The Case for Work

Description

The modern work ethic is in crisis. The numerous harms and injustices harboured by current labour markets and work organisations, combined with the threat of mass unemployment entailed in rampant automation, have inspired a strong "post-work" movement in the theoretical humanities and social sciences, echoed by many intellectuals, journalists, artists and progressives. Against this widespread temptation to declare work obsolete, The Case for Work shows that our paltry situation is critical precisely because work matters. It is a mistake to advocate a society beyond work on the basis of its current organisation. In the first part of the book, the arguments feeding into the "case against work" are located in the long history of social and political thought. This comprehensive, genealogical inquiry highlights many conceptual and methodological issues that continue to plague contemporary accounts. The second part of the book makes the "case for work" in a positive way through a dialectical argument. The very feature of work that its critics emphasise, namely that it is a realm of necessity, is precisely what makes it the conduit for freedom and flourishing, provided each member of society is in a position to face this necessity in conditions that are equal and just. Cover Title page Copyright page Acknowledgements Contents Introduction i.1 The Book's Purpose and Method i.2 What Is Meant by 'Work'? i.3 Four Features of Work i.4 Making the Case for Work Part I. The Case against Work 1 A Modern Value 2 The Work Ethic 2.1 The Rational Organization of Formally Free Labour 2.2 Creative Extensions 2.3 A Protean Catchphrase 2.4 A Problematic Reference 3 Abstract Labour 3.1 Normative and 'Traditional' Accounts of Work in Marx 3.2 Struggle against Work and Refusal of Work 3.3 Technological Rejections of the Work Ethic 3.4 Value-Form Theory 3.5 Work beyond Abstract Labour 4 Work as Discipline 4.1 Discipline after Marx and Weber 4.2 The Historical Relativity of Work 4.3 A Foucauldian Case for Work? 5 Aristotelian Objections 5.1 The Dichotomy of Praxis and Poiesis 5.2 Play, Leisure, and Festivals 5.3 Shaky Foundations 6 Nihilistic Work 6.1 The Nihilism of Modern Work 6.2 The Heidegger Case 6.2.1 Work's Guilt by Association 6.2.2 Heidegger on Machination 6.3 French Heideggerians 6.4 Non-nihilistic Work 6.5 Is Work Inherently Fascistic? 7 The Imminent Obsolescence of Work 7.1 Early Predictions 7.2 Marx on Automation 7.3 Spectres of Automation 8 The Social and Political Irrelevance of Work 8.1 Post-industrialism 8.2 A Category Error 8.3 Normative Objections Part II. The Case for Work 9 Feminism's Ambivalent Attitude to Work 9.1 The Origins of Female Oppression 9.2 Work and the Modern Oppression of Women 9.3 Domestic Work and Social Reproduction 9.4 Social Reproduction: Generalizing the Concept 9.5 Colonization and Slavery 9.6 Feminist Representations of Emancipated Work 10 The Work of Social Reproduction 10.1 The Work of Social Reproduction 10.2 So Much Work 10.3 Which Activity Is Not Work? 11 The Long History of Work 11.1 Work in Garden Societies 11.2 The Myth of Early Leisure Societies 11.3 Cultural Histories of Pre-modern Work 11.4 Answering the Historicist Objections 12 The Social Centrality of Work 12.1 Problematic Metaphors 12.2 Types of Social Action 12.3 The Work of Communicative Action 12.4 Social Centralities of Work 12.4.1 Effective Operations 12.4.2 Sustaining the Flows of the Lifeworld 12.4.4 Recognition of Contributions 12.4.5 Occupations 12.4.6 Household Cooperation 12.4.7 Society's Infrastructure 13 Facing Necessity 13.1 The Necessity of Work 13.1.1 Finitude 13.1.2 Natural Necessity 13.1.3 Social Necessity 13.1.4 Human Neediness 13.2 Facing Necessity 13.2.1 Strengthening Subjective Life 13.2.2 Work and Play 13.2.3 The Goods of Facing Necessity 14 Organizing Necessity 14.1 The Collective Response to Necessity 14.2 Questioning the Organization of Necessity 14.2.1 Which Work Is Necessary? 14.2.2 Is Work for Value Necessary? 14.2.3 Unsustainable Work 14.2.4 Injustice in the Collective Organization of Work 14.2.5 Unfreedom in the Collective Organization of Work 14.3 Achieving Freedom Together 14.3.1 Politics of Self-development 14.3.2 Democratic Work 14.3.3 Work as a Condition of Politics Conclusion: Transcending Necessity Bibliography Index