Activity

[...] Capitalist work systems are not defined by a numerical threshold, a kind of red line that only when crossed can we reasonably speak about exploitation. No, this is a qualitative relationship. For that reason, the capitalist mode of production by its very nature has always entailed overwork,…

In the end, this economic model is unfeasible since it artificially distils what counts as ‘productive labour time’ down to such a bare minimum that if workers only performed this minuscule task then nothing would get done. Proper labour consists of both (a) the task and (b) the essential, supporti…

[...] This is how the work ethic functions today. Occupational roles are detached from their basis in productive utility and work becomes the wandering reference point for everything else. Not a concrete activity but an abstract and diffuse prism through which all of life is myopically evaluated an…

[...] The work ethic mutates into something entirely different, much darker, compared to previous eras. It used to help fill in or suture over the emptiness of human vulnerability (an attack) and help a community imagine itself in positive terms. Now, however, salvation and redemption comes to thos…

[...] Work today is simply an ideology, designed to lock in a particular class relationship and naturalise the private ownership of the means of production. It does this by falsely evoking the ruse of physiognomic necessity: if we work in order to live, then only a fool would argue against the ne…