Why Work?: Arguments For The Leisure Society

by Vernon Richards (Editor)

All the stars have a go - includes essays by William Morris, Kropotkin, Lewis Mumford, Cliff Harper, Bertrand Russell, Colin Ward etc.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Anglo-Italian anarchist, anti-fascist and long time contributor to the Freedom paper.

Reviews

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Why Work?' is a collection of essays from the late 19th Century to the present day asking questions about the nature of work and possible imaginings of a future where what we know of as work continues outside of the constraints of capitalist society. Originally released in 1983 this collection has had something of a refresh with a number of additional essays which highlight that this collection is as relevant as ever. Most writers are approaching this from an anarchist perspective although there are a few right wing libertarians sneaking into the book.

Generally, this collection is pretty good. For those familiar with anarchist concepts, approaches and theory they will find little new in here, although I suspect for some readers new to anarchism or reimagining work they will find a number of absolute gems in here that they will refer to time and time again.

I'll get a couple of criticisms out of the way first. A couple of the pieces are about as engaging as watching paint dry. Perhaps this is a little unfair, but reading anarchist literature sometimes can send one practically to sleep - so yes, a couple of pieces are a little dry. Also, perhaps I should acknowledge that a number of these pieces were written at a time where certain perspectives we would find offensive today were perhaps given a free pass. The editors of this revised edition quite rightly call these thoughts out and have retained the text 'as-is'. So William Morris contrasts the working class of Victorian England with 'savages' and highlights the potential of descending into some kind of savagery post-Revolution. In an otherwise excellent piece about informal / black / unpaid economies (known as The Other Economy) Denis Pym idealises the local handyman who frequents the pub as some kind of localised superhero, superbly connected. The authors quite rightly highlight that in working class communities there are women networked, sharing skills, favours and work in 'invisible' work.

I often find my interest in systems thinking and my career in business change intersect with anarchism. At some point I will capture all these thoughts down (or at least do the podcast I threaten to do). As part of my journey, experiencing a really shitty manager early in my career I made a commitment that if I ever have line management responsibility I wouldn't treat people like that. So professionally, I have done quite well, effectively trying to work by anarchist principles. Themes like divested leadership (listen to the person who knows what they are talking about), manage work, not people, increasing democracy and autonomy about how work is done comes not from reading business improvement and leadership books but by trying to live and work as an anarchist as far as possible.

One thing that does jump out when I read about 'emergent change' or the latest business improvement / engagement fad is that really anarchists thought of this stuff and wrote about it decades before anyone else. Themes like holocracies and self-directed agile teams were all presented as anarchist ideas a century or more ago. It's funny, because there are some people I really like in the HR / Transformation space but I could put one of their quotes up against Kropotkin and one would struggle to identify who said what!

It's the same in the Systems Thinking world - I think Systems Thinkers have so much to learn from anarchism and anarchist theory. One thing anarchists don't do is give you a plan for the future - a blueprint where everything is laid out, because anarchists recognise complexity and emergence and that what may be a solution in one community may present very differently in another. The aforementioned Pym article about informal economies and it's relationship to waged labour would be an eye opener to systems thinkers who would recognise the economic and social value of 'hidden' labour.

I was joking with a friend whilst reading this that the Italian anarchist and philosopher Camillo Berneri in the 1930's was predicting agile work teams, the impact of automation and designing ergonomic healthy work spaces. He'd fit in with any 'change team' or 'digital transformation'!

So for me, a lot of these connections I am making are because I recognise, as do lots of other people that 'work' doesn't really 'work'. It's demeaning, degrading and leads to unfulfillment and the solutions or ideas to rethink this are already there (albeit packaged differently).

A key theme throughout the book is the acknowledgement that in the future there will still be a need for 'productive activity' and how this may be undertaken. Consistently throughout writers have spoke of a future of increased automation leading to increased leisure time, yet we are working longer and longer. This 'feature' has been approached in a number of ways. I like the sadly, recently deceased David Graeber's notion of 'bullshit jobs' - it's quite the stinger, but 'if you went on strike would anyone care' is a good definition of a bullshit job. It quite frankly isn't needed. (Look at our entire 'financial services sector' for a good example). Juliet Schor highlights the link of work to increased unhappiness and how longer hours is rewarded by financial wealth and there is a reluctance of people to give up what they don't need (or want) in favour of something they would like. And of course there is the purpose of automation - in our society nothing is automated to make life easier for people, automation is to increase profits / decrease costs - benefits for the capitalist class that is never given back to the people.

One section from a piece written sixteen years ago is particularly prophetic when discussing the value of working from home / for oneself in the current climate. It's worth quoting in full;

'Although computer-based knowledge work hasn't enabled millions of us to leave the corporate world and work at home (as, again, it was supposed to), that's more a problem of corporate power psychology than of technology. Our bosses fear to let us work permanently at home; after all, we might take 20-minute coffee breaks, instead of 10! But what if, say, a fuel crisis or epidemic made it imperative for more of us to stay home to do our work? The paradigm could shift so fast our bosses would fall over.'

There's a lot to like in this book. There are pieces by well known anarchist thinkers like Kropotkin and Colin Ward but they sit alongside the changing nature of work too with a couple of excellent essays about sex work and online (work)spaces and the 'gig' economy. There are a lot of interconnecting ideas that show a) work is pretty shit for a lot of people (we are no more 'engaged' than we were fifty years ago) that b) there will be challenges (which anarchists have repeatedly thought about) when 'productive activity' is required but is undertaken voluntarily and c) another future is possible.

So it's a 3 star book for me with my 'anarcho' head on, but I think this would be quite enlightening to people interested in making work better from a 'professional' point of view or those interested in re-imagining the future.

[Raphier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book ages ago and will revisit it, but one thing I remember is that it was severely lacking is a statistical breakdown of what percentage of companies in the economy are productive, and of that fraction of productive companies how many of the employees actually produce. I have tried to find this information myself, and as far as I am aware there is no original research indicating how many people provide real services (medical care, engineering, freight, maintenance, etc) and real goods (bolts, butter, computers etc) as opposed to paper pushers (the insurance industry as a whole, managers, salesmen, marketers, bankers, etc). It would be interesting to find out how much real work is done and what, on average, the labor hours are per capita. How this book did not address this is incredible since it begs the question. I guess one of us will have to crunch the numbers and produce a book on this. I suspect the real labor hours are around 12 hours per person per week including household chores (cooking, cleaning, industrial production, childcare, etc); industrial production by itself I bet would be an average of less than 2 hours a week if products were built to last. I wish this book had analyzed this - very disappointing.

[Rubli Carran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good discussion but doesn't really talk about real alternatives. Good to read different perspectives though

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool ideas, sometimes hidden inside very dull language. I'd love to see this book updated for the 21st century with more (any?) diversity of contributors.

[Marion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a life-changing read for me. If only everyone would read this book and have conversations about it!

[Elizabeth Lund]

interesting stuff; some of it was quite dated (1960) and topical.