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the abolition of work will only be emancipatory if it also allows the development of autonomous activity. The abolition of work doesn't mean abolition of time and effort, the desire for activity, the pleasure of creation, the need to cooperate with others and be of some use to the community. Instead, the abolition of work simply means the progressive, but never total, suppression of the need to purchase the right to live by alienating our lives.
quoting Andre Gorz
[...] one huge mass of people is confined to either manual torment or mental boredom, while another much smaller group monopolizes skills, dominates knowledge and expertise, and prospers from that domination and monopolization. This division of labor is pernicious in the sense that the real possibility of lightening the work load, spreading the burden, is transformed into its dialectical other, a system of repression and repetition, of obsessive and odious work. Work as the instrument of man only betokens man the instrument.
mildly good encapsulation (in the first sentence)
Perhaps, during crises, we can hatch alternative programs for survival, other methods by which we might not so much "earn a living" as live a living. Perhaps we can self-downsize or even refrain from work itself, and at the same time address a paradox that goes back at least to Max Weber: work is revered in our culture, yet at the same time workers are becoming superfluous; you hate your job and your boss, hate the servility of what you do, and how you do it, the pettiness of the tasks involved, yet want to keep your job at all costs. You see no other way of defining yourself other than through work, through what you do for a living, through the "honor" of being employed. Perhaps there's a point at which we can all be pushed over the edge, "set-free" as Marx said, voluntarily take the jump only to discover other aspects of ourselves, other ways to fill in the hole, to make a little money, to maintain our dignity and pride, and to survive off what Gorz calls a "frugal abundance." Perhaps it's time to get politicized around non-work. [...]
this writing style is exhausting but i get the point
In the guest bathroom, I’d first pile the four rugs outside the door to be cleaned later. I would clean the toilet first, which sat across from a large, double-headed standing shower lined with river rock. Henry said he’d clean that himself. After refolding the towels, I’d wipe down the corner Jacuzzi tub, which, as far as I could tell, they never used. They used the hot tub on the porch, Henry explained, gesturing to the swimsuits hanging on the door. After the tub, I would clean their mirror, big enough that I had to kneel on the counter to reach the top, and dust the lights, double sinks, and cluttered counter. The wife’s side had several clear plastic drawers and stands with various shaped holes to hold brushes and other beauty tools I didn’t recognize. Henry’s side of the sink had multiple medication holders—the compartmental kind with the first letter of the day of the week on top. He had several toothbrushes, and there was splattered toothpaste everywhere.
since Henry is home when she cleans
When I’d moved into the homeless shelter, I had called Melissa, one of my oldest friends, and she listened as I went through my plans for rebuilding my life. Nearly all of those plans involved the help of some form of government assistance: food stamps, WIC checks for milk, gas vouchers, low-income housing, energy grants, and childcare.
“For what?” I asked, peeping through the shelter’s worn blue curtain at a deer walking through the backyard. Mia napped in the next room.
“My tax money’s paying for all of that,” she said, then repeated, “so you’re welcome.”
i've said this before but i really do think that the idea of "post-tax" income is incredibly misleading and awful. taxation is destruction! not redistribution! all labour markets are artificial!
“Oh, really?” I asked, feigning interest. Donna enjoyed Mary Kay oils, which left a film that stuck to the side of the bathtub like Velcro, collecting every hair, every dead skin cell that came off her. It was hard to have conversations with her without seeing flashes of it. I never knew if she expected me to stop and talk or continue cleaning while having a conversation with the person whose pubic hairs and leg hair stubble I’d have to scrub from the ring of her jetted tub.
This is particularly important on pictures not funded by a major studio. Some of the pictures I’ve done have been combinations of private financing and the selling off of “territories.” It works as follows: Let’s say the picture is budgeted at $10 million. Of this, $3 million is in what we call “above-the-line” costs: property, director, producer, writer, actors. The other $7 million is for “below-the-line” costs—that is, everything else: sets, locations, trucks, studio rental, location and studio crews, catering, legal fees (which are enormous), music, editing, mixing, equipment rental, living expenses, set dressing (furniture, curtains, plants, etc.). “Below-the-line,” in other words, is the cost of the physical production of the movie. You don’t have major studio backing, so the producer goes to any or all of the yearly meetings in Milan, Cannes, or Los Angeles and tries to sell the distribution rights for the movie to individual distributors in France, Italy, Brazil, Japan—every country in the world. If he can hold on to the television rights, he can then sell those off country by country. Videocassette rights. Cable television rights. In this way, he slowly accumulates the $10 million needed to make the movie: $2 million from Japan, $1 million from France, $75,000 from Brazil, $15,000 from Israel. No offer is too small.
useful
Most writers are so used to being slapped around that they’re stunned that I want them at rehearsal. Only twice has this backfired. Once, the writer fell in love with the leading lady. He showed his love by trying to make her feel as insecure as possible. He was hoping she’d ask him to help her with her part at night. She complained to me, and I had to ask him to leave. The second case involved a writer who was ready to surrender anything he wrote so that the star of the picture might hire him the next time he needed a rewrite. If the star asked a simple question, such as “I’m not sure the time of day is clear here,” the writer would go downstairs, we’d hear the clackety-clack of his portable, and he’d be back with the scene rewritten to take place in a watch factory. It got embarrassing. The actors began to refer to him as “Round Heels.” At the end of a week I told him the script was frozen and that he was free to go home.
Another example of knowing immediately was Dog Day Afternoon. Because of the then shocking material, I felt that my first obligation was to let the audience know this really had happened. That accounts for the whole opening section of the movie. We went out with a hidden camera and photographed every ordinary incident we could shoot on a hot August day. When we finally cut to Pacino, John Cazale, and Gary Springer sitting in a car in front of a bank, they seemed like just one more shot of a group of people on that oppressive summer day in New York. You weren’t even aware that the story had begun.
The actors are also learning about each other. They are revealing themselves to each other, sharing, in greater and greater amounts, their personal feelings. Henry Fonda told me that on the first day of shooting a Sergio Leone movie, he had to shoot a sexy love scene with Gina Lollobrigida. No rehearsal. Right to it. Actors are very different about love and sex scenes. Some shy away from them. The wife of an actor I worked with wouldn’t allow him to do them. I know that if an affair develops between two actors, it will usually begin on either the day I stage the love scene or the day I shoot it. An actor who must remain nameless wanted to be in on the casting of the woman who was going to play opposite him. When I asked why, he said he had to be able to relate to her sexually if he was to play the love scenes properly. So I asked him, what if the script called for him to kill her? Would he have to relate to her murderously in order to play the part? Things were a little testy between us for the next few days.
lmao