As Bob Black once said, "all old ideologies are conservative, because they believe in work." It baffles me, when I go on the internet, and see lefties and righties debating. They largely seem to agree work is necessary and inevitable, and see no desire to change it as it violates their ideological norms, and you know what? That's the problem. So, I felt a need to deconstruct their perspectives and start again from the basics.
The problem with ideologies
Ideologies...are not objective ways of looking at the world. Let me repeat that so it sinks in. Ideologies...are not objective ways of looking at the world. Not even my ideology is objective, nor do I claim it to me. Take it or leave it, or pick and choose what you accept, I don't care. I don't expect anyone to agree with me 100%. And that's the thing about ideologies, so many people want to accept them 100%. All ideologies are, are a snapshot of the world, when looked at in a certain way, with certain assumptions. Philosophy is useful, but at the same time, it's not useful. You can have philosophers think their way to different conclusions starting from the same reality, simply because their assumptions of that reality are a little different.But philosophy cannot give us an objective reality that is indisputable. People start out with assumptions in a complex universe, and then they conclude certain things. And people cling to these ideologies as if they're the only correct way of looking at the world, when they're not, they're merely models through which to interpret things.
Most mainstream ideologies start from a state of nature. They try to build up their worldviews from scratch. Libertarians make analogies defending their ideologies such as "two men on an island" to justify their views of property rights. You got natural rights theory defending property, social contractarian theory being perhaps a bit more neutral, left wing theories discussing more tribal or anarchistic societies, but they all start from these beginning points. And because early society is primitive, and because everyone needs to work in order to feed themselves in such societies, and all of these societies come from a place of scarcity, their economics also arguably comes from a place of scarcity.
To be fair, Marxism does not do this as much. Marxism does something that pisses off the right, in that it tends to look at the conditions at the time, makes a complex analysis of the problems of the time, and makes criticisms and arguments based on that. Yet, Marxism still becomes pro work. Why? Because the Marxist argument against capitalism did not inherently challenge work. Marx's argument comes from the labor theory of value, that labor is entitled to all that it creates and that the bourgeoisie, in owning the means of production, alienate workers from their labor, and that the goal of socialism is to ensure workers get what they deserve. Their moral argument against the right is not inherently that work itself is immoral, it is a critique of the ownership of the means of production being in the handles of a few, and workers being shortchanged on their labor. While this form of critique is correct in that rather than starting from nature, Marxism is a response to the problems of a specific point of time, it still fails to address the work question, and we need a new ideology. But first, I would like to encourage us to look at questions of work, and distribution of resources another way.
Looking at the world like a sociologist
Rather than looking at the world like a philosopher, moralizing from above (okay, fair I do this too, but in a less rigid way), I like to look at the world through the lens of sociology. Sociology is social science discipline that looks at society through the lens of how society works. It looks at social structures and takes a far less ideologically loaded view on viewing them. Why? because you cannot understand something properly if you are looking at it through a strict ideological lens. Not only do you need to understand how a system works, you need to look at the ideological system behind those norms too, to understand why things are that way. Moreover, you gotta look at lenses of how things function, and where dysfunction lies in systems leading to sub optimal outcomes, and you need to look at who benefits from these rules. Sociology is not necessarily going to say this is the right and only way to do it. Rather it will look at a bunch of different systems and how they all work differently and be like "cool!". And while it might eventually attempt to develop metrics and rank them, these metrics are, ideally, intended to be less ideologically driven. That is not to say implicit ideology can't make its way into things (as having metrics at all can imply certain assumptions about the world and what is good or bad, favored and unfavored), but sociologists at least try to be aware of such things and minimize them, you know, because that makes good science.
Honestly, when you view political ideologies in this way, they all look like lenses. Conservative ideologies often become forms of structural functionalism, defending how society works, because it works, and because if things change, things might not work. Society in this way is like a complex machine, and as long as society's machinery seems to function, there isn't anything inherently wrong with doing things one way or another. If a social structure changing manages to kill half the civilization, that's a bad thing obviously, but if the harm is minimal, what's the inherent harm in changing it?
Marxism is also a lens, one that views society in terms of conflict via different groups. It looks at society through a lens of who benefits and how social structures might favor one group over another. Most left wing ideologies look at things predominantly in such a way.
Another lens is symbolic interactionism, which looks at what social structures and norms and the like mean on a more subjective level in society.
Applying these concepts to the concept of work and distribution of resources, different lenses look at different things. Functionalists look at whether the model a society uses...works. Does this society function? Are the people being fed? How are things getting done? How does this structure encourage work, if this structure changed, would it help or harm society? Stuff like that. Conflict theorists tend to look at things like...well...how Marx views the situation. How the social structures benefit the rich and enslave the poor, and how they are power dynamics intended to benefit one group over another. Symbolic interactionism might look at things like how social norms contribute to work, like it might look at the American dream and what it means to people, or something like that.
All of these lenses have strengths and weaknesses, all are good. But none have the only answer, and most ideologies tend to be but narrow aspects of the situation.
You could also apply the same questions to other societies that dont have a western structure in terms of work and resource distribution. You can look at the autonomous region in Chiapas, Mexico in similar ways. You can look at the !Kung San in South Africa. And you might actually learn something if you aren't kneejerk "well this is bad because it doesnt conform to my ideology". Sometimes it's good to look at what their ideology is, what they believe, and whether it actually works and provides good answers to people. You might actually learn something.
Morality in a "blank slate" universe
Beyond that, it's good to take a larger perspective on this world. I take a largely...secular, nihilistic point of view on things. When I started this blog, I was a secular nihilist. Now my views are a bit more complex due to the re-introduction of spirituality, but given how my views aren't proveable, and given how I don't exactly believe "god" or any other being necessarily wants to interfere too much with humans here, we're still on our own. We are masters of our own fate, and the only limitations to what we can do are the laws of physics. There is no inherent right or wrong outside of perhaps, the harm principle. Torturing, murdering, etc. are bad. Beyond that, it's largely subjective. All moralities make assumptions about how things should be. And here's a thought, maybe, just maybe, there's no inherent value to work.
Looking at it through a purely functional lens, why do we work? Because we have to to survive. That's why. We need to hunt the wooly mammoths to get food. We need to gather berries in the forest. That was the original system of labor. Then we moved to agriculture where we worked sun up to sun down planting crops and tilling the field to survive. And then we eventually advanced from there to doing other kinds of labor.
But the whole purpose of this labor is to make what we need. There is nothing inherently valiant about work. All the social value we attach to it is all soft symbolic interactionist bullcrap. We attach value to work, we valorize it, we make it our way of life. We literally structure our society around maximizing GDP and productivity. We literally tie more productivity, more goods and services, to a better life. We give little thought to the idea of work life balance, choosing instead of working more, to work less and maybe have less stuff, but to use our time doing other things. Our entire perspective of the world is so one dimensional as a society. We no longer work to live, we live to work, believing that all of the stuff we make will leave us happy, fulfilled, and prosperous. Perhaps they are, to some extent correct, but they also make people very unhappy and miserable.
Our social structures, from a functionalist perspective, are geared toward coercing people to work with the threat of poverty, acting under the assumptions that if we did not live in this way, that everyone would starve. Our entire system is designed around the concept of scarcity, something that, given how prosperous we actually are, is fairly distant. Most scarcity in advanced societies at least aren't about lacking resources. We have more than enough for everyone, it's about distributing those resources. Perhaps we should look at if a more favored distribution would exist without destroying work ethic.
And perhaps we should look at whether a specific group overly benefits from the system as it exists (conflict theory), because it totally does. While I might criticize Marx in various ways, he was correct, capitalism as it is structured benefits primarily the rich at the expense of everyone else, reducing them as slaves while the rich profit off of it.
Perhaps we should look at reconsidering these social structures.
Looking at the world a new way
Here's my idea. Instead of looking at work as something that is inherently good, we view it as bad. Disease used to be inevitable, we created antibiotics, medicines, and vaccines. Being hot in summer used to be inevitable, we created air conditioning. We humans, we always modify our environments to suit us. It's what separates us from animals. So....what if, instead of looking at work as an inevitable, why don't we try to see it as an evil and reduce it as much as possible?
I mean, we literally CREATE jobs, because our society is built around jobs. What if we did the opposite? What if we looked at what we need, and we tried to automate away as much work as possible, in order to minimize it?
I'm not saying we can eliminate all work overnight. The pro work ideologues love to act like an anti work perspective isn't worth having if someone has to work. But, that's kind of what I'm here for. To develop a system in which we can maintain a functioning economy, while eliminating and doing away with work, gradually. Or at least balancing incentives to open the door to that in the future. Maybe we have outgrown our past and no longer need everyone working.
Well why should people who don't want to work eat? Uh, because we can feed them, and society won't collapse by doing so. Why should we change the structure of society to allow for freeloaders? Uh, because in doign so it frees us all and achieves outcomes that are more equal overall, while maintaining the incentives in place. You can see how I play both the conflict and functionalist perspectives at the same time here. I desire a functioning society, that has more equal outcomes, more freedom, and more happiness and well being. If we can achieve such things, and we would all arguably be better off for it, why shouldn't we?
I believe if we decided to look at society as it is today, the way Marx did in the 19th century, point out significant issues with it from a different, currently not existing or not very mainstream moral perspective, and offered new solutions moving forward, boom, we can create a new ideology. One that is anti work, rather than pro work.
Just because work will likely always be among us in some form doesn't mean we shouldn't try to eliminate it. Rather than valorizing it, maybe we should treat it as a necessary evil we try to abolish as much as we can. Or, at the very least, as a bit of a compromise since I admit not everyone necessarily thinks like me, allow a plurality of perspectives and allow people to do as they want. If work is so great, let the people who think that work. And if it isn't, let them not work.
Work should be like childbearing. It's a voluntary activity that mainstream culture concedes we dont have to do. But many people choose to do it. And society still functions. I don't know why we can't take a similar approach with work.
The only thing that's holding us back is ourselves. We stick to outdated values of different times, that while functional, cause dysfunction in other ways that greatly reduce peoples' quality of life. There isn't any inherent good thing about work. Work is just what we do to produce the things we need to live. Beyond that it should be totally voluntary, in the sense that we're exchanging extra time to gain extra luxuries. There's nothing wrong with people doing this. The immorality in my opinion comes from forcing people, in a society that is able to take care of its own people several times over.
Conclusion
As was said once in Terminator 2, there is no fate but that which we make for ourselves. The same applies to our social systems. There is no inherent right way of doing things. We can decide, whenever we want, to pursue a different path. Old ideologies tend to have old perspectives that treat work as the default fact of life. But I argue in the 21st century it is a choice to pursue work. We struggle to employ people. Businesses try to downsize and underpay people all of the time. We have entire books discussing and outlining how much the labor market is going to be screwed in the next 20 years. But we still won't rethink our relationship with work.
I say screw work. Work to me, is on par with the likes of sickness and death. While such things are inevitable, we should be striving to minimize such things as much as possible. And while people may choose to work freely, and we should not stop them as it is their choice to do so, we should not force people to work as if we still live in a world of scarcity, when that world no longer exists. If we wanted to, we could all work less, while still living well, and achieving more equal outcomes. So why don't we? We have nothing to lose but our chains.
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