Pushing back against "work reform"

 So...r/antiwork is back again, and it seems like the work reformists want to take over the sub, and the movement, calling for the mod team to quit, for Doreen's website to be scrubbed, blah blah blah.

The movement has grown an insane amount over the past 2 years. And it seems like many of the newcomers have missed the point. The point is the ANTI WORK movement...is to be ANTI WORK. Now, if some people wanna split off and form r/workreform, fine. I've already decided I dont really care for the direction that sub is going in the first place. I'm not a mere reformer, I'm actually AGAINST WORK, and believe in the long term we should abolish it. I don't always agree with r/antiwork's anarchist direction, as my approach is much more moderate and compatible with already existing institutions, but I do believe that the ideal work day, in the distant future, is 0 hours. And 0 minutes. I don't believe we should strive to work, but strive to eliminate work so we can spend our lives doing something else.

But...it seems like the sub got taken over by a bunch of reformists who simply wanted to share memes crapping on their bosses and just wanted...better hours with better pay, and didn't really want to question the concept. While Doreen's interview on fox news was, unequivocally, an unmitigated disaster, the reaction from that sub is far worse. Because now these guys, in trying to distance themselves from Doreen, are seeking to move the movement right, to not really be about being against work any more, but simply trying to reform it.

To me, this is like seeking more compassionate overlords. We need people like Doreen, and movements like hers, to counter the insane protestant work ethic in society. That's why she said "laziness is a virtue". Because we see slavish dedication to work as a virtue, and she was trying to be the anti that. Now...regardless, bringing this message to fox was a bad idea, especially with her as the messenger. Someone like her is best working behind the scenes, writing articles, but not drawing much attention to themselves in public, because as a PR person she's the exact wrong image. Just because we have to pivot our message to different audiences doesn't mean we have to abandon core ideals. 

I'm ANTI WORK. I'm sorry. I want to abolish the concept. Not in some anarchistic way of going back to the stone age, that's never gonna work and one of the reasons the anti work movement gets relentlessly mocked. If you're gonna have the gall to be anti work, you need to actually have a plan to get there. Which is why I spend so much time outlining how we can accomplish our goals, like UBI. Something I learned as a conservative, is all of these awesome left wing ideas are just fantasies until you can find a way to enact them. And I've managed to do that.

Another reason why I feel like I need to push back hard against "work reformists" is because if we cave to them, the movement for an actual anti work movement is lost. We've had these debates before. People tend to forget, but back in the early days of capitalism, being against wage labor was a common sentiment among a lot of leftists. But then, leftists organized, formed unions, started making progress with reforms like the 40 hour work week, OSHA, FLSA, minimum wage, etc., and they just decided, you know what? There's DIGNITY in work. And even now, we have weird labor types pushing these "dignity of work" sentiments, arguing for better conditions, but never truly being against work. If anything they're FOR work, and for wage slavery. And because of their success, the anti work movement has been lost for nearly 100 years. No one dared question work entirely. It was all reformist traditions. Which became the kinds of FDR liberalism and Bernie Sanders social democracy that we often see in politics at best. 

I always feel like I need to quote this, but to put it out there again:

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx’s wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists — except that I’m not kidding — I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work — and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs — they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They’ll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don’t care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working. 

From Bob Black's "The Abolition of Work"

 Here's the thing. Without anti work...the work reform movement is just rank liberalism, social democracy, or socialism. All of those guys are work reformers who dont believe in abolishing work. Without being anti work, you just have mainstream left wing politics. The point of being anti work...is to be anti work. So no. Don't crap on Doreen just because she was a bad and tone deaf messenger who decided to go on fox news. Her ideas are based mostly. And just to rant a little more. I don't understand how people on the anti work sub could miss this. I mean, it's right in the name. Doreen's website was right in the sidebar. They had a massive reading list of anti work literature, and then these normal libs came in and are just like "this is our movement now, you dont represent us". Uh...I'm sorry, but I'm on the r/antiwork mod team's side on this one. It was their sub. And they're anti work. And they just allowed liberals to exist there. And I thank them for it. Because I myself am just a pro UBI lib compared to most of them. Hence why I take potshots at purity testing leftists on here so much. But...unlike these new uppity libs, they don't even believe in the core concept. It's baffling.

Maybe they should just gtfo if they don't accept the basic premise of being against forced wage labor and join some more normie lib and leftist subs. There are enough of them. No need to bring the one place that actually is against work down because you can't wrap your heads around the core message.