Reflecting on r/antiwork and where things went wrong

 So, the last post started off being about Biden raising requirements for salaried workers getting overtime pay, went into the concept of being against work in general, and got me thinking about r/antiwork again. And going down memory lane, I wanted to reflct on the subreddit and where things went wrong with it in my opinion. 

Basically, according to wikipedia, it started in 2013 by Doreen Ford, ya know, the same one who was forced out. Basically, I joined in 2014. The sub was small, Doreen had an outsized influence on the direction of it in the early days, and I remember her abolishwork blog well. I came over from r/basicincome, and quickly fit in since not only being pro UBI, I was also quite on board with the anti work movement assuming we can figure out the mechanics for doing that (which is what I've spent a lot of time doing and what a large part of this blog is about). But yeah, I consider myself one of the OGs of the movement as far as reddit goes. I remember the early days, and I remember it really helping open my mind in combination with the UBI movement. I kinda always fit in more with UBI groups given the anti capitalist nature of r/anti work, but the sub was pretty open to capitalists in the early days and understood that you couldn't just force purity on people or you'll never grow your movement. As long as you were anti work in some form, you were largely welcome.

As the wiki states, and this was when a poll was taken in 2021:

In November 2021, Ford told The Independent that "The main goal of the anti-work movement is just to abolish work, but what that ends up looking like is very different, depending on who you ask," noting that members of r/antiwork include "people who are anarchists, people who are Communists, people who are social Democrats, people who like Bernie, people who like Andrew Yang" and concluding that "there's lots of different kinds of leftists." In December 2021, moderator rockcellist told Quartz that "There’s no particular political ideology that any of us follow" and that the posts on the subreddit reflect "how every individual views their labor, their contributions to society, how they're compensated."^[2] In January 2022, Brian O'Conner of the BBC wrote that the subreddit is "a community still rooted in direct action, but whose focus has both softened and broadened into a wider dialogue on working conditions as its popularity has grown."^[34]

So basically, not only just normal leftists, but also people like me. And in the early days I fit right in. I didn't always see eye to eyes with the anarchist types, particularly in terms of their means of accomplishing change (seriously, leftism really has a problem with accomplishing things properly regardless of how good their theories are sometimes, they're more useful in criticizing capitalism than offering alternatives most of the time), but I still felt at home there nevertheless. The media the sub offered on the subject was useful and I read much of their literature. Again, my philosophical tradition is different, but still, parallel to theirs. 

But then the sub grew...

2020 really exploded the sub's popularity. A lot of people reached a breaking point after the great recession and COVID and the great recession put people over the edge. The sub started going viral, and started growing rapidly. But with it came a lot of strains.

As the article states, there was a big gap between the new and old members there ideologically, and there was tension between older and newer members. The wiki describes it as a tension between traditional leftists and liberals, but I see it more as a tension between those who actually wanted to abolish work, and those who just wanted better wage slavery.

As you guys know, I'm anti work, through and through, but I'm also capitalist. I admit maybe from 2018-2020ish I had a mild anticapitalist lean to my politics, but I always leaned capitalist. Again, this is because i value practicality over leftist theory, and also because i genuinely think, due to works like Phillipe Van Parijs' "Real Freedom For All", that capitalism is more conducive to freedom than socialism.

I disagree with leftist theory even in principle, in part because their take on theory is that humans love to work, it's just that capitalism alienates people from their labor. Whereas my theory is that the core issue with capitalism isn't capitalism, it's work.

But ultimately, that framing of leftists vs liberals did become the reason I was banned later on. I'll get to that. 

But still, I did kinda side with the more OG people in the sub, in the sense that...I was anti work. I might have been a capitalist, but I hated work. I just didn't always agree with leftist doctrines on that.

But at the same time, I did see issues with the newer members. And that problem was often that....they aren't really anti work. Most of them just wanted to bash capitalism and crap talk about their jobs without doing much about it. 

And we saw how this played out with Doreen Ford. Doreen Ford was...anti work.She built the sub from the ground up, it gained popularity because of her leadership, but then she went on her disastrous fox news interview where she went on about minimizing her working hours and being a dog walker, and the internet blew up in outrage about it.

Like it or not, but that was the real face of the anti work movement. Someone who hates work and tried to structure their life around minimizing their own time spent at work.

But...the casuals of the sub who joined in the past few years were OUTRAGED, OUTRAGED I SAY. How DARE this lazy person who doesn't even work represent the anti work movement?! She's making us look bad. Most of us work 40 hours a week or more and just want a fair shake and here's this LAZY person going on fox news and making us look bad!

I admit, Doreen's interview wasn't good. It was actually a dumpster fire. But that's because it was a trap. you go on someone else's show, and they can manipulate the framing of the issue into whatever they want it to be. And you, as an interviewee, how next to no power. To go on fox news, you're walking into a trap, because OF COURSE fox news is gonna spin things into how they wanted to spin them. And doreen was admittedly, too inept to pick up on that. I don't blame her, she is autistic, sometimes she can't read the room, but hey, fox got to basically bash the sub into oblivion.

And from there, people got outraged. And the masses basically pushed her out. And a lot of people split off to make a "work reform" sub to basically just advocate for better working conditions without being anti work itself. 

There were several power struggles among moderators of the sub, which can't even get into the specifics of, and a lot of ideological struggles as well. As the article said, the tension became one of that between leftist and liberal, which put me, an anti work "liberal" in a tenuous situation. Initially they seemed like they werent gonna ban people for being nominally capitalist...but let's face it, over time, they changed the rules to not allow "right wing" content, which is ANY pro capitalist content, which set the stage for my ban.

The fact is, I myself have had my own opinions on this tension, which I outlined here previously. Again, being ANTI WORK and being ANTI CAPITALIST are not the same thing. One means you oppose work, and the other means you oppose capitalism. To a leftist it means the same thing, because in order to oppose work you must oppose capitalism but I just find this to be weird leftist brainrot. It's pure theory and ideology with no basis in reality. 

Most leftists are pro work. Heck, given the labor theory of value, most leftists are ideologically stuck into serving pro work goals, they just dislike capitalism and its mode of production.

And on the flip side, you can be capitalist and anti work. I AM that guy. I want to use UBI to shift people away from work all the time and liberate people. I admit I'm more reformist, and my approach will take decades or centuries to fully carry out, but hey it beats revolution. And I try to work within the practical confines of reality. 

This caused me to get a bit of disdain for certain leftists on the sub. Especially the gatekeepy people who would act like only true leftists are anti work. And this led to the discussion that got me banned.

Basically, it was a topic on UBI. Someone posted about it and leftists, with as much brainrot as they have, started screaming about how UBI was a trap and only communism can save us, that kind of nonsense. Being the resident UBI supporter, I pushed back. And we got in some discussions of work and capitalism. I admit I was snarky and a bit hostile at times, I get like that when dealing with idiotic leftists at times, but really I came from a good place. Because to me, these leftists arent even anti work. Like really, over the past year the sub had become a craphole where anti work just became "anti capitalist mode of production, work is okay, capitalism isn't", and I knew most of these people didnt really wanna abolish work, they just wanted to attack capitalism.

Hell to the work question most of these people don't even have solutions, and then you get these idiot leftists pushing jobs programs, ON THE ANTI WORK SUB!

It was just stupid. 

And I called this crap out. I pointed out how leftism is NOT the solution to the work issue, that my solutions actually would work better, and in my discussion, I violated my ideological precepts of leftism. I pointed out in reference to the infamous landlord argument that landlords dont actually profit a ton off of landlording, and that the core issue with housing is due to supply shortages. I pointed out how billionaires arent always evil, and that it's more the system that's the problem, not the people, pointing out how philanthropic some billionaires are...and nope...cant have that on a leftist subreddit, thats apologia for the capitalist class.

I call that NUANCE. I mean, really, can we be honest? Landlords suck but the housing issue is far more complex than that and the whole "landlords will just raise rent" argument is so dishonest. It basically comes down to "no amount of reformist change will ever fix the problems, we need full on revolution". And you cant even argue against that, without violating important leftist doctrines about the world, because to them, everything comes down to the ownership class. Im not saying there arent issues with that, but issues are complicated. And solutions are complicated. And a huge reason I have the heterodox views i have is i developed my ideology around reality, rather than trying to force reality into a box. I try to combine pragmatic liberalism with lofty leftist goals. And as a result I made up my own ideology, with my own belief system, and I tend to view things my own way.

I admit that my views arent as unique as i like to act. Especially since yang ran on a variation of my ideas in 2020, but still. I own my ideas, I researched issues on my own, and i reached my own conclusions and built my own worldview. No one owns me but me. 

But...when you have a subreddit that doesnt allow nuance and who thinks rejecting certain ideological precepts is unacceptable and means you're a right winger who must be banned, I got banned. 

And now I kinda hate the sub.

Really, it's just a circlejerk of learned helplessness and leftism. It's just capitslism is evil, nothing but revolution will ever fix things, liberalism will never work, and I dont like the solutions put in front of me.

I can respect nuanced people who dont accept the canned solutions in front of them, BUT, leftism IS a canned solution, or lack thereof. It's an ideology of nothing is ever good enough but revolution, it's dangerous, it won't work, and these guys are just screaming into the void and will never do a darned thing to solve the problem. It's a form of constructive institutionalism as yang would call it. LIke yay we didnt do anything but at least we talked about the problem. 

Look, I'm trying to advance solutions as we're able. I have clear political goals and mechanism by which to accomplish my change. I chose reformism because revolution is insane, dangerous, and has a terrible track record. And just leads to a lot of people dying and totalitarianism. 

Heck, we can see that totalitarian mindset here where even as someone as anti work as me got banned for the above, because I didnt go along with their dogmas. What do you think these people would do if they ever got power? Oh idk, purge all but the most faithful leftists and even some of the most faithful leftists? Gee, where did that happen before? Every communist country ever tried?

And yeah.

The fact is, the anti work movement got coopted by leftists after doreen left and those guys are full of brainrot, their ideologies are outdated and won't solve the problems, and they really can't stand dissent.

So blaming the problems with the cultural divide of the sub on "liberals", they started banning liberals who expressed bog standard liberal beliefs. And they just allow the leftists to go around circlejerking and purity testing nonstop, and you cant even argue with them without running around of the right wing content rule.

So yeah, the downfall of r/antiwork is basically leftism. Leftism is illiberal, it cant tolerate dissent, it cant accept compromise, and anyone who dares disagree with groupthink can get banned.