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The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries
In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory.
287 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2011
112 people are currently reading
5341 people want to read
About the author
Kathi Weeks
8 books50 followersKathi Weeks teaches in the Women's Studies Program at Duke University. Her primary interests are in the fields of political theory, feminist theory, Marxist thought, and utopian studies. She is the author of The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries and Constituting Feminist Subjects, and a co-editor of The Jameson Reader.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
December 30, 2014
While I'm sympathetic to the idea that there are a lot of problems with work and its centrality to most people's lives, the very high level of abstraction of the writing was an impediment to my getting into this. Doesn't really discuss any jobs in specific (is being an associate professor of women's studies at Duke, like the author, a bad job? if so, how and why? If not, then what sorts of jobs in particular are we talking about? ones with low autonomy? low wages?).
I guess I've lost my touch since college in being able to read closely enough to figure out the meaning when it's page after page of highly theoretical social/cultural/political discourse not really anchored in anything from everyday life. Here's one example from p. 88, in which she is criticizing someone else's critique of work:
"Despite the importance of these authors' critique of unsustainable patterns of consumption and their interrogation of a commodity fetishism that functions to deflect questions about the relationship between consumer goods and the conditions under which they are produced, the link the authors affirm between support of productivism and opposition to consumerism reiterates one of the central tenets of the traditional work ethic."
I sort of get that -- she's saying the other author is trying to shoot down traditional work ethic but actually misguidedly supports it. But long passages in that turgid style make my mind wander, which isn't conducive to getting more out of it.
I guess I've lost my touch since college in being able to read closely enough to figure out the meaning when it's page after page of highly theoretical social/cultural/political discourse not really anchored in anything from everyday life. Here's one example from p. 88, in which she is criticizing someone else's critique of work:
"Despite the importance of these authors' critique of unsustainable patterns of consumption and their interrogation of a commodity fetishism that functions to deflect questions about the relationship between consumer goods and the conditions under which they are produced, the link the authors affirm between support of productivism and opposition to consumerism reiterates one of the central tenets of the traditional work ethic."
I sort of get that -- she's saying the other author is trying to shoot down traditional work ethic but actually misguidedly supports it. But long passages in that turgid style make my mind wander, which isn't conducive to getting more out of it.
November 16, 2012
I anticipate this book, and that which it represents, will be a cornerstone of my politics for some years to come.
In the first two chapters, it calls into question the central role of the institution of work in capitalism, as well as the primacy of productivist discourses more universally, not only within capitalism but also within Marxism, specifically the Marxist traditions of socialist modernism and socialist humanism. The politics of the autonomist Marxist "refusal of work" are also elucidated here. In the next two chapters, while placing the institution of work in context with an examination of the "wages for housework" movement, and an exploration of the relationship between work and family, Kathi Weeks makes her two core demands in the Problem with Work: firstly for basic income, and secondly for a shorter working week.
In the closing chapter, she situates basic income and shorter hours as utopian demands. After a brief discussion of anti-utopian thought as exemplified by Karl Popper (pre-Cold War: there must be no other way than Western liberal democracy) and Francis Fukuyama (post-Cold War: there is no other way than Western liberal democracy), Kathi Weeks makes a spirited defense of utopianism in its various forms: its ability to generate critical distance from the world as it stands, while inspiring hope and imagination for the future.
Positing life as the counterpart to work, she concludes with a call to "get a life".
After getting through the introduction and the first chapter (which laid excellent groundwork for the chapters to come), I was continually inspired. Partly because I had simply not encountered many of the ideas put forth here (and felt a strong affinity for them), and partly because it is a compelling mix of analysis, critique and demand. It's also worth noting I think, that Kathi Weeks uses few of her references completely without reservation, but she makes good use of them, and her reading of them is often imaginative (see Nietzche in support of utopian hope). In short: changed my life. There is a joke about subject formation here but I just... I can't make it work.
In the first two chapters, it calls into question the central role of the institution of work in capitalism, as well as the primacy of productivist discourses more universally, not only within capitalism but also within Marxism, specifically the Marxist traditions of socialist modernism and socialist humanism. The politics of the autonomist Marxist "refusal of work" are also elucidated here. In the next two chapters, while placing the institution of work in context with an examination of the "wages for housework" movement, and an exploration of the relationship between work and family, Kathi Weeks makes her two core demands in the Problem with Work: firstly for basic income, and secondly for a shorter working week.
In the closing chapter, she situates basic income and shorter hours as utopian demands. After a brief discussion of anti-utopian thought as exemplified by Karl Popper (pre-Cold War: there must be no other way than Western liberal democracy) and Francis Fukuyama (post-Cold War: there is no other way than Western liberal democracy), Kathi Weeks makes a spirited defense of utopianism in its various forms: its ability to generate critical distance from the world as it stands, while inspiring hope and imagination for the future.
Positing life as the counterpart to work, she concludes with a call to "get a life".
After getting through the introduction and the first chapter (which laid excellent groundwork for the chapters to come), I was continually inspired. Partly because I had simply not encountered many of the ideas put forth here (and felt a strong affinity for them), and partly because it is a compelling mix of analysis, critique and demand. It's also worth noting I think, that Kathi Weeks uses few of her references completely without reservation, but she makes good use of them, and her reading of them is often imaginative (see Nietzche in support of utopian hope). In short: changed my life. There is a joke about subject formation here but I just... I can't make it work.
September 30, 2017
Kitabın üç meselesi var:
Birinci mesele "çalışma etrafında örgütlenmiş toplum nasıl bir toplum ve özne üretiyor" konusu. Bu konudaki tüm yaklaşımları derli toplu değerlendirmiş. Literatür günümüze kadar geliyor.
İkincisi, feminist hareket ev içi emeği sorgulayarak bu konuda nasıl bir açılım yarattı ve vatandaşlık maaşı bu açılımı nasıl öteye taşıdı konusu.
Üçüncüsü ise politik iddianın öneminin gerçekçiliğinden değil örgütleme, sınırları kaldırma, başka türlü düşünme imkanı sağlamasından geldiğini anlatan ütopya meselesi.
Kitap sadece bilgi sunmuyor politik bir tartışmaya da davet ediyor.
İşçi sınıfı örgütlenmesi konusuna kafa yoranlar ve her gün işe gitmeye hala alışamayanlara çok faydalı olacak, -okuması çok kolay olmasa da- dolu dolu bir kitap.
Birinci mesele "çalışma etrafında örgütlenmiş toplum nasıl bir toplum ve özne üretiyor" konusu. Bu konudaki tüm yaklaşımları derli toplu değerlendirmiş. Literatür günümüze kadar geliyor.
İkincisi, feminist hareket ev içi emeği sorgulayarak bu konuda nasıl bir açılım yarattı ve vatandaşlık maaşı bu açılımı nasıl öteye taşıdı konusu.
Üçüncüsü ise politik iddianın öneminin gerçekçiliğinden değil örgütleme, sınırları kaldırma, başka türlü düşünme imkanı sağlamasından geldiğini anlatan ütopya meselesi.
Kitap sadece bilgi sunmuyor politik bir tartışmaya da davet ediyor.
İşçi sınıfı örgütlenmesi konusuna kafa yoranlar ve her gün işe gitmeye hala alışamayanlara çok faydalı olacak, -okuması çok kolay olmasa da- dolu dolu bir kitap.
January 14, 2026
The struggle of the proletariat against Capitalism is hard and real. So is the struggle against this book. I should know better than to commit to a book with such an enchanting title, because the subject matter sounds interesting and relevant. However, the reality is that The Problem with Work is damn-near unreadable for the entirety of its 230 pages.
I’ve had a long academic career and completely understand the idea that, when speaking to peers, one must use language that the fewest amount of people can understand. The Problem With Work reads like a PhD thesis, so it becomes evident right from the start, that the reader is going to have to put in a lot of work to finish this book, because it’s loaded with run-on sentence and jargon. Weeks simply refused sentence structures that would make her book more accessible and that is the main reason it’s so unenjoyable. Unless, of course, sentences like “Thus we find in a body of management literature and practice that spans the Fordist and post-Fordist periods an expressed need to locate and preserve some kind of balance between work and family – a relationship many feminists, on the contrary, struggled to expose as a product of normative exposition rather than natural proclivity and a site of flagrant contradiction rather than mere imbalance” float your boat.
Everything else is miniscule by comparison, but let’s lay them out here. First of all, there are no original ideas in this book. When making a point, Weeks chooses on one or two extraneous sources, several decades old, when she makes her argument. She does not have her own data to share. Why she chooses these sources is anyone’s guess because there is nothing that implies these sources are the ultimate authority on the subject. There are also no examples when she’s trying to make a point. She just states things as matter-of-fact or barely expands on them. Weeks also spends dozens of pages telling you what she’s going to tell you before she tells you. When you’re dying to finish a book, that’s really frustrating. The final chapter of the book is both the best and worst. It’s the worst because it’s 40 pages of Weeks defending “Utopianism” as a viable avenue for making choices in the present (a laughably Marxist argument since only orthodox Marxist consider “utopia” to be a condemnation and a dirty word) by ONLY quoting Nietzsche and Bloch (why them specifically? again, no idea), and the best because it’s a waste of time and you can completely skip it.
The Problem with Work is one of those books where the author sets out to boycott their own work. There’s very little useful information here for the reader once they’ve put in the time and effort to wrestle with the text. I’m glad her committee liked it and gave her a degree, though. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to graduate.
I’ve had a long academic career and completely understand the idea that, when speaking to peers, one must use language that the fewest amount of people can understand. The Problem With Work reads like a PhD thesis, so it becomes evident right from the start, that the reader is going to have to put in a lot of work to finish this book, because it’s loaded with run-on sentence and jargon. Weeks simply refused sentence structures that would make her book more accessible and that is the main reason it’s so unenjoyable. Unless, of course, sentences like “Thus we find in a body of management literature and practice that spans the Fordist and post-Fordist periods an expressed need to locate and preserve some kind of balance between work and family – a relationship many feminists, on the contrary, struggled to expose as a product of normative exposition rather than natural proclivity and a site of flagrant contradiction rather than mere imbalance” float your boat.
Everything else is miniscule by comparison, but let’s lay them out here. First of all, there are no original ideas in this book. When making a point, Weeks chooses on one or two extraneous sources, several decades old, when she makes her argument. She does not have her own data to share. Why she chooses these sources is anyone’s guess because there is nothing that implies these sources are the ultimate authority on the subject. There are also no examples when she’s trying to make a point. She just states things as matter-of-fact or barely expands on them. Weeks also spends dozens of pages telling you what she’s going to tell you before she tells you. When you’re dying to finish a book, that’s really frustrating. The final chapter of the book is both the best and worst. It’s the worst because it’s 40 pages of Weeks defending “Utopianism” as a viable avenue for making choices in the present (a laughably Marxist argument since only orthodox Marxist consider “utopia” to be a condemnation and a dirty word) by ONLY quoting Nietzsche and Bloch (why them specifically? again, no idea), and the best because it’s a waste of time and you can completely skip it.
The Problem with Work is one of those books where the author sets out to boycott their own work. There’s very little useful information here for the reader once they’ve put in the time and effort to wrestle with the text. I’m glad her committee liked it and gave her a degree, though. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to graduate.
August 28, 2014
It is a truth universally acknowledged that work sucks and you shouldn’t do it.
This is an argument – the one Kathi Weeks puts forward early in her book – that I can definitely get behind. The first half of “The Problem with Work” is a very adept analysis of the way work, and workers’ concepts of work, shape our lives (she focuses primarily on the United States). Beginning with Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” she describes the “work ethic” and its function in keeping workers active at making money for their bosses, and fits her analysis within the anti-work strains of Marxist thought, most notably the autonomist tradition. While it’s heavily academic and often a slog to get through, the analysis and critique of work she puts forward is engaging and convincing, though thoroughly depressing to read while commuting.
The second half of the book is something of a prescription: Weeks sees a Universal Basic Income (UBI) with no strings whatsoever attached, along with a curtailed 6-hour workday (with no loss in pay), as ways to begin to decouple the human subject from work – in the first case, by separating sheer subsistence from a requirement to work, and in the latter by opening up additional spaces for non-work activities. She connects these concepts to Marxist feminist thought via a connection to the “wages for housework” movement that was once prevalent in feminist circles, both in the similarity of the demand for money (in one case, for as-yet unpaid work, in the other for no work at all) and in the act of demanding itself.
While she makes some convincing points about the act of demanding and its potential effect on the system even when the demands are not met, the second half of the book feels slightly bloated with a long chapter on utopian thinking and a lackluster explanation of the demands (that don’t, in the end, seem all that utopian). In the time-worn reform vs. revolution debate, she seems to consider her propositions as revolutionary, but I see them as fairly unimpressive reforms. Many libertarian thinkers have proposed a basic income of some kind, for instance, as a way to reduce the size of bureaucratic government and let market forces take even further control of people’s lives. And while an income without restrictions would be liberating for a great number of people (I’m not against it, I should say, I just find it wanting), it still requires a body to administer it (the state, one assumes) that is presumably seen as distinct from the people who receive the income.
Ultimately, the UBI/6-hour-day project seems better capable of assisting an alternative group to exist alongside the capitalist class, but in no way seriously challenges capitalist hegemony. If the goal is to create space within capitalism for people to either not work, work less, or some combination of both that leads to expanded autonomy, then that seems like a nice short-term goal. However, while Weeks makes some arguments that this short-term goal will make space for long-term thinking, the self-styled utopianism of the book’s specific demands feels a bit lacking.
Overall, like many of this kind of text, the analysis of the problem was considerably better than the prescriptions for solutions. It’s also worth noting that the book is clearly intended for an academic audience, and can often be dauntingly heavy with references to various concepts that are not explained in detail (in other words, you’ll be Googling stuff).
This is an argument – the one Kathi Weeks puts forward early in her book – that I can definitely get behind. The first half of “The Problem with Work” is a very adept analysis of the way work, and workers’ concepts of work, shape our lives (she focuses primarily on the United States). Beginning with Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” she describes the “work ethic” and its function in keeping workers active at making money for their bosses, and fits her analysis within the anti-work strains of Marxist thought, most notably the autonomist tradition. While it’s heavily academic and often a slog to get through, the analysis and critique of work she puts forward is engaging and convincing, though thoroughly depressing to read while commuting.
The second half of the book is something of a prescription: Weeks sees a Universal Basic Income (UBI) with no strings whatsoever attached, along with a curtailed 6-hour workday (with no loss in pay), as ways to begin to decouple the human subject from work – in the first case, by separating sheer subsistence from a requirement to work, and in the latter by opening up additional spaces for non-work activities. She connects these concepts to Marxist feminist thought via a connection to the “wages for housework” movement that was once prevalent in feminist circles, both in the similarity of the demand for money (in one case, for as-yet unpaid work, in the other for no work at all) and in the act of demanding itself.
While she makes some convincing points about the act of demanding and its potential effect on the system even when the demands are not met, the second half of the book feels slightly bloated with a long chapter on utopian thinking and a lackluster explanation of the demands (that don’t, in the end, seem all that utopian). In the time-worn reform vs. revolution debate, she seems to consider her propositions as revolutionary, but I see them as fairly unimpressive reforms. Many libertarian thinkers have proposed a basic income of some kind, for instance, as a way to reduce the size of bureaucratic government and let market forces take even further control of people’s lives. And while an income without restrictions would be liberating for a great number of people (I’m not against it, I should say, I just find it wanting), it still requires a body to administer it (the state, one assumes) that is presumably seen as distinct from the people who receive the income.
Ultimately, the UBI/6-hour-day project seems better capable of assisting an alternative group to exist alongside the capitalist class, but in no way seriously challenges capitalist hegemony. If the goal is to create space within capitalism for people to either not work, work less, or some combination of both that leads to expanded autonomy, then that seems like a nice short-term goal. However, while Weeks makes some arguments that this short-term goal will make space for long-term thinking, the self-styled utopianism of the book’s specific demands feels a bit lacking.
Overall, like many of this kind of text, the analysis of the problem was considerably better than the prescriptions for solutions. It’s also worth noting that the book is clearly intended for an academic audience, and can often be dauntingly heavy with references to various concepts that are not explained in detail (in other words, you’ll be Googling stuff).
June 19, 2020
This is a really great book! I was already antiwork but I learned a lot from Kathi Weeks' argument and feel more knowledgeable abt this political theory and the history of labor.. very relevant for right now as we are seeing all the holes in the idea of work as we know it. The book is in 5 chapters that outline: (1) the work ethic and how our ideas of work have been created and enforced historically, (2) the idea of the 'refusal of work' through Marxism & productivism and how/why we should refuse work rather than try to reform it, (3) feminist argument against work & the valorization of reproductive/domestic/care work through Wages for Housework, (4) thinking abt what we would do if we had less work (shorter hours but more $) in a more expansive way than "more time for family,” and (5) envisioning our postwork utopia through some other utopias (literary, concrete/abstract, traditional). Lot of interesting stuff here that I will continue to think abt!
April 26, 2013
work sucks, I know
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 14, 2021
Muy rico, un 10. Me parece muy interesante porque enlaza muy bien varias cosas que se están hablando aquí últimamente: rbu, reducción de jornada, trabajo reproductivo, utopías.
Me ha interesado especialmente lo propositivo: renta básica universal y reducción de jornada como demandas utópicas que sirven no sólo como reivindicación de reformas concretas sino tb como provocación para imaginarnos la posibilidad de una vida que no gira en torno al trabajo (tampoco el reproductivo).
También el análisis de la potencia que tiene el mismo acto de demandar, y como estas reivindicaciones pueden interpelar a imaginar un mundo y una vida diferentes a gente que no se siente incluida en categorías clásicas a las que ha intentado movilizar la izquierda, como clase obrera.
Y un puntito especial para todo el análisis sobre como la organización en torno a la familia nuclear es el soporte y el complemento para la organización del trabajo productivo. No es nada nuevo pero tantos análisis lo dejan de lado que ha sido un soplo de aire fresco.
Me ha interesado especialmente lo propositivo: renta básica universal y reducción de jornada como demandas utópicas que sirven no sólo como reivindicación de reformas concretas sino tb como provocación para imaginarnos la posibilidad de una vida que no gira en torno al trabajo (tampoco el reproductivo).
También el análisis de la potencia que tiene el mismo acto de demandar, y como estas reivindicaciones pueden interpelar a imaginar un mundo y una vida diferentes a gente que no se siente incluida en categorías clásicas a las que ha intentado movilizar la izquierda, como clase obrera.
Y un puntito especial para todo el análisis sobre como la organización en torno a la familia nuclear es el soporte y el complemento para la organización del trabajo productivo. No es nada nuevo pero tantos análisis lo dejan de lado que ha sido un soplo de aire fresco.
Want to read
May 11, 2012Introduction:
http://libcom.org/library/problem-wor...
http://libcom.org/library/problem-wor...
July 28, 2021
Quite literally the best theory I’ve ever read. This book does so much for me
Want to read
April 21, 2017NTS: not in library. $16.35 on Kindle
March 13, 2013
Kathi Weeks tackles a lot of hard and frequently overlooked issues in this book. Her strongest analysis and critique come into play when she focuses on the secularization of the protestant work ethic and its ties to feminist labor activism and modern ways of life. Reading this book was laborious yet exciting; it challenged some of my deepest framings and beliefs. However, the race analysis in this book is glaringly lacking and, when present, tenuous at best.
March 20, 2022
The most powerful book I've read to date.
Tedious, hopeful, expansive, analytical, dense..
This book packages so much theory into every word that I felt my lens forever altered. Killed a highlighter while reading this one.
This is not a read for those that aren't comfortable getting mired in theory; dissecting from every angle before moving on. It took me a year. I am grateful for it.
Tedious, hopeful, expansive, analytical, dense..
This book packages so much theory into every word that I felt my lens forever altered. Killed a highlighter while reading this one.
This is not a read for those that aren't comfortable getting mired in theory; dissecting from every angle before moving on. It took me a year. I am grateful for it.
November 12, 2017
Absolutely brilliant. Weeks has shattered my so called 'naturalized ontology' when it comes to the sanctification of work...
Orthodox marxisms slip through our finger tips in our accelerated age.
Orthodox marxisms slip through our finger tips in our accelerated age.
June 26, 2019
This book is so on point that I want to go to grad school to study this.
Read
December 11, 2021I first read parts of this book for is a class in college and decided to revisit it. It’s dense and theory heavy (I’ll admit some parts went over my head) BUT overall it was insightful and pushed my own views of the values of work (broadly defined) and leisure. I appreciate Kathi Weeks ability to problematize work, the work ethic, and the dominant capitalist focus on productivity while also looking toward the future with concrete ways to cultivate a life against work (beginning with a universal basic income and shorter work hours without pay cuts). She also acknowledges that freedom and utopian demands are ever evolving, as she says they are “at once a goal and a bridge”. Therefore, radical and revolutionary change is a constant creative struggle.
Took me months to read, but if you’re into theory, I definitely recommend! (Or I can give you my notes).
Took me months to read, but if you’re into theory, I definitely recommend! (Or I can give you my notes).
July 7, 2024
Good! I didn’t exactly spite-read this but generally anti-work stuff doesn’t interest me. I am a person who needs to be busy and occupied and I think of myself as maybe too realistic, maybe more pessimistic than rational. I like Weeks’s positing of her argument as something perpetually being made and allowing that utopian demands can challenge us, that the act of making demands itself is political, and that we should allow ourselves to imagine the impossible in creating a new and better world, maybe even have a little fun in this horrible world!
October 31, 2025
oh nothing just me n my feminist literature
February 5, 2025
There is a lot of interesting and thought-provoking stuff in this book for sure, but the superabstract way it's written was honestly quite repulsive to me, because I hate this pseudoacademic style where you try to stuff in as many fancy and/or abstract words as possible to the point that sometimes it's very hard to discern what the fuck you're talking about exactly. As in:
What the hell does that even mean, jesus christ? Also, I found the book a bit too meandering – for instance, people might say that your demands are too utopian, so why not spend 20% of the book on discussing utopia in all its facets (as a genre, as a provocation, as a demand etc.) just to basically repeat the same thing throughout the chapter anyway (namely that utopias are good, as they can distance us from the present reality and they can provoke us into action or at least into non-conformity of some sort or just be thought-provoking, in the least)? No wonder it took me literally three years to actually (re)read all of it lol.
The same logic of imagination that conceives the relation between the refusal of work and its abolition in terms of difference and rupture grounds it also in tendency and potential.
What the hell does that even mean, jesus christ? Also, I found the book a bit too meandering – for instance, people might say that your demands are too utopian, so why not spend 20% of the book on discussing utopia in all its facets (as a genre, as a provocation, as a demand etc.) just to basically repeat the same thing throughout the chapter anyway (namely that utopias are good, as they can distance us from the present reality and they can provoke us into action or at least into non-conformity of some sort or just be thought-provoking, in the least)? No wonder it took me literally three years to actually (re)read all of it lol.
May 5, 2012
Weeks traces the development of the work ethic and the problems it presents us within our current society. She then uses the autonomist marxist tradition of the 70s, and specifically the feminist project of the Wages for Housework movement as a starting point to launch her own demands of less hours with no reduction in pay and a guaranteed basic income to everyone, regardless of employment or family status. She moves along this trajectory with detailed theoretical discussion of various currents of marxism and feminism. Ending with a somewhat dense philosophical look at the ideas of utopianism and the political power of utopian demands.
A really great book, powerfully arguing against the fetishization and exaltation of "hard work", while pointing to a future where we all have more time for ourselves, our communities, our passions, and our lives outside of capital.
A really great book, powerfully arguing against the fetishization and exaltation of "hard work", while pointing to a future where we all have more time for ourselves, our communities, our passions, and our lives outside of capital.
September 14, 2020
I got a little sleepy in the most theoretical pages of this book, but on the most part, easy to read and understand even for someone who isn't familiar with Marxism. Having yearned for a 30-hour work week to be considered "full-time" for a long while, I loved this book because it provided thoughtful ammunition for the argument. To totally oversimplify: Weeks advocates for utopian intersectional feminism grounded in reality and practice. Highly recommend for feminists as well as anyone frustrated with our society's obsession with work.
May 17, 2016
Very valuable although highly intellectual discussion of such issues as wages for housework, a post-work society, and basic guaranteed income. I recommend this for anyone struggling to get by, as well as those who are concerned about making the economy sustainable or improving the general social welfare.
July 28, 2013
Reads like a PhD thesis from the 90s.
January 7, 2021
The author is a gender studies professor, that is the embodiment of what's wrong with academia. She has no authority talking about anything but how much "oppressed" (read "privileged") she is.
October 24, 2024
I found it really enlightening, especially in the author's critique of the work ethic, born in capitalism but quickly absorbed by most of the labour movement as well; in her re-reading of the "wages for housework" movement; and in her proposals for universal basic income and shorter working hours as utopian demands to move towards a society in which life (and not work) is at the centre. I love that her critique of the work ethic also includes (1) a critique of the asceticism that often accompanies this ethic, both on the right and the left, and (2) a feminist critique of the institution of family (this made me want to revisit Hester & Srnicer's After work https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...). I was sorry to find chapter 5, which deals with utopias from a philosophical point of view, at the end of the work - long and abstract, it seemed to me rather anticlimactic: it would have been much more interesting and constructive at the beginning of it.
Read
March 20, 2025Various Sections of Chapters 1 & 2
August 9, 2023
Work is for Boys!!
April 2, 2024
Kathi Weeks is another fantastic scholar that provided a rich conceptualization of work. The way she brought many perspectives and fields into conversation to create a powerful and masterful theorization of work blew me away. The only aspect I’m not quite sold on was the analysis of utopian thought as it relates to post-work imaginings. Perhaps I need to revisit this after tackling some other labor and sociology texts.
July 10, 2022
As a blue-collar kid, going for my masters and still somehow doing hard manual labor at every turn— this book shook my world. Kathi Weeks turned me onto autonomous Marxism, and her coverage of De Las Casa et al. is just…. life changing for me. Very subjective review but damn… I think abt this book daily
January 11, 2023
A great read that investigates the criticisms of work under capitalism using Marxist and Feminist approaches as well as the proposals of alternatives from antiwork to postwork in Marxist autonomist thought
Highly recommended for anyone with an interested in the topic
Highlights of the read included:
Referencing Marx exposing the secret of profit-making by changing the site of the analysis from a market-based exchange to wage-based production, in doing so the world of waged work is publicised and explosed as neither a natural precursor nor a peripheral byproduct of capitalist production, but rather as its central mechanism (wage) and lifeblood (work), with this shift in perspective, Marxian political economy recognises waged labour as central to the capitalist mode of production and claims it as the standpoint from which capitalism's mysteries can be uncovered
Thus waged work remains the centerpiece of late capitalism economic systems, it is how most people acquire access to the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, it is not only the primary mechanism by which income is distributed, it is also the basic means by which status is allocated, and by which most people gain access to healthcare and retirement
Marx sought not only to publicise work, but also to politicise the world of work, which is to say, the focus on the consumption of labour seeks to expose the social role of work, and at the same time, to pose it as a political problem - a social system that ensure that working is the only way that most of us can meet our basic needs, the specific mechanism by which goods and services are distributed in a capitalist society appears to be grounded not in social convention and political power, but in human need; thus the social role of waged work has been so naturalised as to seem necessary and inevitable, something that might be tinkered with but never escaped, and operates as a social convention and disciplinary apparatus rather than an economic necessity
Referencing Salzinger's study of gendered labour in maquiladoras in which she argues that it is precisely the combination of rigid gender categories with the malleability and variability of their enactments and meaning that explains the resilience of gender as a principle of human differentiation. In this sense, ironically, the tremendous plasticity of gender reinforces rather than undermines its naturalisation.
The author's reframing of social reproduction and extending it beyond the problems of this work's invisibility, devaluation and gendering. Although she wants to register that domestic labour is socially necessary and unequally distributed (insofar as gender, race, class, and nation often determines who will do more and less of it), she is also interested in moving beyond the claim that if it were to be fully recognised, adequately compensated, and equally divided, then the existing model of household-based reproduction would be rectified. A more expansive conception of social reproduction, coupled with the refusal of work, might be used to frame a more compelling problematic.
What happens when social reproduction is understood as the production of the forms of social cooperation on which accumulation depend or, alternatively, as the rest of life beyond work that capital seeks continually to harness to its times, spaces, rhythms, purposes, and values?
How work ethic came to be more inclusive in terms of class by means of its exclusions based on race and gender. In the early industrial period, elements of the white working class came to identify with waged work as a mark of independence and status by way of their racial identities. The legitimacy of and identification with what had been resisted as "wage slavery" in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was established "in time and in comparison" to the institution of slavery and those constructed through its sustaining discourses as its abject subjects. The embrace of whiteness, as Roediger explains, "was a way in which white workers responded to a fear of dependency on wage labor and to the necessities of capitalist work discipline". The othering of various immigrant groups delivered a similar reward to wage labourers, paying what WEB Du Bois called a "public and psychological wage" to the white working class
The refusal of work disavows socialism imagined either as state-planned economy to alleviate exploitation or as small-scale production to remedy alienation. The problem to solve is not simply to liberate production, but also for humanity to liberate itself from production by ceasing to treat it as the centre of gravity of all social activities and individual action. Rather than a vision of the work society perfected, with its labours rationally organised, equally required and justly distributed, it is a vision of the work society overcome - a society in which work is certainly not eliminated, but comes to play a different role of social production and political obligation
The major role of the domestic labour debate in Anglo-American Marxist and socialist feminist theory in the 1970s in which participants argued that gender difference and hierarchy are also constituted and reproduced through labouring practices, and that specific gender divisions of labour are part and parcel of contemporary capitalist social formations
The wage as one of the most direct expressions of the relation of power between capital and labour and one of the most tangible objects of struggle over its terms. As Cox and Federici explain: "the wage always has two sides: the side of capital, which uses it to control the working class by trying to ensure that every raise is matched by an increase in productivity; and the side of the working class that increasingly is fighting for more money, more power, and less work."
The wage can facilitate both the accumulation of capital and the expansion of workers' potentially autonomous needs and desires. The wages for housework perspective sought to challenge dominant understandings about who is disciplined by the wage and who is involved in struggles over wages. Just as Marx argued that the wage served to hide the surplus labour expended by waged labourers in the production of surplus value, the wage also obscures the contributions of unwaged labour toward the process of valourisation and consequently the true length of the working day
Applied to unwaged domestic labour, the refusal of work means the rejection of its present familial-centered organisation and gendered distribution of labour, as well as the refusal to defend such a critique by recourse to some all-too-familiar romanticisation of the domestic realm's relations and rituals.
This deployment of the strategy of refusal within the terrain of domestic work not only radicalises, but also clarifies the practice. Refusing work - in this case, refusing domestic work - does not necessarily mean abandoning the house and denying care; rather it mandates an interrogation of the basic structures and ethics that govern this work and the struggle for ways to make it, as it were, unproductive. In this sense, the feminist refusal of work might serve as an antidote to the cultural obsession with work, thereby opening a space in which to discuss its present terms.
The demand for basic income extends the insight of the wages for housework persepective that an individual's income depends on a network of social labour and cooperation broader than the individual wage relation. Whereas the demand for wages for housework intended to expose the dependence of waged work on household-based relations of reproduction, the demand for basic income entails an implicit recognition that all citizens contribute to society in a variety of ways including contributions that may or may not have monetary value or even be measurable.
One way to understand the wages for housework movement and analysis is as part of a larger effort both to map and to problematise the vexed relationship between social reproduction and capital accumulation. In the cases of wages for housework, social reproduction was identified with the unwaged household labour necessary to reproduce waged work. One problem with this formulation was that, because housework was so closely identified with the institution of the family and associated with a limited range of domestic tasks, the site of the conflict was too narrowly conceived and the remedies that could and have been offered for the problem the advocates publicised and politicised - including work-life balance initiatives and commodified domestic services - have served more to sustain the existing system than to point us in the direction of something new.
An alternative formulation would need to broaden the concept of social reproduction to capture more accurately and pose more effectively the terms of the conflict between processes of valorisation and the reproduction of the subjects and socialities upon which they depend
Highly recommended for anyone with an interested in the topic
Highlights of the read included:
Referencing Marx exposing the secret of profit-making by changing the site of the analysis from a market-based exchange to wage-based production, in doing so the world of waged work is publicised and explosed as neither a natural precursor nor a peripheral byproduct of capitalist production, but rather as its central mechanism (wage) and lifeblood (work), with this shift in perspective, Marxian political economy recognises waged labour as central to the capitalist mode of production and claims it as the standpoint from which capitalism's mysteries can be uncovered
Thus waged work remains the centerpiece of late capitalism economic systems, it is how most people acquire access to the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, it is not only the primary mechanism by which income is distributed, it is also the basic means by which status is allocated, and by which most people gain access to healthcare and retirement
Marx sought not only to publicise work, but also to politicise the world of work, which is to say, the focus on the consumption of labour seeks to expose the social role of work, and at the same time, to pose it as a political problem - a social system that ensure that working is the only way that most of us can meet our basic needs, the specific mechanism by which goods and services are distributed in a capitalist society appears to be grounded not in social convention and political power, but in human need; thus the social role of waged work has been so naturalised as to seem necessary and inevitable, something that might be tinkered with but never escaped, and operates as a social convention and disciplinary apparatus rather than an economic necessity
Referencing Salzinger's study of gendered labour in maquiladoras in which she argues that it is precisely the combination of rigid gender categories with the malleability and variability of their enactments and meaning that explains the resilience of gender as a principle of human differentiation. In this sense, ironically, the tremendous plasticity of gender reinforces rather than undermines its naturalisation.
The author's reframing of social reproduction and extending it beyond the problems of this work's invisibility, devaluation and gendering. Although she wants to register that domestic labour is socially necessary and unequally distributed (insofar as gender, race, class, and nation often determines who will do more and less of it), she is also interested in moving beyond the claim that if it were to be fully recognised, adequately compensated, and equally divided, then the existing model of household-based reproduction would be rectified. A more expansive conception of social reproduction, coupled with the refusal of work, might be used to frame a more compelling problematic.
What happens when social reproduction is understood as the production of the forms of social cooperation on which accumulation depend or, alternatively, as the rest of life beyond work that capital seeks continually to harness to its times, spaces, rhythms, purposes, and values?
How work ethic came to be more inclusive in terms of class by means of its exclusions based on race and gender. In the early industrial period, elements of the white working class came to identify with waged work as a mark of independence and status by way of their racial identities. The legitimacy of and identification with what had been resisted as "wage slavery" in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was established "in time and in comparison" to the institution of slavery and those constructed through its sustaining discourses as its abject subjects. The embrace of whiteness, as Roediger explains, "was a way in which white workers responded to a fear of dependency on wage labor and to the necessities of capitalist work discipline". The othering of various immigrant groups delivered a similar reward to wage labourers, paying what WEB Du Bois called a "public and psychological wage" to the white working class
The refusal of work disavows socialism imagined either as state-planned economy to alleviate exploitation or as small-scale production to remedy alienation. The problem to solve is not simply to liberate production, but also for humanity to liberate itself from production by ceasing to treat it as the centre of gravity of all social activities and individual action. Rather than a vision of the work society perfected, with its labours rationally organised, equally required and justly distributed, it is a vision of the work society overcome - a society in which work is certainly not eliminated, but comes to play a different role of social production and political obligation
The major role of the domestic labour debate in Anglo-American Marxist and socialist feminist theory in the 1970s in which participants argued that gender difference and hierarchy are also constituted and reproduced through labouring practices, and that specific gender divisions of labour are part and parcel of contemporary capitalist social formations
The wage as one of the most direct expressions of the relation of power between capital and labour and one of the most tangible objects of struggle over its terms. As Cox and Federici explain: "the wage always has two sides: the side of capital, which uses it to control the working class by trying to ensure that every raise is matched by an increase in productivity; and the side of the working class that increasingly is fighting for more money, more power, and less work."
The wage can facilitate both the accumulation of capital and the expansion of workers' potentially autonomous needs and desires. The wages for housework perspective sought to challenge dominant understandings about who is disciplined by the wage and who is involved in struggles over wages. Just as Marx argued that the wage served to hide the surplus labour expended by waged labourers in the production of surplus value, the wage also obscures the contributions of unwaged labour toward the process of valourisation and consequently the true length of the working day
Applied to unwaged domestic labour, the refusal of work means the rejection of its present familial-centered organisation and gendered distribution of labour, as well as the refusal to defend such a critique by recourse to some all-too-familiar romanticisation of the domestic realm's relations and rituals.
This deployment of the strategy of refusal within the terrain of domestic work not only radicalises, but also clarifies the practice. Refusing work - in this case, refusing domestic work - does not necessarily mean abandoning the house and denying care; rather it mandates an interrogation of the basic structures and ethics that govern this work and the struggle for ways to make it, as it were, unproductive. In this sense, the feminist refusal of work might serve as an antidote to the cultural obsession with work, thereby opening a space in which to discuss its present terms.
The demand for basic income extends the insight of the wages for housework persepective that an individual's income depends on a network of social labour and cooperation broader than the individual wage relation. Whereas the demand for wages for housework intended to expose the dependence of waged work on household-based relations of reproduction, the demand for basic income entails an implicit recognition that all citizens contribute to society in a variety of ways including contributions that may or may not have monetary value or even be measurable.
One way to understand the wages for housework movement and analysis is as part of a larger effort both to map and to problematise the vexed relationship between social reproduction and capital accumulation. In the cases of wages for housework, social reproduction was identified with the unwaged household labour necessary to reproduce waged work. One problem with this formulation was that, because housework was so closely identified with the institution of the family and associated with a limited range of domestic tasks, the site of the conflict was too narrowly conceived and the remedies that could and have been offered for the problem the advocates publicised and politicised - including work-life balance initiatives and commodified domestic services - have served more to sustain the existing system than to point us in the direction of something new.
An alternative formulation would need to broaden the concept of social reproduction to capture more accurately and pose more effectively the terms of the conflict between processes of valorisation and the reproduction of the subjects and socialities upon which they depend
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