FOR A WORLD ABSOLUTELY OTHER
by Wolfi Landstreicher
from Willful Disobedience
Volume 4, number 1, Winter 2003
Life unbridled, a venture into the absolute other, requires the total
destruction not only of 'my' work, but of the very concept of work and
economy as the basis of human relationships. - Jean Weir
If the anarchist project can seem incomprehensible to those who have
learned to accept the necessity of being ruled, who have learned to prefer
security to freedom, that project, understood in its totality, as the
complete overturning of all social relations based on obligation and
compulsion, can even be incomprehensible to many anarchists. The idea of
the destruction of work is frequently met with incomprehension. And this
comes in more than one form.
The most frequent form of imcomprehension I have encountered when I have
spoken of the destruction of work is that which simply exclaims: "But we
have to eat!" In certain ways this reaction is quite similar to the
response to the call for the destruction of prisons, cops and states which
cries: "But then rape, robbery and murder would run rampant!" It is a
response that stems from habit - we have always lived a certain way. Within
this way specific institutions are said to fulfill specific needs - thus,
work and the economy are the institutional framework through which food is
provided within the present system of social relationships, and we know of
no others (except by rumor). So the thought of a world without work evokes
visions of starvation precisely at the point where the capacity to dream
stops.
Another form of incomprehension involves confusion over what work is. This
stems in part from the fact that the word can be used in ambiguous ways. I
may, indeed, say that I am "working" on an article for WD, or on a
translation. But when I am doing these things, it is, in fact, not work,
because there is nothing compelling me to do them, I have no obligation to
do them; I do them solely for my own pleasure. And here is where the basic
meaning of work and its destruction becomes clear.
Work is an economic social relationship based upon compulsion. The
institutions of property and commodity exchange place a price tag upon
survival. This forces each of us to find ways to buy our survival or to
accept the utter precariousness of a life of constant theft. In the former
case, we can only buy our survival precisely by selling large portions of
our lives away - this is why we refer to work as wage slavery - a slave is
one whose life is owned by another, and when we work, capital owns our
lives. And with the world domination of capital, increasingly the totality
of existence is permeated by the world of work - there is no moment that is
our own unless we ferociously rip it from the grip of this world. Though it
is true that wage slavery cannot be equated with chattel slavery, it is
also true that the masters of this world, in referring to us as "human
resources", make it very clear how they view us. So survival with a price
tag is always opposed to life, and work is the form this opposition takes.
But theft (and its poor cousin, dumpster diving) does not in itself free us
from work. "Even robbing banks or reappropriating goods remains within the
logic of capital if the individual perpetrator of the deed does not already
have their own project in motion" (Jean Weir). And here is one of the most
common misunderstandings of an anti-work perspective: confusing the
avoidance of having a job with the attack on the world of work. This
confusion manifests in a practical emphasis on methods for surviving
without a job. Thus, survival continues to take precedence over life. One
encounters so many people now within certain anarchist-influenced
subcultures, who know where all the dumpsters, all the free feeds, all the
easy shoplifting stores, etc. are, but who have no concept of what to do
with their lives beyond surviving on the steets. The individual with a
clear idea of her project who, for example, chooses to take a job
temporarily at a printer's in order to learn the skills and steal as much
material as she needs to start her own anarchist publishing project -
quitting the job as soon as his projectual tasks are accomplished - is
acting far more pointedly against the world of work than the individual who
spends his days wandering from dumpster to dumpster, thinking only of how
he's avoided a job.
Work is a social relationship, or more precisely, part of a network of
social relationships based upon domination and exploitation. The
destruction of work (as opposed to its mere avoidance), therefore, cannot
be accomplished by a single individual. One who tried would still find
herself trapped within the world of work, forced to deal with its realities
and the choices it imposes. Nor can work be destroyed separately from the
complete destruction of the system of social relationships of which it is a
part. Thus, the attack against work starts from our struggle to
reappropriate our lives. But this struggle encounters the walls of the
prison that surrounds us everywhere, and so must become the struggle to
destroy an entire social world, because only in a world that is absolutely
other, what some have called a "world turned upside-down", will our lives
ever truly be our own. Now we can snatch moments and spaces - and indeed
this is necessary in order to give us the time to reflect upon what we, as
individuals, really want to do with our lives. But the task remains before
us of breaking down the prison walls.
MORE ON...(inc comments)
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/02/27/4318732
