An obsession with work is a colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist construct. As such, the anti-work movement is an important part of decolonization, feminism, and anti-capitalism. Work is a tool of oppression By anti-work, I don’t mean that no one ever works. That’s preposterous of course. There are things that need to get done, and people need to do them. But this obsession with hard work as a virtue, as a good and righteous thing to do, the glorification of toil and sweat and labor… that’s a tool the wealthy who don’t work for a living use to oppress those who do.
Anarchy and modern convenience
A major part of anarchy and socialism is the concept of anti-work. An obsession with work is a colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist construct. As such, the anti-work movement—a focus on working less overall and sharing labor more equally—is an important part of decolonization, feminism, and anti-capitalism. A common criticism of this is that reducing the amount everyone works to something like 20 hours a week instead of 40+ means we would have to give up a lot of conveniences.
Political Aspects of Full Employment
Why do capitalists hate full employment? Because it weakens their power over workers.
Work is a cult, here's how to escape
Resisting Racial Capitalism: An Antipolitical Theory of Refusal
An Antipolitical Theory of Refusal
Capitalism Without Humans
As new technologies (not immigrants) replace human labor, "machine breaking" as a tactic of rebellion is taking on a renewed vitality.
Freedom Now | Polity: Vol 52, No 3
Left-wing politics is resurgent. Self-proclaimed socialists are unexpectedly popular. Proposals like universal health care are a commonplace of Democratic campaigns. But there is not yet a clear, unifying idea behind this political shift. We propose that that idea is freedom. While the left once understood freedom as emancipation from the economy, the right spent the twentieth century neutralizing and appropriating the idea of freedom by reinventing the economy as the true site of freedom. To reclaim freedom as a value of the left, we have to begin with the daily experience of most people: the unfreedom of the workplace. The authoritarian organization of work is not just an offense against freedom; it also helps us understand how freedom requires emancipation both from the economy and within the economy, and why that emancipation requires mass struggle.
Will capitalism end capitalism? | Steve Loftus | The Critic Magazine
Imagine waking up one morning to discover your job still exists, but your services are no longer required. The work is being done, just not by you, not by anybody. Somewhere, a machine is doing it…
Distinguishing Labor from Work · Aaron Ross Powell
We should get rid of the former, if we can, but we should absolutely keep the latter.
In 2026, I’m no longer interested in ‘working on myself’
We think of ourselves as full-time projects, but what if doing so much inner work does more harm than good?
'A directive from above': Former NYT editor lays out how the paper pushes anti-trans bigotry
In this in-depth interview, former New York Times editor Billie Jean Sweeney details how the paper shifted towards openly promoting anti-trans hatred, how some staff tried to stop it, how it's directed from the very top and the damage this legitimization of bigotry has done
Distinguishing Labor from Work - Aaron Ross Powell
We should get rid of the former, if we can, but we should absolutely keep the latter.
The revolution will not be funded: beyond the non-profit industrial complex
Introduction : the revolution will not be funded / Andrea Smith -- The political logic of the non-profit industrial complex / Dylan Rodríguez -- In the shadow of the shadow state / Ruth Wilson Gilmore -- From black awakening in capitalist America / Robert L. Allen -- Democratizing American philanthropy / Christine E. Ahn -- The filth on philanthropy : progressive philanthropy's agenda to misdirect social justice movements / Tiffany Lethabo King and Ewuare Osayande -- Between radical theory and community praxis : reflections on organizing and the non-profit industrial complex / Amara H. Pérez -- Native organizing before the non-profit industrial complex / Madonna Thunder Hawk -- Fundraising is not a dirty word : community-based economic strategies for the long haul / Stephanie Guilloud and William Cordery -- "We were never meant to survive" : fighting violence against women and the fourth world war / Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo -- Social service or social change? / Paul Kivel -- Pursuing a radical anti-violence agenda inside/outside a non-profit structure / Alisa Bierria -- The NGOization of the Palestine liberation movement : interviews with Hatem Bazian, Noura Erekat, Atef Said, and Zeina Zaatari / Andrea Smith -- Radical social change : searching for a new foundation / Adjoa Florência Jones de Almeida -- Are the cops in our heads and hearts? / Paula X. Rojas -- Non-profits and the autonomous grassroots / Eric Tang -- On our own terms : ten years of radical community building with Sista II Sista / Nicole Burrowes ... [et al.]
How Liminalism Became the Defining Aesthetic of Our Time
This crowd-curated digital movement is one of the most pertinent and explicit reactions to our particular slice of dystopian late capitalism.
Alasdair MacIntyre’s Philosophy in Practice
It is a curious thing when an artist, thinker, or writer gains influence outside the audience he intends or is comfortable with. When a thinker associated with the right becomes popular on the left, or a novelist associated with the progressive left becomes popular among conservative readers, there can be a sort of strain felt between the audience in fact and the “true” audience, or between those who feel themselves to be the authentic recipients of a work’s message and meaning and those who, to the true believers, come across as opportunistic in their enjoyment of works in tension with their own views. The same is true when a writer working within an academic discipline gets picked up by those outside it: Those working within that discipline may find the co-opting of these thinkers misplaced at best or malicious at worst.
if there's one conclusion that the study of both labor history and imperialism converge on, it is that the richest people in the world are happy to burn money on control, power, impunity. and the "everything is about profit" version of anti-capitalism does not survive serious contact with either
Leonard Pierce
Adding to this thread: it’s a common mistake (I’ve made it myself, many times) to think of the motivations of the capitalist elites as essentially mercantilist: that is, that they are largely still motivated *entirely* by profit and loss, selling product, etc. This has not been true for a while.
