It's a short interview if you haven't seen it, I can sum it up without you watching probably: basically the (transgender I guess) lead mod of the antiwork subreddit is a part time dogwalker who "aspires to teach philosophy" and basically gave an interview a lot of reddit judged to be not what they wanted and made them look like stereotypically not as good in the public's eye.
But many of the redditers are confused, antiwork is based on anarchist / individualist (?) / anarcho-primitivist Bob Black's essay "Abolish Work", which more or less was calling for work reform but thinking itself to be "abolishing work" - acknowledging there was necessary labor, but was in favor of making work as voluntary as possible. Not necessarily a bad idea, or I think there's something that can be salvaged from that. But reddit wanted antiwork to be for work reform outright while antiwork was more for finding ways to do the least amount of work possible, and then conservatives wanted to be against the work reform, and "Doreen" just rebelled against both. Kind of refreshingly consistent to me, in a way.
So some redditers are mad because "Doreen" only works part time, and is not as "gainfully employed" to lead their "movement". The problem is, those redditers are of a different movement - the work reform movement, so a workreform subreddit gained a lot of subscribers. Antiwork is more about "abolishing" work - Bob Black has written positively about the hunter-gatherers who supposedly only worked 20 hours a week according to some modern anthropology. So "Doreen" probably feels their few hours of work is closer to this ideal.
I argue this view of hunter gatherers is revisionist and such conditions never existed, I argue literally Adam and Eve were created with some civilization and so there were no "original hunter gatherers" as Sahlins has argued there were in the 1970s (this anthropological view is recent, about how "great" hunter gatherer life apparently was). Anprim John Zerzan was dismissive of my argument via email, although strictly speaking it cannot be disproven as their theory cannot be proven. So I believe they have faulty anthropological assumptions which make "anarcho-primitivism" and working less seem more attractive.
As an anarchist, "Doreen" doesn't care about making eye contact, looking presentable, cleaning up the room, etc. that redditers were complaining about. Really is influenced by the old punk movements which have all but died today in my opinion. A lot of "libertarians" are basically conformists who want to dress up and play the part - which isn't really all that pro-freedom, for people who don't want to do all those things. So part of me likes this part of "Doreen's" nonconformity (while I don't really like the "transgender" part for example), although I can understand that other people were looking for more polish on a seeming "official spokesperson".
There's an enormous amount of waste that some people have been able to find ways to live off of, and "Doreen" strikes me as being part of this movement (see for example "freeganism", the idea of gift economics, etc.). The math seems somewhat sound that there's so much waste or productivity gains that people could, in theory, if it was all divided up equally, work a few hours a week if they wanted, which "Doreen" wants and lives a bit. But of course we know in practice the world is simply an unfair struggle at times and these "fair distributions of wealth" will not take place except for whatever we can figure out to create.
The source of outrage is basically a mismatch between these two philosophies of work reform and work abolition. As Bob Black wrote, as an analogy to slavery, he was not for "slavery reform" but "slavery abolition". They think work is slavery - but necessary work is ok. At the end of the day in my estimation they're still basically for work reform, but want to think of themselves more as abolitionists.
Bob Black is an academic I believe, so it's no surprise that "Doreen", looking up to him, wants to be a philosophy teacher as well. Zerzan is a professor, anyway, and they've had similar views.
Anyway, any thoughts on these related topics of anti-work, post-left, anarcho-primitivism, etc.?
Did Jessie say at one point that for you to accept a job offer was voluntary, added with the fact that you can quit any time you like, that it is clearly not slavery?
If you don't like your job, then quit. Slaves didn't have that option, but you do.
I think what the elite are offering is no job. Just stay in your converted shipping container allocated to you. Play virtual reality all day while getting high. You will own nothing, but you will be happy. Build up your career and possessions in the virtual world instead of using up real world resources that could be used to make elite's parties better.
You see, that's why they call us 'useless eaters'.
They resent that we use up resources. Resources that could otherwise help them have more fun or impress their friends.
The are going for this model full-bore.
A return to serfdom.
work is voluntary in a sense, but not in another sense - those who do not work, cannot eat, ordinarily - so it is compulsory in a sense.
True, capitalists / conservatives are simply for freedom to choose jobs, but they're arguing for the freedom to have no job at all, which would require dependence either on nature or technology (automation) or a collective or something. I think they have a point to make but it's open to criticism and modification for how a person chooses to live within the system we have.
Yeah, I think that is used as a trap, they want to make people think they can be safe being dependent on them, then they pull the rug out from under them. Ultimately certain elites either want working class people to disappear, or work hard for them. So the dependence route must be a way of weakening them so the elites can gain more without opposition. But some of the pro-automation antiworkers want to have control of that automation so they might gain leisure, rather than being dependent on elites who own it, I'd think. Which is a different thing.
Ultimately there are certain conditions I think that lead to the anti-work mindset so I think maybe the goal is to try to diagnose what happened and try to persuade certain "workaholics" to chill out with certain "slackers" to find ways to contribute more to the world. Antiworkers may have not experienced profit from their work, which would lead to demoralization and less interest in being productive. They may have gotten wrong messaging that certain work is "beneath them". They may confuse certain other things that maybe could be straightened out.