So, I ended up getting in an argument with some conservative dude trying to pull gotchas on me with my anti work ideology, and because I was kind of distracted by IRL crap going on at the time, he pushed me into a corner by arguing that work is reality and pushing me to name a time when humans never worked, which I can't do, because humans have always worked in some capacity. I would like to address this concern more deeply, but it does require a bit of explaining on my part, and I figure it would be good to make an article about this.
First of all, once again, be skeptical of what people call "reality"
I wrote an article about this previously, but always be skeptical when people try to promote their views as "reality." As demonstrated above a lot of neoliberal and centrist hacks like to do this, but the right loves to do this on economics too. To them, capitalism and its history is "reality". Now, we should know better than to accept this at this point, given we discussed things like "the prehistory of private property" and "prehistorical myths of modern political philosophy" by Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. I won't go into all of the details of that again, but he did a good job slaying a lot of sacred cows surrounding capitalism, and pointing out that things like Lockean property rights aren't really objective realities, but subjective systems we created. Karl Widerquist actually did a good job outlining the general history of work, which I'll regurgitate briefly now.
First of all, we lived in stateless societies. In stateless societies, we worked. Yes. But generally speaking we weren't coerced by any social systems or anything. We just worked to meet our basic needs and that was it. We put in about 40 hours doing ALL we needed to do, and that was that. We hunted, we gathered, we took care of each other, everything.
Then societies formed. As people settled down, started acquiring something akin to "property" and we started moving to larger and larger communities with more centralized control, things started going in a bad direction. We got these chiefdoms in which societies would come to be run by autocratic rulers. And these rulers would expand their reach further and further, forcing more people under their rule, and ultimately squeezing out free areas where people ran out of places to run. These autocratic rulers, these chiefs, would often force people to work, and they would be the ultimate say in who got what, and they would basically get most of the rewards, obviously. This led to the monarchies of old. Where we got this idea that the rulers were put there by divine right and all land and property ultimately belonged to them. THis wasnt just a European thing, Widerquist and McCall pointed out that kings in pacific islands had similar systems, but in Europe we had the monarchies. And most people worked as serfs to nobles, who owned the land and were friends of the king. The king was the ultimate owner of all of the land. And we had this hierarchical system where all worked for the king.
Then we started shifting to capitalism and classical democracies around 1800ish with the American and French revolutions. And we started developing capitalism then. And this is where I'll combine some Max Weber here, since Weber's views are valid on the subject. We always had elements of capitalism and markets throughout civilized history. BUT...we didn't really develop this weird ideological obsession with the idea until 1800s. So we developed capitalism. We shifted from a view of the world based around monarchies and divine right, to one developed around property and "natural" rights. And the property rights theorists love to just act like that crap is "reality", but it's not, that stuff developed in the 1700s and really came to fruition during the 1800s in institutional form.
And during this time, we had major movements around the world that systematically forced people into working in a modern capitalist system. We had the enclosure movement in Europe where public land and commons were privatized, forcing people into cities where they had no choice but to work, and the colonial movement in which the Europeans essentially colonized the whole world and forced capitalism on everyone. There was actually a lot of debate in the 1850s and the like in America about the value of chattel slavery as opposed to wage slavery and which one was worse. I'm sure we can all agree chattel slavery is worse, but it is interesting that most of those slaves went back to working for their former owners after due to lack of "opportunity." In Europe, there was a lot of widespread condemnation of capitalism, such as through the works of Karl Marx, and even a lot of fictional works like a Christmas carol. Early on it seemed obvious that this system was constructed, so many leftists wanted to just have a revolution and change it. Just as revolutions overthrew monarchies, they wanted revolutions to overthrow capitalism. Now, we've seen these kinds of revolution in the 20th century, and marxism was tried, and I don't approve of the results, mind you, but regardless of my feelings toward socialism, i do find value in their critiques of capitalism.
Going back to the protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism, I found much of that book enlightening on this subject too. It seemed that early on, as capitalism created technology and labor saving devices that allowed people to work less, when people actually used it to work less, the capitalists freaked out and tried to shift the incentive system to force people to work more. Rather than using technological gains and economic growth to work less, they forced us all on a treadmill to work just as much as before, while the numbers on the chart go up and up and up.
Which is where we start getting into the actual work question
Yes. Throughout history, we have always worked. HOWEVER, for most of history, we worked to meet out basic needs. But what capitalism has done, is solve the material conditions that would force us to work through economic growth, only to force people to work through social structures that systemically deny people those needs to force their productivity from us.
So capitalism solved the work problem on one hand, but then created a new one on the other hand. Pre 1800, literal scarcity caused people to work. Post 1800, we had growth, but the system imposed artificial scarcity on people to keep people working. And now we have a system that no matter how rich society gets, people still work the same hours. We have GDP going up and up and up, with it something like $76,000 a year per person at the time of me writing this, but...we still work the same hours that we did in 1938. Back in 1938, the 40 hour work week was seen as progressive. It was long fought for by the labor movement, and the logic was 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours for everyone else. Of course in practice, we get literally 8 hours on the clock at work, a significant part of our off time dedicated to work like commuting and breaks, and even more time working for ourselves to meet our needs like grocery shopping, housework, etc. Where is life? Where do we fit life? Well, we don't, unless we forgo sleep, which many choose to do because our society keeps people so busy.
GDP per capita in 1950, based on previous estimates I've done, shows that back then, accounting for inflation, GDP per capita was around $24k a year. Now its 3x that. But we work the same hours. John Meynard Keynes wrote in 1930, that in 100 years, that would be 2030 or 7 years from now, that we would be able to work 15 hour weeks. We've accomplished the growth to be able to do that. BUT...we're still working 40 hour weeks? Why? Because our society has this ideal that everyone has to work, and 40 hours is the proper amount of hours to meet our needs. And due to the profit seeking mechanations of capitalism, and how wealth is extracted from people, people work their lives away, only to be paid the bare minimum, with most of the wealth going to the top. So at the end of the day, we work and work and work, and we're kept on this treadmill of never ending growth, while our lives seem to not get any better.
And this guy on reddit loves to act like that's okay because we always worked and that's "reality." No, it's not reality. In the past we worked because we had to. States formed and basically oppressed people with unfair property systems and monopolies on violence and forced them to work. These states eventually replaced monarchies with democracies and capitalism,a nd capitalism is based on natural rights theory and the sacredness of private property. But private property is a social construct. And so are the institutions that force us to work. And in the modern day I would say that work IS a choice. It's NOT a "reality" simply foisted on us. We could use the growth and technological gains from capitalism to actively shrink the work week. I've proposed that before on this blog. We could use UBI to allow people to CHOOSE to work less. But instead, our institutions keep us locked in the same patterns as before, and people act like it's natural. At one point, yes, it was natural. At this point, no it's not, it's a completely societal choice that we can change.
I don't agree with socialists on much. Socialists are work obsessed just as capitalists are, quite frankly. And honestly, most versions of their ideas are highly destructive in practice. Market socialism is the best of these, but i see it as indistinguishable from social democracy with unions and blah blah blah. Quite frankly, the debate we should be having isn't between capitalism vs socialism. it should be work/growth vs working less/not as much growth. I'm not ANTI growth btw. Growth is what makes the fact that we can choose to work less at all possible. But, given it IS a choice, I would suggest we take it.
As such, no, work is not an inevitable reality under capitalism. Just under laissez faire capitalism with unrestrained property rights. if we adopted a form of human centered capitalism with a second bill of rights like I laid out the other week, with an emphasis on policies like UBI, universal healthcare, and reducing the work week, yes, we could work less. And if my projections are correct, we could still live in an advanced country as well. The exact tradeoffs depend on how much we choose to work less. The less we work, the less stuff to go around, and the more we work, the more stuff, so it ultimately depends where on that scale we're comfortable with. We've set the 40 hour work week around 85 years ago, and haven't moved it since. We should move toward less work. We're 6x as productive per person as we were in 1938. And I expect GDP per capita to quadruple in the next 100 years if we work at the same pace. But what if we chose for it to only triple? Or double? Or remain stagnant? We could convert all of that productivity into working less.
Ultimately, "reality" is not fixed. We choose, collectively, the reality we live in. If we wanted to change our society tomorrow, we could. I'm not saying all changes are positive. Just ask people fleeing from marxist countries how well that sort of change worked. BUT....if we simply reform capitalism much like we have, but this time move in a direction of guaranteed basic needs, freedom to work or not to work, and working less overall, I dont see how that would go wrong if we implemented it right. Capitalists love to act like their ideological ideas are all of reality. They're not. They're an ideologically laden idea of it. They love to act like their ideas are inevitable and anyone who opposes them are stupid. Not really. We can choose to live in whatever system we want. The fact that we have one so work centric is a choice, and it's a choice i think we should change.
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