areyou

Working for the man, working on myself, this relationship is work, this relationship is working, working on this or that, this is my body of work, that is just what i do for work, work work work. It's a word we seem to use for every sort of action or arrangement that requires any effort, but what does it really mean? Many anarchists are anti-work but scrape themselves raw on tasks or endeavors that could be called work.

What defines something as work? Is it alienation, is it coercion, or is it personal, social, economic, or something else??

Are anarchists against work? If so, which ones and why? Are anarchists who are anti-work also anti-leisure or is opposition to work necessarily an embrace of a leisure-based lifestyle?

Could a sustained anarchist war on the institution of work be possible and if so, what would it look like? What allies in this battle would anti-work anarchists likely be able to find?

***

Thanks to Anonymous for this TOTW guest submission. If you'd like to write your own guest TOTW submission, you can submit your writing here: SUBMIT HERE!

Comments

Bad Punny (not verified) Tue, 10/07/2025 - 07:51

most jobs suck except the ones that blow.

but seriously, why keep asking these questions in these ways?

"work" can be horrible, forced, coerced labor. and "work" can be tending a garden, feeding a child, writing an essay.

the word has so many connotations that unless you are prepared to list them all each time you say you are "anti-work" others will misunderstand your meaning and probably your point as well.

better to cut to the chase and say you are anti-slavery. that is what a lot of anarchists seem to actually mean.

and as for leisure, imo the leisure/work binary is a product of capitalism. doing a thing can be strenuous or easy. and one isn't work because it is hard and the other leisure because it requires no effort. work is work (slavery) when it is done not for oneself but for another. otherwise you are just doing stuff, relaxing or building a cabin.

anon (not verified) Tue, 10/07/2025 - 09:31

In reply to by Bad Punny (not verified)

"the truly efficient laborer will not crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure, and then do but that he loves best. He is anxious only about the fruitful kernels of time. Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another. Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as if the short spring days were an eternity."
--A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers

I agree with your comments. anti-slavery is the real question. jobs suck, not 'work'.

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/07/2025 - 10:11

can responses to this topic not turn into simplistic semantics? 

yes jobs bad, work good; no work bad, jobs also bad; no neither jobs nor work bad, only coercion bad... all of these are just about what definition you're using, and that will be subjective and so not that interesting to talk about here. 

to flesh out some other parts of the question, what does it mean that we talk about work in such contradictory ways? what is the impact of various words that mean both good and bad things, and therefore maybe point towards the inherent fluidity of meaning?

what IS the opposite of work? is it leisure? or is leisure the flipside of the same coin, and so to work the same as the left wing is to the right wing (and vice versa)? what's the difference between leisure and play? feral faun and bob black were useful in their day on this topic, and have both posited meaningful play as the goal, vs their definitions of work. 

lumpy (not verified) Tue, 10/07/2025 - 10:18

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

you know who already really covered every angle of this topic for centuries?

the damned reds. so if the american allergy to marxism is a problem for somebody, they can rely on weird, toxic hacks like bob black for a derpy, half-cooked analysis of work.

and i say all of this as the lumpenest of proles, so marx himself would have hated me and claimed i was a smelly criminal who couldn't be trusted. which is unfair because i just showered last night!

SirEinzige Thu, 10/09/2025 - 13:23

In reply to by lumpy (not verified)

Bob said it better by far and it's not even close. Marx actually saw labour as something of an essence to human beings. He came close at various points as Bob himself acknowledged but there is no sustained anti-work philosophy in Marx and the old reds. Even the situs fell short though they came REALLY close.

It was only ever the classical Stirnerian strain of anarchy that said anything similar.

BB remains the definitive work critic. Sadly he's not long for this world(is he still alive) and I can see his ideas REALLY taking off after his death. By the time the 30s and 40s come along people will be far more interested in his and other anti-work(and tech) ideas than faggotty fucking milieu morality in regards to his supposed 'snitching'(lol)

Workers Of The World...relax.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/10/2025 - 07:32

In reply to by SirEinzige

I'd yet have to see if there was anything in Bob's writings about the social purpose of work as status-building and relational empowerment gimmick. Loophole of anti-work theory is in how it appeals to trust-fund kids who might never have to get a job, and people like PLW and maybe Bob himself were spearheading this trend.

If you'll negate work, you'll also be having to negate its *negatives* (living in the streets, or on the dole, at worst in prison... as the socio-pathological version of being on trust funds), in order to really be asserting a form of life that doesn't require work in the first place.

So I'm afraid Black hasn't suggested many avenues for pursuing such trajectories beyond work. It's cool to be critically analyzing society, but in the lack of better options, the under-privileged tend to be clinging back to the solutions "offered" by society. This IS the main reason why revolts and social uprisings get to fade away.

SirEinzige Fri, 10/10/2025 - 09:18

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Certainly by his later writings.

For one thing it's important to understand the difference between zero some game structures and infinite game structures the latter of which is more to Bob's as well my and others liking. Negating work does not mean negating labor as such(all anti-workers make the distinction between work and labor), it means selecting for productive play and solving the social problems that cause work to come into existence in the first place.

Having a good grasp of game theory really helps with anti-work analysis.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/10/2025 - 15:29

In reply to by SirEinzige

Marx thinking that labor is humanity's species-being or whatever the fuck doesn't mean he was pro-work. The basic premise is that he thought humans liked running around creating and building stuff. Not very controversial for anarchists, I don't think. Him / his students thinking that we need hyper-industrialism to reach that point and to pour work / coerced labor into that, is just classic means-ends disunity on his part.

SirEinzige Sat, 10/11/2025 - 06:59

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

But it’s a problematic assumption nonetheless and it can certainly be turned into prowork propaganda. Marxism does not have a good track record towards anti-work tendencies on the whole. The Situs were a minority tendency who, while informed, were not all that Marxist.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/13/2025 - 04:06

In reply to by SirEinzige

Sure, I suppose it could be extended to a pro-work position but only if you took the anti-work position because you value productivity above all else and think that removing coerced labor will make the process of labor go faster or something. Or if you think "human nature" can be prescriptive rather than descriptive, I wouldn't know about Marx's position on that though. Anyway, there are anti-work Marxist currents like autonomism and Marxist humanism, and I'd go as far as to say that modern anarchism probably derives antiwork from autonomism, since autonomism's big thing is removing thw productive/unproductive labor dichotomy in typical Marxism. It wouldn't surprise me since green anarchism is largely influenced by German autonomism.

That aside, pretty much every communist I've read or spoken to recognizes the lack of coerced labor as something communism "will" "bring" so yeah. With the notable exception of Stalinists and Maoists.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 10/11/2025 - 08:01

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

The basic premise is that he thought humans liked running around creating and building stuff.

Marx never talked about creation, but about production, or at best, transformation of goods extracted from nature. His whole theory lies on the notion of productive labor- or work- and its management and exploitation. I don't recall anything anywhere in his theory that escapes the framing of humans as workers. He did see the liberation from work -or a kind of liberation- as the ultimate goal for humans within communism... but like at the end of a thousand-years process.

So I guess there're workerists that are worse than him, but he was still a kind of workerist in how he enforced this deterministic "species-being" upon people. Ancoms and ansocs *should* theoretically be for an actually counter-deterministic view of people where labor can be abolished in the here and now. But yet they're often found to remain stuck in these derelict old Modernist narratives. Some have evolved beyond, tho.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/13/2025 - 03:55

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

I don't see this as anything more than just a dispute of terminology. He called it production instead of creation, that doesn't necessarily entail ecological devastation, hell it doesn't preclude an animistic view of "nature" even, that's just an association between words you've picked up. Similarly I don't see how you can create something without taking a resource from nature, even if you respect that nature, and all you're taking are leaves for your egalitarian band society's huts or w/e.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/13/2025 - 09:47

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Creation and production means two very different things. There's been an intense debate going on for decades. We do put serial numbers on products, but a creation can't have one.

Why is that? Because production is aimed at making products... goods that are to be available to an X number of people, within a planned mode of distribution. So in that sense, even a film director or a DJ artist still can be considered a creator, where the movie or music producer is, well, a production manager, or the classical Modern sense, a "boss".

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/17/2025 - 08:09

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

If I voluntarily create every week some amount of food and make it available to 10 of my friends, is that production? Why? If it's production, why does that matter?

lumpy (not verified) Tue, 10/07/2025 - 10:13

my attitude towards wage work has always been about how much punching upwards i can do, without drawing too much attention. spent most of my 20s learning by getting fired over and over, eventually settled on working a lot of nightshifts because you're often alone, there's usually no manager looking over your shoulder, etc. more room to experiment!

i'm a union thug nowadays so there's at least some class consciousness but back when i was toiling in the salt mines of the gig economy, the only thing that stopped me from becoming clinically depressed was taking tiny little revenges, whenever i could... AND YOU SHOULD TOO! haha

as for meaningful "work" that isn't about labour exploitation, that's a completely different topic and of course i have projects and do things because i want to or because they need doing, same as humans have literally always done and always will.

it's kind of bizarre to me to confuse any of that (being a human) with being exploited for your labour (being dehumanized), since the only relationship between those two things is antithesis.

alex (not verified) Tue, 10/07/2025 - 15:36

In reply to by I am Makhno (not verified)

"My minimum definition of work is forced labor, that is, compulsory production."
"Playing and giving are closely related, they are the behavioral and transactional facets of the same impulse, the play-instinct. They share an aristocratic disdain for results. The player gets something out of playing; that’s why he plays. But the core reward is the experience of the activity itself"
it doesnt get much more "define work as bad and play as good and call it a day" than this. if work is whatever is compulsory then sure. fuck that! good thing its so easy to tell who is doing the rest of the activity of human life because they want to and not because, perhaps, its necessary and no one else is willing to do it (or thinks they should "have to" i.e. be robbed of the opportunity to have someone else do it for them). i think it's also telling that black asserts there is a "core reward" for play that consists in the experience of the activity itself (whatever that is). when it comes to art and poetry, sure, but if we're talking "washing the dishes" its beginning to look a lot like the protestant ethic. the truly noble dishwasher will enjoy the dishwashing. well, no doubt. good luck finding her

also the line "Conversation, sex, dancing, travel—these practices aren’t rule-governed but they are surely play if anything is" has made me laugh every time i've seen it. i can only think it must mean either: a blatantly false statement intended to throw the central conceit of the essay into the trash and point the reader towards the topic really being addressed (the rest of the essay about domination and the regulation of life etc); or, he is not accustomed to doing any of those things and doesnt understand any of them at all; or, he is sneaking in a definition of "rule" such that it could never apply to his good order of life.

i dont disagree with a lot of stuff in that essay though. for me, work abolition is about destroying the conditions that permit and empower the existence and reproduction of the particular and real within which most of us are impressed. not the word or the practice of doing necessary things

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/09/2025 - 13:20

In reply to by alex (not verified)

i am someone who enjoys washing the dishes and another friend comes to mind immediately. that doesn't mean that we want to only and always wash dishes, nor that we want our dish-washing to be taken for granted. there's a lot more at play here than a simple binary of people finding The Thing they like and just always doing that and The Other Thing they don't like and never doing that. 

 

alex (not verified) Thu, 10/09/2025 - 15:02

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

totally. and i'm suggesting that the author's framework is insufficient for describing that. i used dishwashing as an example to refer to other texts that also address this kind of thing, and because im also usually the dishwasher in my house, and because i have also worked as a dishwasher. my point is that there are considerations that are relevant to whether or not i'm willing to do a thing besides whether i enjoy it, and i reject a work/play dichotomy on those grounds. sometimes i enjoy my work, other times i find some aspect of my play to be tiresome. i used to hate the diet part of working out when i played rugby, for example. my suggestion is, vis-a-vis work abolition, that the confusion arises as much in the word "abolition" as it does "work." the author defines work in such a way that obviously it should be abolished; but people use that word much more broadly than "going to work" in the sense of "job necessary for [survival/security/social standing/etc]". there are also occasions where people say something is "hard work" like raising a toddler or preparing for a flood or replacing a sewage pipe. i dont believe that the latter category is the kind of thing that can be abolished, and i also think that "play" is a limiting, not a liberatory way of thinking about it. both are forms of work, regardless of whether you whistle while you do it, but the former could be abolished, as an institution and because it is an institution.

similarly im interested in "abolishing time." to me, that means one way or another ending the social practice of measuring time in such a way that it can be demarcated, accumulated and used as a token to stand in for the force or deprivation that would result from rejecting it as such. that doesnt mean that i believe time has some opposite that should be embraced as a way of life, nor does it mean im interested in abolishing what people are doing or talking about when they say they're "taking their time" or that "time is on my side" or whatever

SirEinzige Thu, 10/09/2025 - 13:14

In reply to by I am Makhno (not verified)

Sad thing is there are tik tok genZ viral videos of young Zers having allergic reactions to the 9-5 meat grind(I actually posted the same link on a tweet showing one of these genZ rejections). There has never been a better time for focused anti-work propaganda.

The current old identitarian legacy left is just not fit to bring forth this message which is why I want it to fade away like the first old left eventually did.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/17/2025 - 08:14

In reply to by SirEinzige

You need to get cured from your fixation on identity politics. It's just politics conducted through the lens of a certain identity - often imposed from the top-down yes, but not an analysis worth throwing away, since it affects people every day. Similarly fascists and nationalists aren't really identitarians like you love to claim, since they seek to create hierarchies based on that socially-defined identity whereas anarchist "identitarians" don't. Most are race and gender abolitionists even, etc.

CalvinSmith Fri, 10/17/2025 - 13:45

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

About "now is the best for anti work rhetoric" is just an opinion. Fuck you so hard for this repeated command anarchy. I can gaurantee you wouldn't be doing this in real life, because you would get your ass kicked.

Anyways, if you don't understand the gravity of the reaction to work as it comes from those born after 96', then you do not work. So what the fuck are we doing as anarchists telling people not to work, but then with hostile intent telling them what to do? "...go...do..." Benefit my ability to survive FIRST you fucking retards. Let SE talk about identity differences if you want me take you seriously. Let people discuss things calmly, you fucking hypocrite.

lumpy (not verified) Fri, 10/17/2025 - 16:01

In reply to by CalvinSmith

WHERE did they say anything like that?
HOW are you accusing them of being the one who's not chill?
WHY do you think they owe you anything?
"discuss things calmly" he says ...

if you're an ironic troll sock puppet, you're indistinguishable from the mentally ill, reactionary chud you're satirizing. OR ... there's the other possibility!

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 10/18/2025 - 18:08

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

We Stirnerians are soOoo unique and originally brilliant that we are categorized by Teh Establishment as "neurodivergent" , It's their self-defensive semi-derogatory term to hide their envy and their unbearably boring perspective on lifestyles and methodologies.

God King Tue, 10/07/2025 - 23:28

It seems within many circles, work is a coercive/compulsory activity dedicated to the consumption and production of commodities that's enforced through economic and political means. A job. The anarchist communist/socialist types typically have no issue with this and can't think outside that concept when boiling down their word vomit.

To me, work is accomplishing something you set out to do. Pretty basic.

GEF (not verified) Fri, 10/10/2025 - 07:56

> Are anarchists against work?
I would hope so, but seems like far too many are still into it and that's a major hurdle to the emergence of a new anarchist movement.

> Are anarchists who are anti-work also anti-leisure or is opposition to work necessarily an embrace of a leisure-based lifestyle?

"Leisure" exists only in relation to work, or being busy with productive commitments. There's leisure, and there's PLEASURE, which is a completely different notion even if it looks similar on the surface.

> Could a sustained anarchist war on the institution of work be possible and if so, what would it look like? What allies in this battle would anti-work anarchists likely be able to find?

Why do you need to talk about "war" on the institutions... or why are you bringing commenters to this specific question? You do know the current US regime is looking for this type of war-posturing, right?

But more importantly, how about just rejecting the social institutions... especially for the part of finding ways to live a "good life" away from these? I find the latter to be very consistent with anarchy, where the war talk leads back to same-old statist revolutionary paradigms. War is the domain of states, as war is at the roots of every state-building.

Le Way Sat, 10/11/2025 - 18:35

It is mostly fuelled by a desperation to survive, a natural preservational instinct which has been marketed and commodified by an hierarchical and ruthless minority of social power brokers, monopolized and institionalized into a web of transactional based relationships fed by individual negative seething ressentiments.

CalvinSmith Sun, 10/12/2025 - 12:18

or not you work depends on various factors. For example, if you don't eat, your body will not "work".

Karl Marx would probably testify, after all these years of rolling in his grave, that we do not want the inverted anarchist reality where work is banned or has been eliminated.

If someone ask you if you work, ask them to feed you a 20 dollar bill, then answer the question.

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
CAPTCHA
Y
9
w
4
W
1
*
q
Enter the code without spaces.
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.