Abolish Work on Immediatism Podcast

"To be clear, the case against work is not one for a shorter workday, for better jobs, working conditions, or benefits, but rather for the enthusiastic retrieval of a kind of autonomy and energy that remains unthinkable as long as work endures. Violently and imperiously, work steals our opportunities for self-creation; it forecloses any possibility of Emile Armand's beautiful idea -- 'personal life as a work of art,' whereby life is lived in favor of oneself, not as an funereal exercise in abstention." ~from the Foreword

These five new episodes of Immediatism explore jobs, antiwork, and the prospects of more jobs being taken by robots in perhaps the near future. David Graeber reports "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs." Brian Dean discusses "Antiwork -- A Radical Shift in How We View Jobs." And in the three-part David Autor Series, John Danaher explores "Why Haven't Robots Taken Our Jobs? The Complimentarity Argument," "Automation and Income Inequality: Understanding the Polarization Effect," and "Polanyi's Paradox: Will Humans Maintain Any Advantage Over Machines?"

This book, Abolish Work: An Exposition of Philosophical Ergophobia, is edited by Nick Ford, published by LBC Books, and available from LittleBlackCart.com.

Foreword by David S. D'Amato
https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/234-abolish-work-an-exposition-...
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/235-on-the-phenomenon-of-bullsh...
Antiwork -- A Radical Shift in How We View Jobs
https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/236-antiwork-a-radical-shift-in...
Why Haven't Robots Taken Our Jobs
https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/237
Automation and Income Inequality
https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/238-autor-series-2-automation-i...
Will Humans Maintain Any Advantage Over Machines?
https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/239-autor-series-3-polanyis-par...

Feedback and requests to Cory@Immediatism.com

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The editor Nick Ford didn't have space to include Bob Black because he included so many of his own essays which include such gems as 'In the long run we need to work on building alternative institutions filled with productive play and autonomous activity that is chosen not out of necessity or via govern­mental restrictions but from the individual's free action. Cooperatives and independent contracting associations are two good examples of this.'

You heard it here first, folks: working at a coop isn't working!

The rabbit hole that Bob Black represents is simply too much for someone like Doreen Cleyre who's C4SS SJW politics lead to a much more technological series of solutions. She's probably a lot closer to William "Goofy" Gillis and his technophilic brand of anarchism if it can even be called that. A lot of the institutional ideologically captured left(which included the trans non-binary faction that she/they are a part of) is simply not interested in those niche anarchist uncivilized positions that came out of the 1980s.

For me, this is the foundations for a distilled Stirnerian anarch-egoist-anarchy which is ultimately friendly to the more anti-technological uncivilized positions. The trans stuff can be part of it(trans-individualism as I call it) but ditch the techno-machineological stuff that currently is a part of it.

A likely quote from Bob Black : Officer, officer, please fight my battles for me!

'No one should ever work.Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work.' etc

Bob Black one of the most underrated anarchists of the 20th Century!
I would do time for him.

Zero credibility fantasies aside, it would be more in the spirit of what Bob Black is about in practice if you would snitch on someone to the police for him.

from who? I'd love to be able to cut out the middleman, who's unfortunately such an asshole but made some very compelling arguments too!

for me, it's more black's presentation than his originality, whatever that means. when it came to putting words together he's second to none.

honestly, this obsession with his private life is pathetic.

Nothing is original as a unit, however the way BB takes concepts or ideas and presents and strings them together to form a convincing argument, all in a witty manner, is uniquely original to him.
For instance, his statement that anarchism was around way before the first State structures formed in Sumer is a brilliant attack upon the pedants who believe anarchism is a revolutionary ideology born in France or Russia in the 18th and 19th Centuries. THAT is original.

Wherever Bob Black got his ideas from, I'm damn glad he wrote them down and published them. In thirty years, I haven't seen another anarchist writer in English who can match his passion, directness, acute insights, sense of humour, and utter disregard for political correctness. There is nothing in this dry and uninteresting anthology that can match his confrontational and inspiring style, and The Abolition of Work is his best piece. What could be more appealing than a call to replace work with "permanent revelry" and the "ludic way of life"?

but did he take that lady hostage and choke her tho? says he had a good reason, seems legit!

Thank you all for not forgetting about me, Bob Black. Thank you to the guy/girl who mentioned me being a police snitch. I mean, whatever, dude. And thank you to the guy who used to say I was a pig fffffucker but who no longer posts here apparently. I didn't like him/her/it at all.

You are always on our minds when we're not working Bob. And as for Hogshire, DIE DIE DIE SCUM!!!

Big beautiful Bob, I'll give him a job if he comes and sees me,,,,,,,,I'll be back in my tower in January,,,,,,,its been a long 4 years,,,,,,,I can get him a job sacking redundant workers,,,,,,,he can lecture them on the pleasures of being oùt of work,,,,,,with no money,,,,,,,,I wonder what that feels like,,,,,,.not working or having money?,,,,,,Free?,,,,,Straaaaange huh?,,,,....*pouts*

I imagine that Bob Black would have been either enraged or highly amused (or perhaps both) by seeing his ideas associated with the Libertarian Party/anarcho-capitalist writers who infest this anthology: Kevin Carson, Sheldon Richman, Nick Ford, et al. Even the title is a nod to The Abolition of Work. Now, I had some personal experience with that particular fringe group in my mis-spent youth, having worked briefly for the Libertarian Party as a canvasser and telephone fund raiser, and met Sheldon Richman once. I'm also familiar with two of the authors Richman quotes at length in his article from this book, "Work!", Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard, and the idea of mentioning either of them favorably in a book supposedly opposed to the concept of work is ludicrous. Richman seems to use the terms "work" and "labor" interchangeably, and is oblivious to the dialectical relationship between work and "leisure", which is something Black brought out very clearly in his own essay. He is obsessed with the economistic notion of "marginal utility", and thus can't help putting the whole discussion in the framework of economics, which is an intellectual discipline real anarchists would have little use for.

so ... to recap: "real anarchists would have little use for" economics... you mean when they're talking about work or just in general?

I suppose I've been influenced by Foucault a little, difficult as he can be for me to follow sometimes. Insofar as economics is a body of knowledge, or purports to be, it comes with certain ideological assumptions which run deeper than either Marxism or capitalism. The Libertarians, "anarcho-capitalists" and 'market anarchists" who contributed to this anthology can't rise above economic thinking about work, whereas Bob Black seemed to be pointing towards a way past that, towards a world that would be absolutely Other, and impossible to describe in economic terms.

Yup, economics assumes money to be the god of a materialistic based reality and existence and has reified society to function by its values and structures. Land value, work (labor value), food, accomodation, health, the totality is built around its utility by accumulation as credit and its expenditure as debt, and all people are pressed into accepting and believing in these tenets to exist. However, the true anarch may use money as a tool, but does not think in terms of the economic value of life.

sure ... I mean, it really depends what you're using those words for?

like, materialist analysis is pretty fucking important to talk coherently about stuff like how people live and on what terms. I guess all I'm wondering is if anarchists can afford to be economically illiterate for ideological reasons lol

that hasn't worked well in my experience

oh and I don't think ol' blathering Bob was/is pointing at much of anything. he's an OG of the post-left. he made his hay with critique, he didn't build or imagine the future much in a way that I found compelling. the post-left position always seems mostly content with its critique, in my experience.

congratulations, you have understood the basic concept of a post-left @ discourse: it is a critique. primarily it's a critique of left-anarchism and left-anarchists and the dubious actions and projects they initiate and/or support. there is certainly nothing particularly innovative in terms of positive interventions, but the continued suicidal alliances, the continual fetish for formal membership organizations, the endless dreams of some sort of anarchist unity (not to mention a hoped-for unity of anarchists with social democrats maoists and tankies) make it clear that the fundamental impetus for the creation of a post-left @ critique hasn't disappeared. we still need that critique as long as there are stupid anarchists doing stupid things in the name of anarchism

and I consider that critique valuable AND draw from it on a regular basis but in this case, I was responding to makhno's comment that Bob Black was pointing to a world without any concept of work or economics or whatever.

If so, he must have been vaguely waving his hand towards a horizon, at best haha

I guess you didn't remember the parts where he explicitly discusses productive activities that are not bound by value (economics) or compulsion. Maybe read it again

the issue is not my reading comprehension friend! discussing the possibility of other means of exchange isn't the same as a whole world without economic coercion. I'm not saying Bob Black owes us a whole alternative system either. lets not have a stupid debate ok? critique is a lot easier than what to do, that's not unique to the post left position either.

it's not complaint friend, it's the assumption that there's always more to learn! what comes after "post left"? what limitations are created by framing your analysis reactively around all the things you hate?

Thx for pointing out the essential problem facing the personal shift from one world view to another. By materialism I'm describing a life of looking only at quantitive processes and the social power it provides (income, possessions, servants) physical matter accumulation (cars, houses, land, cash)and not a metaphysical. Of cause not all metaphysics is ideal such as religion and ideology, however the form I'm describing is found in daily aesthetics and meditative exercise to maintain a healthy and autonomous mind and body. One can still have math skills and use cash, that is all that money was ever meant to be used for before it was hijacked by ideology and turned into a weapon of slavery.
So economic illiteracy is actually favourable for anarchists, and if they know their maths, they won't get ripped off because their meditations will allow them to calculate the real value of freedom.
But I agree the economists have created a maze of involuntary and voluntary financial contractual obligations such as rent, employment, banking, omg mortgage, debt payments, penalty and fines all woven into State legislation , it doesn't really work well for anyone except the 1%, but by pursuing an aesthetics of joy into every day, just a shirt on your back and open healthy relationships with a few kindred friends puts you 20 lightyears ahead of Elon Musk types in being a real human with a billion dollar heart.

And again, just letting you know I'm not a spaced-out jesus-freak type in a white robe, I'm just the regular dude in jeans and shirt at Wallmart buying ANARCH DIY stuff, mmmkay?

"like, materialist analysis is pretty fucking important to talk coherently about stuff like how people live and on what terms. I guess all I'm wondering is if anarchists can afford to be economically illiterate for ideological reasons lol

that hasn't worked well in my experience"

like, your ushanka is showing, comrade. "materialist analysis" is pretty fucking useless to talk about. just look at all the talk has done since your mans and his mans first shat it onto the page. what you should be wondering is how to stop making the same idiotic mistakes because dead white men said some totally groovy big brain shit and not worrying about what anarchists need be.

never change, lumpentroll

Ushanka lol,,,,,materialism,,,,,,yah!,,,,,,,,,money,,,,,,yah!,,,,,,,,,,,,moron,,,,,,,,,,yah!

Materialist analysis is NOT important. In fact in a larger onto-epistemological framework materialism is just plain wrong compared to subjective idealism or panpsychism(where I settle). Anarchism and anarchy works best as a psychist(or even idealist) conception of reality not a materialist one which belongs more to Marxists, communists and others who can't see beyond modern political economy.

They tend to use countersensical terms like "social relations" which is a terrible phrasing. It makes more sense to see human affairs in terms of structure and function not a redundant term like 'social relations'. Capital and State are a structural functional reality that is best understood from a psychist conception of reality.

To his other point regarding Black, Blacks post-leftism is leading to a more distilled unelective and unproposed anarchy that flows from Stirner as opposed to Proudhon who represents the elective proposed form of anarchy. Anarchos and anarchism as opposed to anarche and anarchy. Post-left critique is leading to a new discursive age of anarch and anarchy beyond anarchist and anarchism. Anarchy as an explicit apolitical living structural function(apolitical as in gang with an explicit analysis)

ziggy and lumpy, sittin in a tree
telling us all just how we need to be
first the academy, then anews
in real life i bet they are both a big snooze

that last line is terrible form. if you can't make snooze work, then try lose, flues, fuse, muse, spews, cues, clues, or go off a little with, like, prove.

the "i bet" is nice content, but definitely throws off the rhythm.

good luck!

aw cute, whoopin on your little marxist strawman huh? lazy, but cute.

seriously tho ... he's talking about a hat, then he makes the same old ridiculous assertions that reality doesn't matter in economics? it's not even worth responding to. we've all been watching ziggles give himself pep talks in his bathroom mirror for literally years and years at this point, its a bit sad. feels like I'm kicking puppies to even bother pointing out that reality PROBABLY MATTERS...

but hey, everyone can live in whatever little bubbles of denial and ideology they want. if they come near me and flex, I'll pop that shit so fast and laugh while they cry about it. facts and feelings and all that :)

oh my mistake, the hat comment was someone else. likely Le Fool using his latest pseudonym. but yes, foaming at the mouth about the karl and the commies doesn't really help you understand economics better I'm afraid.

you know who does? this guy - https://michael-hudson.com/

I'm not that interested in economics myself but I wanted to learn enough to understand exactly how wall street and financialization took the already shitty societal constructs of the previous century and supercharged them to the mass suicide point we're at now. Neoliberalism and all that. This guy breaks it down real easy and simple for dullards like me and yes, he's a marxist. who worked for the IMF... good luck making any sense of that without setting aside all the usual american assumptions

There's others as well such as Mark Blythe as well as Kevin Carson when it comes to having a good handle on economic language. None of this legitimizes your statement that materialist analysis matters. You can have a command of poly-econ language and NOT be a materialist.

Keen actually was at a conference that Bob Black also attended in 2017 and he gave a pretty good speech as did Bob of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7iIxPRt5C8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRDRYjOJuMs

I know these excellent links were meant for lumpen's possible enlightment but also, thanks I found it refreshing to hear Steve's eloquent slant on the future of work and its relevance.

ziggy ... you keep saying it doesn't. why is that any more valid? I'm required to waste my time arguing with you why? we've already done this dance for years. anyone who's watched your "contributions" here has every reason to think you're deliberately wasting peoples time. you never even had the spine to prove you actually exist by calling in to aragorn's show.

mark blythe is decent, I agree although his conclusions about power are fucking terrible. he came out pretty strongly against the the milquetoast liberal slogan of defunding the police so he's got tunnel vision like most contemporary economists but he at least acknowledges that neoliberalism is suicidal. i'm less familiar with keen but if he's this guy, I'm looking up who's all about banking reform, that would be another failure to understand how power functions. we're anarchists here, remember?

I think you simply lack basic comprehension skills when it comes to my positions. I don't think I'm exactly complicated and I'm not speaking in complex code(like Frere Dupont for instance). Overall my extreme pro-anarchy views are pretty plain spoken.

You also completely miss my take on economists like Keen or Blythe. I don't go to them for their overall societalistic worldviews, I go to them strictly for their economic analysis. Why would you think that he is a frame of reference for me beyond that. What else do you not get about my positions Lumpster?

sure ziggles, we've done this before too. you claim I'm too stupid instead of in disagreement with you and because of how boring all this is at this point (again, for years now), I'm only a little bit curious as to whether you honestly believe everyone who disagrees with you is just stupid.

If that's the case, that's pretty embarrassing for you. But it's also a perfect circle from which your thinking can never escape. Have fun with that sweetheart!

if I drank every time ziggles trotted out the same smarmy shit, i'd have a serious problem

Which non-work indigenous societies have you borne witness to? And in what magically-thinking-characteristic-of-United-States-of-America-people notion of reality are eight-billion-plus people going to magically make the jump into living like this?

The San tribe, haven't you heard of them? But I suppose neo-Marxist workerists aren't interested in alternative societies which are free of factories hmm?
Its not really THAT magical, more a case of common-sense and the cessation of fear and hesitation by about one sixteenth of the 8 billion, that's about 500 million who control the reigns of power on behalf of the 1000 or so who hold the wealth. How's your maths AND optimism?

So, you've been among the San? And you're seriously arguing that eight billion plus people are going to make the Great Leap Backward to living in the manner that they do?

How is this supposed to happen?

Try to express yourself in a clear manner, unlike your second paragraph, which is fucking unintelligible.

A commodity isn't an object, it's a social relation between human beings mediated by market exchange, and obviously this won't exist in a communist society. Your argument here is a straw man argument. Im not against the goals described her -- I'm asking anarchoids to come up with a persuasive argument as to how this is supposed to come about. In the real world, among real people, not the usual Harry Potter fan stuff.

OMG all the same old dull rhetoric starts rolling out in opposition when the real visionary and paradigm shifting ideas are revealed. Yeah, and my billion dollar heart is a commodity!

The whole point is it doesn't have to come about. It already exists, its here now sitting right beside you, but you just can't grasp it, because you have a wall inside your consciousness and you don't have the key to open it, but I do.

Anon 01:07 have some faith in the goodness of most people and their anarchoid guardians, we are ìn for some exciting times ahead.

I think you're jealous of radfun folk. Life is about style.

What's the point of a subculture that generates absolutely nothing of relevance to the larger world around it in a context of what's happening in the United States today?

your individual relevance, the relevance of the subculture, and anything you or it generates is utterly pointless in this larger worldly, or any other, context. this is the point. requiring one beyond it or so much other external recognition or deeper meaning is the cause of your angst. get over yourself—your importance.

The U.S. anarchist subculture gave rise to the 'Woke' thing in the larger society around us? Please explain.

Well its the feminist and gay faction of the idpol mass neurotic revolution which began the neo-narcissistic zeitgeist phenomenon.

"Neo-narcissistic"? Whatever that means, the Far Right has been a bastion for abysmal narcissist madmen for centuries already. Source: history.

That includes your hero Gavin McInnes.

Gavin McInnes is exactly the type of moron who I describe as neo-narcissistic, and if you just happen to be lacking in some of the nuanced terminology used, it goes hand in hand with neo-fascism and neo-liberal at either end of the spectrum. Gay pride, proud boys, me to, are all part of the populist milieu.

As if narcissism used to be a movement, like a while back, between like the 20s up to the 70s?

I look back at any point in history and there was always some narcissist moron either in charge of some major power or at least very influential in some movement. They also tend to be alpha males, but hey that's not related to feminism! /s

So thanks anyways for your inclusion of McInnes as a narcissist hipster moron. He's just same old shitbag with neo-retro looks, not new/old shitbag.

yeah, i just throw prefixes on words at random and THEY ALL TOTALLY THINK I'M NEOSMART AS FUCK.

Thanks for at least replying with mediocre analysis of the present Western narcissistic culture, what I refer to as the neo-narcissistic movement fueled by the capitalist consumerism carving its greed swath through the minds of the horde at the expense of a tranquil environmental ambience.

Identity politics is a mainstream pro-capitalist liberal schtick, not an anarchist subculture thing. Here, as in so much else, the subculture is a tail getting wagged by a dog.

were never the big threat to the system that its proponents believed it to be and it will (has?) be completely absorbed by the system. The system doesn’t care about your super special pronouns and woke politics as long as you keep going to work, be nonviolent, obey the law and pay your bills. “WokeWashing” is already in full effect. Idpol is already being mobilized for increasing social control as well as made into a marketing tool used to sell the products of international megacorporations.

Hmmkay, but I still hold that there is an underlying mass failure on the Idpol subject's part to distinguish between true liberation and a self-absorbed neo-narcissistic pride, and under whatever ideological authority, it exists as a force unto itself. The tail is half wagged by the connected social networks it multiplies and thrives within.

what you hold, is an unfinished thought.

IdPol was/is a deliberate cooptation of ideas that were originally about liberation.

My thought is not unfinished, I'm just lazy and hate the work it requires to complete a comment ;)

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