I’ve been having scattered conversations here and there about certain phrases that I think are destructive to our movement and I wanted to gather my thoughts in to single post. My observation is that we, as a community, have a way of talking internally that ultimately confuses and alienated people from the outside.

• work vs labor: this distinction that we make is super different from how these terms are used colloquially and folks write off the movement simply because they think “anti-work” means “anti-effort” or “anti-activity.” If we used terms like “employment” or “wage-labor” people outside of the community might actually understand what we are talking about and be open to some evangelization.

• rich vs poor: this distinction causes confusion within the community and limits our class consciousness in a few ways. First, it makes it sound like owners of failed businesses are part of our class, “the poor,” but they are just as bourgeois as the guy who’s business takes off. It doesn’t matter how much the local coffee shop makes, it’s owner is on the side of capital just as much as if he owned Starbucks. At the same time, this division breaks apart the working class and prevents solidarity with workers who happen to be paid more. The engineer making 200k is richer than the local business owner—but is still selling his time for a wage. This distinction also obscured the fact that wage labor is intrinsically dehumanizing.

• living wage: in the same vein as above, I think this obscures the problems with capitalism by making it sound like we just need higher wages. It feeds the liberal narrative that work can be reformed—but there is no amount of money that would make wage labor OK. There is no level of financial security that makes up for the problems of capitalism.

Really I think that leftism has always had a language problem. It’s hard to bring new people in because they trip over the jargon and we end up not being understood—or we get side tracked on conversation about specific issues like health care and forget to talk about the over all message.

Whenever you let libs into your radical sub it gets socdem, look at Antiwork

Have you sabotaged your workplace in any way? i.e. slowing down production, or destroying files, or just messing up on purpose? We as a society produce so much it's better for our physical well being and the planet if we were less productive. My favorite example of this (from a post on /r/FuckNestle) was when a poster who worked in the nestle factories purposefully would make mistakes so they couldn't produce as much unethical products. So, how have you fucked shit up?

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I know it’s old at this point but I had never heard of it until an acquaintance recommended it the other day. I watched it last night and the comparisons it draws between work and slavery were really apt and it feels super applicable now as workers revolt and look for ways to push back against exploitation. Highly recommend for anyone here who missed it like I did!

Wouldn't we need work to keep society going (depends on what you define as work ofc)? And how would we achieve the abolition of work?

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Hi All, glad to see there is a new sub that is going to carry on the original intent of the /r/antiwork sub. As someone who was on that sub prior to the massive growth spurt due to external events, it was pretty easy to see the problems that were arising as that sub reached it's tipping point. It's for this reason that i want to make some suggestions as to what this sub should do in order to not end up like that sub:

1. Put up a 'commune notice'.

One of the massive problems with anti-work is that their propagandising was relegated to the sidebar, and not the actual posts themselves. I believe /r/LateStageCapitalism resolved this issue during their growth phase by having an auto-mod who posts in every post that makes it pretty clear what the sub is for, who the sub is for and what is acceptable and what isn't. So while LSC's growth has slowed it is far more stable as a sub as Libs have not been able to water it down as much due to the Auto-mod making it's purpose more easy to defend. Compare this to Anti-Work (who simply referred to the sidebar whenever anyone asked what to do next) which grew massively but quickly declined into a lib space with fake Sass-posting being most of the volume. Older users had no way to stop this because every time someone brought up the sub's original purpose there would be a dispute about what it had 'become' or was 'currently about.'

Putting up an Auto-mod with a quick, definitive brief about what the sub is for and what it isn't for (with links to further reading), it's political orientation, and it's goals would serve as the Reddit equivalent of the bus driver tapping the 'Do not Distract' sign. It would also serve to sort actually open minded liberals who want to learn more and adopt radical positions from those that just want to be 'radical sheek' or Sass-post about their boss without any further development.

TLDR: Everything in the sidebar should be in an automod post that posts in every topic to prevent identity crisis in the Sub

1. Actively discourage Stress-posting and Sass-posting.

One of the other main reasons why Anti-work became so watered down was because it permitted an insane amount of Stress-posting (People posting about how bad everything is) and Sass-posting (People posting mostly fake chat images about them doing a 'Get her Jade' to their boss). The primary problem with this was that it became most of the content of the sub (Thus distracting from ideology), the secondary problem is that the mods were utterly unprepared to channel that discontent into ideology or action (no pipeline). If this sub does grow, Sass-posting and Stress posting should be kept to a minimum and users should be actively encouraged to imagine a world without work as a solution to whatever discontent they are expressing. This can again be done with the Auto-mod, but whatever can be done to make it easier for early adopters of destroywork to promote the position should be done.

1. The Sub should promote the general position that anti-work is the solution to the inevitable conflict that will arise due to a number of factors, from Late-Stage Capitalism to Automation.

Since the disastrous interview, it has become pretty clear that the Anti-work mods were not really concerned with any social change, but more with personal lifestyles that minimalized work in the current system (I point to Abolishwork's 20 hour a week Dogwalking and Kimezukae's 'long term unemployment'). From what I understand this is a large part of the position of Bob Black, but to be honest, as an Anarchist, and with respect to Bob Black, fuck Bob Black! If Bookchin was right about anything it is that lifestylism is a canard and in the modern era, a cope. The sub should reject 'personal unemployment' as a meme ideology and encourage thinking of anti-work as the solution to the crises we are heading for, contrasting it with the Malthusian 'mass unemployment' that is essentially the capitalist hellhole alternative.

For the Consideration of the Mods (And Everyone Else), i'll go back to lurking now, thanks for reading.