[...] 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.

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. [...]