So, something I see often on r/antiwork and other subs where r/antiwork users inhabit is that a lot of them like to cheapen the idea of being against work. Like when I say anti work, I'm against work. I see work as an inherent (although necessary) evil, and I seek to minimize it, and the amount of time we spend on it.
But a lot of r/antiwork types kind of do some philosophical legalese around it in a way that undermines the whole concept and just turns it into more standard leftism. And basically this comes down to the distiction of work and labor. A lot of leftist anti work users look at work and are like, yeah, im anti work, but im pro labor. And when you push them on the definition, they define work essentially as what we do under capitalism. We get a job, we labor for others, basically wage slavery. But then they also understand that we still need to do a lot of "work" and they redefine it as "labor". And labor can mean anything really. It normally means the "work" we have to do in order to survive, but...let's face it, work under capitalism is often that too. This seems to shift the definition of being anti work, as in against having to do things in order to survive and wanting to minimize the amount of things we have to do in order to survive, to just being against work under a capitalist mode of production.
And this is why i tend to fall out with the anti work folks too. As you guys know, I'm somewhat pro capitalism (with significant restrictions and reforms) but I'm anti work. I think the capitalist mode of production is fine, as long as we make working as voluntary as possible. My issue comes from the concept of wage slavery.
But a lot of anti work type people are these days arent really anti work, again, they're just anti capitalism. And I fear that if they had their way, they would still force people to work, they would just, much like in Karl Widerquist's big casino, say that work under capitalism was bad yes, but under our new glorious "socialism" work is just and you have no right to refuse. Let's face it, that's what it's gonna come down to.
Also, the language of some of these people seems to give it away. What triggered this discussion was some "anti work" leftie who in a debate sub with capitalists started shaming the capitalists for being lazy and having no motivation outside of money.
And I just...don't see the problem with that. A lot of leftists love to act more moral than thou and it's annoying, and to be honest, I kind of agree with the capitalist here. I understand most humans are self interested, and they're not going to do socially useful work out of the goodness of their heart, they need incentives. What matters to me is that those incentives are minimally coercive. I would rather entice people with monetary rewards than economic coercion like under capitalism today. I'd rather have wage slavery over actual slavery, or some sort of socialist "utopia" where not working is literally illegal. As such, on the work issue, I'd argue that my UBI infused capitalism is better than normal capitalism, and normal capitalism is better than socialism or a capitalist economy with slavery in it. At the end of the day, a lot of socialists would love to force people to work. They would wanna force EVERYONE to work. They look at landlords and billionaires and go "you know what? these people need to get REAL JOBS" and fantasize about putting to work cleaning sewers in their little utopias.
Meanwhile here I am trying to think of how to raise everyone up to the status of shareholder. How everyone would get a check based on how much society based on how much we had produced that way.
And that's the difference between my capitalist anti work mindset and that of a socialist. I think with the right reforms surrounding work, capitalism can be improved or saved. Socialists at their heart aren't really anti work for the most part, they're just anti capitalist mode of production. So when you see anti work leftists use weasel words like "I'm anti work but not anti labor", understand that that's really what they're saying.
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