you feel like you're holding your interlocutor's hand.
You ask me a lot of questions without answering any yourself, which feels very bad faith. Especially when you're asking big societal level questions from a random person on the internet who has zero power to do any meaningful change beyond being nice to the people around me. I'm more than happy to bash rich white people (which most of your leading questions lead to) and you don't have to be a contrarian dick about it. Honey and vinegar my dude.
I'm not answering your bad faith spree of condescension. In the future, make your point and don't ask others to make it for you and avoid assuming that everyone else is dumb (which is how you come off). Just because a person doesn't list out all their reasoning, doesn't mean they haven't thought about it. You come of as militant and aggressive to people that are on your side, which is always bad.
Listen. The topic is terminology and constructs imposing on workers a division, of some being "unskilled".
You had suggested that such norms have a "logistical" (e.g. natural) utility, as for example of career counselors seeking to process cases more efficiently. Your repeated insistence that I have invoked an appeal to nature, even in spite of my denial, is dishonest.
I sought to challenge your representation of the natural utility for the construct of the "unskilled worker", and your representation of its occurrence in society. Constructs are not equally helpful to everyone. Society has structure.
Capitalists organize the division of labor, the recruitment of workers, and perpetuate the wage system.
The term "unskilled worker", obviously, is a construct reproduced by capitalists, toward the effect of marginalizing a cohort of the working class, and keeping the class divided and therefore disempowered, against becoming conscious of being oppressed beneath the wage system.
There is no argument to be won, or grand solution to be proposed. There is no value merely in subjecting the privileged to "bashing".
Value derives from being critical over how society is organized, and the processes by which it is reproduced, and from seeking the opportunities for meaningful change.
Answers and solutions cannot simply be passed to you, as though on a silver platter. You need to think and to learn, to ask questions yourself, and to try to answer them, with an attitude that is critical, not avoidant or assured.
What is abundantly clear is that if you are protected the construct of the "unskilled workers", then you are protecting capitalists, and harming the working class.