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What if we abolished the institution of work?

If we were not required to work to pay for basic rights, such as food, shelter, and water, could we embrace radical solutions to change the current state of our society?

As the post-pandemic struggle about work and working conditions rages on, workers are quitting jobs that make them miserable, while unions seek recognition and avenues for negotiations, all within our current capitalistic system that declares each individual鈥檚 worth to be inherently tied to their productivity. But what if society was not organized around wage labor, but something else? And what would that something else be?

Millions of workers left jobs in 2021 at such a scale it鈥檚 been deemed the 鈥淕reat Resignation.鈥� Recent attempts to understand their dissatisfaction have explored what the 鈥渇uture of work鈥� looks like and how work overall could become more bearable. How about a four-day work week? Or higher pay? Better working conditions? Flexible hours? But 32-hour weeks (or whatever good policy is on offer) are adaptations to a dehumanizing system鈥攖hey don鈥檛 address that system as a whole, nor do they get to the core of the workers鈥� discontent with the inhumane machinations of capitalism. 

Online, the rejection of the idea of work itself is a growing trend across social media platforms. On TikTok, about how the poster doesn鈥檛 like to work, no matter what job, often go viral. 鈥檚 message鈥斺�淔uck this, I don鈥檛 want to work for the rest of my life :(鈥濃�攔eceived thousands of likes and comments in agreement. On Twitter, where the constant barrage of negative news is constantly dissected and commented on, posters point out how capitalism keeps marching on despite the unconscionable tragedies we鈥檝e all had to digest in the past two and a half years. The pandemic, the Ukraine war, school shootings where children are massacred, continued police killings of Black people鈥攏one of these is enough to bring our exploitative system to a halt; workers are supposed to muddle through and keep the world turning with our labor. On Reddit, the (the r/antiwork subreddit) has 2 million subscribers who can easily access an online library about and exchange experiences with each other about the jobs they don鈥檛 want to do. The motto of this subreddit, whose members call themselves 鈥渋dlers,鈥� is 鈥淯nemployment for all, not just the rich!鈥�

On Reddit, the 鈥榓nti-work鈥� community has 2 million subscribers who can easily access an online library about the abolition of work and exchange experiences with each other about the jobs they don鈥檛 want to do.

Despite the online hype, the idea of refusing the tyranny of labor rather than reforming it isn鈥檛 new. In 1985, post-leftist anarchist Bob Black wrote and published the essay 鈥淭he Abolition of Work,鈥� where he argues that work 鈥渋s the source of nearly all the misery in the world. … In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.鈥� 

For Black, working to earn a living is at the heart of capitalism鈥檚 coercive forces, and he asserts that society should be organized around play instead of wage labor. 鈥淚 think that what I wrote is still true and only slightly exaggerated,鈥� Black says. 鈥淎s I define the word, 鈥榳ork鈥� is forced labor鈥攃ompulsory production. It is inherently coercive, like the state.鈥�

Black says having to pay for housing, food, water, health care, and whatever else is needed for survival is what keeps workers under the control of wage labor, regardless of what ideology is elected into government. 鈥淭he most important function of work鈥攁s I have always maintained鈥攊s social control,鈥� Black explains. And yet, as Black writes in his essay as well as in his book, also titled The Abolition of Work, a disproportionate amount of what constitutes 鈥渨ork鈥� has little connection to human survival. Compiling work reports, filing meaningless corporate documentation, and inventing cryptocurrency are just a few examples of 鈥渨ork鈥� that do not aid the practical survival of humans. Abolishing work would free us to do what we really love and reorient human efforts toward care and the simple act of living. 

鈥淪ociety would be simpler [and] radically decentralized, yet people would be more diverse, more individualized, and so their social relations would be richer, more complex,鈥� Black says. 鈥淟ife would be safer, although maybe less orderly. But where order is necessary, it would be the order of custom, not the rule of law. There would be opportunities, beginning in childhood, for people to try out many different things and discover what things they can do that they like best. Maybe there will be some people who like doing the same thing all the time鈥攊n other words, doing a 鈥榡ob.鈥� These unfortunates, too, should be free to do what they want to do. This is a society that has no center.鈥�

The Anti-Work Response to the Girlboss

One example often used in support of anti-work arguments online is the alleged death of the 鈥済irlboss.鈥� The girlboss can be exemplified by Kim Kardashian, who models aspirational femininity and independent entrepreneurship that supposedly liberates women from gender oppression, even as she ends up reinforcing and repeating the same abuses she supposedly sought to eliminate. A combination of pandemic burnout, growing social awareness, and the emptiness of women 鈥渉aving it all鈥� in a broken economy has revealed the impact of the girlboss to be less than revolutionary. As Amanda Mull : 鈥淭he push to move beyond the girlboss is an acknowledgment that a slight expansion of college-educated women鈥檚 access to venture capital or mentoring opportunities was never a meaningful change to begin with, or an avenue via which meaningful change might be achieved. Being belittled, harassed, or denied fair pay by a woman doesn鈥檛 make the experience instructive instead of traumatic.鈥� 

In short, some overworked women are discovering that a seat at the table isn鈥檛 a path toward liberation鈥攔ather, it鈥檚 a path toward becoming an overworked cog in the machine.

The anti-girlboss sentiment is often articulated through memes that challenge the message that women should be doing it all. Instead, these memes argue for 鈥溾�� For Angie Barbosa, an anarcho-feminist travesti (a transfemme, nonbinary identity specific to Latin America) scholar who studies feminist, queer, and anarchist literature and activism, these memes are a countercurrent to the violence of feminized 鈥渉ustle鈥� culture. 

鈥淣ot only do women and femmes have to deal with violence, exploitation, overworking, and constant impairments against our autonomy, now we鈥檙e also supposed to struggle within a value system that asks us to be healthy, happy, confident, self-sufficient, self-caring, boundary-aware, independent consumers,鈥� Barbosa says. 鈥淲e are working endlessly, tirelessly to produce a performance of successful femininity that denies the soul-wrecking gendered reality of violence. We are overworked, exhausted, angry, frustrated, violenced, deprived of many of our basic rights, and somehow still expected to feel like a boss.鈥�

Adding to the burden of women and femmes is the unpaid labor of domestic work, which is still largely invisible and unaddressed by policies that attempt to make waged work more comfortable. Even with a flexible work schedule, domestic work is still low-paying and distributed along gendered lines.  

鈥淭he reality of care and work can be terribly exhausting for femmes, but the good news is that the more people, groups, and communities are caring for each other in balanced, consent- and autonomy-based structures, the less everyone has to work, and it just becomes easier to live,鈥� Barbosa says. 

Small feminist structures of care and radical solidarity are the counterpoint to the solitary and herculean work of the girlboss鈥攁nd as such, the abolition of work must also reckon with the racialized and gendered distribution of domestic and care work. 鈥淚 believe that whether this future of femme freedom includes work or not depends on our reading of what 鈥榳ork鈥� means,鈥� Barbosa says.

A Great Transformation

Underlying the taboo around the abolition of work is the fear that the world won鈥檛 sustain itself if people are not coerced into performing tasks to ensure humanity鈥檚 survival. How would we eat if workers were not forced to grow food for themselves and to sell it to others for their own sustenance? How would we keep public spaces clean and usable without street sweepers and maintenance workers who need a paycheck to support themselves? How would we survive without the care work and domestic labor that the racialized working classes are compelled to provide below cost? Black believes that if the structure of work is abolished, people will be able to sustain themselves and take care of each other, but without coercion.

For practical thinkers, this reorganization sounds easier said than done. We have been manipulated into maintaining capitalism鈥攁nd correlating this maintenance with our own survival鈥攆or so long that the idea of people working to help each other survive sounds improbable and impossible. What would we get in exchange for our selfless efforts to maintain each other鈥檚 existence? What would be the trade-off, if not money? Self-sustaining societies鈥攕uch as the Zapatistas in Mexico, who have organized their own cooperative economy; developed autonomous justice, education, and health care systems; and created a bottom-up political decision-making process鈥攁re proof we can lasso the abolition of work to the possibilities of reality.  

鈥榃e need to transform everything,鈥� Black says. 鈥業n my utopia there would be little coercion, and no institutionalized coercion such as government and work.鈥�

鈥淲e need to transform everything,鈥� Black says. 鈥淚n my utopia there would be little coercion, and no institutionalized coercion such as government and work. Some activities, including some of what used to be 鈥榳ork,鈥� are likely to be done in relatively permanent organizations鈥攁nd there is some risk in that. Work like that, when it is not individual craft work, can be organized by worker self-management.鈥� 

For Barbosa, the abolition of work and redistribution of domestic work is an invitation to rethink what we value in our lives. 鈥淚f the meaning of our lives was no longer to work, it could be a genuine and deep connection to each other, our bodies, and our environment,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 interesting that removing work from the equation makes a lot of our current definitions of success and happiness quite meaningless. It could be very powerful to imagine what happiness could be if it鈥檚 not just survival, success, capital. If we didn鈥檛 have to fight for the basics, I really have no idea what we should or could do instead, but I would love to find out.鈥�