Criticism of the work
The critique of work describes the rejection of compulsory work or certain forms of work or the criticism of work as such. Not every activity is generally regarded as work. In particular, foreign determination and alienation of work are rejected .
The concept of work
The word “work” is of common Germanic origin (* arbējiðiz, Got. Arbaiþs); the etymology is uncertain; possibly related to indoeurop. * orbh- "orphaned", orphan , "a child who deserved to do heavy physical activity" (see inheritance). The word rabota or robota , which is widespread in the Slavic languages and can also mean "bondage" or "slavery", is related . In Old and Middle High German, the word meanings “Mühsal”, “Exertion”, “Not” predominate; literally still today effort and work (cf. Psalm 90, Latin labor et dolor).
The French word "travail" is related to an early medieval torture instrument . The Italian “lavoro” and English “labor” (American “labor”) go back to the Latin “labor”, which also primarily means “effort”.
Basics
The central position of work from the perspective of philosophy in collective value systems differs little in the respective forms of government and models of rule .
However, some critics of the work completely disapprove of the work. Necessary activities (e.g. caring for frail people) are not refused. The idea behind this is that such activities take on a different character under non-hierarchical conditions.
Karl Marx and Alienated Work
Karl Marx formulated the concept of alienated work in the economic-philosophical manuscripts of 1844, which were unpublished during his lifetime . There, Marx came to the conclusion that the worker, through his activities, is constantly gaining ever greater wealth in the form of private property in the hands of the capitalist class produced, by means of which he is again exploited . The private property would, therefore, product of alienated labor, as well as means by which to the externalization of the work further realized resistant. In his activity the worker therefore not only produces an increasing number of goods that are alien to him, with them he also reproduces at the same time the wage labor relationship exploiting him and the commodity form of his work. With the ongoing "valorization of the world of things", the "devaluation of the human world increases in direct proportion." The worker becomes poorer, the more wealth he produces. The alienation by the wage labor relationship between workers and capitalists manifests itself in four forms:
- The worker faces his work product as an alien being and an independent power. His work product does not belong to him, but to someone else.
- The own activity is an external activity that does not belong to the worker. The work activity does not satisfy the needs of the worker, it only serves as a means to satisfy needs outside of it , so that work is escaped as a plague unless there is material constraint. The externality of the work is shown in the fact that the work done is not the worker's own but belongs to someone else.
- Neither the generic character of man, the free and conscious activity, as well as his generic life, the processing of the environment and society, are not possible for the worker, his generic nature is alien to him.
- A direct consequence of the alienation of work product, activity and the human being is the alienation of the human being from the human being.
In the work Die deutsche Ideologie, Marx also problematizes the concept of alienation to the effect that it is idealistic and can therefore often be misinterpreted. So he only writes of "alienation" there. By alienation, he means above all that the social division of labor in capitalist class society , the establishment of social activity, in short, that the private owners (the capitalists) dispose of foreign labor, restrict individual wage workers in their free development. Social cooperation in the production of life does not appear to individuals as their own power; it is an alien force that stands outside of them and is mediated by social relationships. This circumstance can only be eliminated by people recognizing and organizing their own forces as social forces on the one hand, recognizing and eliminating the social contradictions that result from people's concrete social relationships. On the other hand, comprehensively developed productive forces are a prerequisite for the abolition of the division of labor. In this way, humans can actively shape and change their environment, their social being would no longer confront them as an alien, determining power, but as an opportunity for comprehensive individual development.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in “Dawn. Thoughts on Moral Prejudice ":
“The eulogists of work. - In the glorification of "work", in the tireless talk of the "blessing of work", I see the same ulterior motive as in the praise of charitable, impersonal acts: that of fear of everything individual. Basically, looking at the work - one always means that hard work from morning to night - one feels that such work is the best police force, that it keeps everyone in check and the development of reason, desire, and the desire for independence knows how to hinder vigorously. Because it consumes an extraordinary amount of nerve power and withdraws it from thinking, brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it always keeps a small goal in mind and grants easy and regular satisfaction. So a society in which people are constantly working hard will have more security: and security is now worshiped as the supreme deity. - And now! Fright! The "worker" in particular has become dangerous! It is teeming with "dangerous individuals"! And behind them the danger of danger - the individual! "
In The Joyful Science he wrote:
“ Work is getting a good conscience more and more on its side: the tendency to enjoyment is already known as the“ need for relaxation ”and is beginning to feel ashamed of itself. “You owe it to your health” - that's how you talk when you are caught out on land . Yes, it could soon get to the point where you don't give in to a penchant for vita contemplativa (that is, to go for a walk with thoughts and friends) without self-contempt and a guilty conscience. "
In Human, All Too Human, it says:
“It is the misery of the active that what they do is almost always a little unreasonable. For example, one must not ask the money-collecting banker about the purpose of his restless activity: it is unreasonable. The active roll as the stone rolls according to the stupidity of mechanics. - As in all times, all people fall apart into slaves and free; because whoever does not have two thirds of his day to himself is a slave, by the way, he is who he wants: statesman, businessman, official, scholar. "
Paul Lafargue
Marx's son-in-law Lafargue said that three hours of work should be enough. As a critic of the work, Paul Lafargue , author of the pamphlet “Le droit à la paresse” ( The right to be lazy ) (1883), was an outsider in the old labor movement . Lafargue saw himself as a revolutionary socialist and accordingly he assessed the capitalist work ethic . “Capitalist morality, a pathetic copy of Christian morality, puts a curse on the flesh of the worker: its ideal is to reduce the needs of the producer to the minimum, to stifle his pleasures and passions and to make him the role of a machine condemn, from which one can work at will without rest and without thanks. ”Lafargues Manifesto was published in 1887 in German. Lafargue quoted Lessing :
"Let us be lazy in all things,
just don't be lazy to love 'and wine'
just don't be lazy to be lazy."
Heinrich Böll and the "Anecdote on the Lowering of Work Morale"
The anecdote about the lowering of the work ethic is a short story by Heinrich Böll from 1963 about a tourist and a fisherman who exchange their different opinions on work ethics and attitudes towards life. He wrote it for a broadcast by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on "Labor Day" on May 1, 1963.
Critical theory
The often-picked catchphrase of the Great Refusal as a way out appears on the last pages of Herbert Marcuse's The One-Dimensional Man . Many groups of the '68 movement and the alternative scenes referred to this motif, but also to his other works, and advocated an exit from the capitalist system. Marcuse's utopia is to justify a liberated society based on reason and drive theory, but at least to keep alive the possibility of another, freer society. In his essay Attempt on Liberation (1969), planned under the working title Beyond the One-Dimensional Man , Marcuse developed a more optimistic position following The One-Dimensional Man .
In his 1967 lecture given to students at the Free University of Berlin: The End of Utopia , this approach is carried out. In societies with highly developed productive forces there is therefore the possibility of an upheaval through which poverty and misery and alienated work can be abolished. Contrary to what Marx had described, "the realm of freedom in the realm of necessity" can appear. Marcuse describes the negation of the existing society as a prerequisite for the transformation of human needs . What is needed is a new morality that goes beyond Judeo-Christian morality , one that fulfills the vital needs for joy and happiness and encompasses the aesthetic-erotic dimensions . He advocates an experiment in the convergence of technology and art as well as work and play .
Operaismus and postoperism
In clear demarcation from the Italian Communist Party , whose political strategy was aimed entirely at conquering the state apparatus, the operaists were strictly anti-state and propagated the fight against factory work. The focus of the considerations is always the subjectivity of the workers, whose struggle against work, which is not always obvious, is understood as the driving force behind history. The movements of the capitalist side and of capitalist society are to be understood as reactions to this struggle of the workers, not the other way around.
Refusal to work, "celebrating sick leave", sabotage at the workplace etc. would undermine the necessary discipline and disrupt the development of the productive forces. This could lead to crises and a revolution. As a means of raising awareness and agitation, the operatives also used the “ Questionnaire for Workers ” developed by Marx . Through the participating analysis of the “class composition” in so-called militant investigations, the specific starting point for effective struggles of the workers should be developed.
Situationist International
The tradition of rejection of work was revived by a group of young people in Paris after World War II . Guy Debord was among them . The slogan "Ne travaillez jamais" ("Never work") then returned in May 1968 in Paris. Debord wrote of the proletarian revolution : “It can begin easily wherever autonomous proletarian assemblies will abolish the separation of individuals, the commodity economy and the state by recognizing neither the authority nor the property of anyone outside themselves and by overriding their will make all laws and all specializations. However, the revolution will only triumph if it asserts itself worldwide without leaving even the smallest space to any existing form of alienated society. "
René Viénet, who, like two other members of the SI, was directly involved in the occupation of the Sorbonne in May 1968, writes about this period:
“Capitalized time stood still. Without a train, without a metro, without a car, without a job, the strikers made up for the time they had lost in such a dreary way in the factories, on the streets, in front of the television. You strolled around, you dreamed, you learned to live. "
“With automation , which is the most advanced area of modern industry and at the same time the model in which its practice is perfectly combined, the world of goods must overcome the following contradiction: technical instrumentation, which objectively abolishes work, must at the same time work as a commodity and received as the only place of birth of the goods. So that automation or any other less extreme form of increasing the productivity of work really does not reduce the socially necessary working hours, new jobs must be created. The tertiary sector and the services are the immense expansion field for the stage lines of the distribution and praise army of today's goods; It is precisely in the artificiality of the need for such goods that this mobilization of supplementary forces happily finds the necessity of such an organization of the rearguard work. "
Anti-Labor Movement and Anarchism
The anti-work ethic states that work tends to be unhappy and is increasingly being replaced by machines. Therefore, the amount of work should be reduced. The ethics seem to have originally come from anarchist circles, and to have their origin in essays such as Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell , “The Right to Useful Unemployment” by Ivan Illich, and the “Abolition of Work” by Bob Black.
The followers of this movement argue that it is in the capitalist and communist , either directly or indirectly companies to "work" mentality towards life through the development cost of living, labor markets, the weekly working hours, the application of normative values in the economy and social conventions comes . Some (such as Bob Black ) ask why, with increasing technology, the number of hours in the average weekly working time has not fallen significantly. They are therefore trying to find answers and practical solutions for reducing the amount of work the average person does and encouraging the activities that they see as beneficial to happiness.
In 1985, the post-anarchist Bob Black called on the world's proletarians to relax, as no one should ever work. He criticizes a society that consists only of production and consumption . His criticism is similar to the Marxist Alienation criticism if he does as an anti marxist and postleftistischer (individual) anarchist understands. He calls for all workplaces to be redesigned so that they are “like a game ”. Central to his criticism is the notion that work is “ determined by others ”, whether in state socialism or capitalism . Following Michel Foucault , he emphasizes the central role of work in disciplining: prisons and factories came into being at the same time, schools were there to exercise thought and willingness to perform and obedience, and there was “more freedom in any somewhat de-Stalinized dictatorship than stated an ordinary American workplace ”.
The game, on the other hand, is not necessarily governed by rules and played voluntarily, in complete freedom. He points out that hunter-gatherer societies are typified by gambling, a view he borrows from Marshall Sahlin's work . He tells the rise of hierarchical societies through which labor is cumulatively imposed so that the compulsive labor of today would appear incomprehensible and oppressive even to ancient and medieval peasants. According to Black, the most important tasks can be done in such a way that they appear playful. In addition, a great deal of work is superfluous or only serves social control. He advocates Charles Fourier's approach that instincts should not be suppressed, but rather that social harmony arises through acting out. The Frankfurt School also took this approach . Bob Black is skeptical about the possibility of labor-saving technology eliminating work. He believes the left cannot critically criticize work because of its attachment to the category of worker that requires work to be upgraded. Bob Black calls for a gift economy . Gustav Landauer had a similar criticism to Bob Black's . He too wanted to redesign the working day in a similar way.
Value criticism
Since the 1990s the group Krisis has tried to renew the criticism of the work. She published a "Manifesto Against Labor". The argument is similar to that presented by Bob Black, but the crisis sees itself as (post) Marxist. Work is not viewed as a supra-historical form of activity, as is the case in “traditional Marxism”, but it is criticized as capitalism- specific gainful employment , as is capital , since both are based on the same system of valorization. The occurrence of the incessantly self-evaluating value is fetishistically objectified in capitalist society as an ensemble of practical constraints and, according to a Marxian formulation, " automatic subject " (see Das Kapital vol. 1, MEW 23: p. 169). People mainly serve these practical constraints , which people actually created themselves, as objects and material within the recycling process, which is determined by goods , value , money and (abstract) work. Everything sensual , people and their needs as well as the ecological system of the earth and nature remain external to the system of value utilization and are basically indifferent to it.
Critique of (male) work in feminism
The current critique of work is the critique of identification with work as a central element of male identity .
Criticism of work in pop culture
in the field of music the songs of the bands:
- Deichkind : Bend up
- Dire Straits : Industrial Disease
- Geier nosedive : We have to learn to be lazy , as well as unemployed and undeclared work
- The Godfathers : Birth, School, Work, Death (Song and Album)
- Heaven 17 : Crushed by the Wheels of Industry (Album "The Luxury Gap")
- Jethro Tull : Working John, Working Joe
- The cashiers : work sucks
- Mönster : work sucks (none but also)
- Dawn : Frank is sick in the closet
- Mülheim anti-social : yuppie pigs
- Refpolk : work sucks
- Offense : My Life
- Clay stones shards in the album Why am I so dirty : Slave trader , I don't want to be what my age is , Why am I so dirty
See also
literature
- Paul Lafargue : The right to be lazy . Refutation of the right to work from 1848 . 5th edition. Nevertheless publisher , Grafenau 2004, ISBN 3-931786-03-X . The right to be lazy: refuting the “right to work” . Verlag der Volksbuchhandlungen, Hottingen-Zürich 1887, wildcat-www.de
- Friedrich Engels : The situation of the working class in England . Based on our own experience and authentic sources. Dietz-Verlag, Stuttgart 1892 (newly published by Walter Kumpmann at DTV, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-423-06012-3 )
- Bertrand Russell : Praise of Idleness, 1932
- Collettivo "Il picchio": Manuale dell` Assenteista - Editrice "le vipere padane", Absenteism - the art of celebrating sick , 96 pages, Bologna February 1978
- Collective of authors: It is better to party when sick than to work healthy! Paths to Knowledge and Wealth ! anarchismus.at from the 1970s
- David F. Noble : Machine Striker or Humans' Complicated Relationships with their Machines . Interaction-Verlag, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-924709-00-9
- Reinhard P. Gruber : Never again work. Schivkov's messages from the other life . 155 pages, Residenz Verlag, Salzburg 1989, Vienna ISBN 3-7017-0606-9
- Isabella Andrej: The "Blue Monday". - A form of resistance to industrial discipline of working time . Seminar New History WS 1993/94: Univ. Prof. Edith Saurer , Work and Labor Struggles in Europe, 18th to 20th Century . Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, ihs.ac.at (PDF; 0.3 MB).
- Erich Ribolits: The work up? Vocational pedagogical pamphlet against the total purification of man in post-Fordism . Profil, Munich / Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-89019-362-5
- Wolfgang Ayaß : Compulsory work and care work. On the history of “help with work” outside of institutions , in: Frankfurter Arbeitslosenzentrum - FALZ (ed.), Labor Service - acceptable again? Forced to work in history and the welfare state , Frankfurt / M. 1998, pp. 56-79.
- Oliver Kloss : Does work make you free? An experiment on the value of gainful employment . In: Bernd Gehrke , Wolfgang Rueddenklau (Ed.): That wasn't our alternative. Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 1999, ISBN 3-89691-466-9 , pp. 362-383.
- Roswitha Scholz : Value and gender ratio. In: Streifzüge No. 2, 1999
- Gruppe Krisis : 1999 Manifesto Against Labor and on .exit-online.org
- Criticism of the Manifesto Against Labor (from: Wildcat Circular No. 54, November 99)
- Young Democrats / Young Left Handbook against Labor - Tips for social parasites 94 pages, 2000,
- Robert Kurz: Black Book Capitalism . A swan song for the market economy . Ullstein, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-548-36308-3 , Black Book Capitalism (PDF; 2.5 MB)
- Charles Reeve, Xuanwu Xi: Hell on Earth: Bureaucracy, Forced Labor, and Business in China . Edition Nautilus , Hamburg 2001
- Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri: Empire. The new world order . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-593-37230-4 .
- Bob Black: The abolition of work . Löhrbach 2003, ISBN 3-922708-04-8 , in the original The Obolition of Work or in German The Abolition of Work .
- Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri: Multitude. War and Democracy in the Empire . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-593-37410-2 .
- Michael Heinrich: Critique of Political Economy. An introduction . ( Memento from June 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart 2004
- John Holloway : Stop making capitalism . In: Grundrisse 11/2004, pp. 6–12. grundrisse.net (PDF; 937 kB)
- Holger Schatz: work as rule. The crisis of the achievement principle and its neoliberal reconstruction . 2004, ISBN 3-89771-429-9
- Eberhard Straub : About doing nothing. Living in a world without work . wjs-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-937989-02-1
- Corinne Maier, The Discovery of Laziness. The art of doing as little as possible at work . 1st edition 2005. Goldmann, Munich, ISBN 978-3-442-30113-3
- Edward P. Thompson, John Holloway: Blue Monday. About time and work discipline . Edition Nautilus , Hamburg 2007.
- Ulrich Bröckling: The entrepreneurial self. Sociology of a form of subjectivation. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-29432-1
- Young Democrats / Young Left: Handbook against forced labor 2012
- Claus Peter Ortlieb : Compulsory work and work ethic 2012
- Katja Rothe Depression and (non-) work. On the status of the depressive within the Critique of Work , in: Trajectoires, No. 6/2012, December 14, 2012
- Patrick Spät : So what are you doing? Happy polemic against the work fetish . Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2014.
- Ulrich Renz : The tyranny of work. How we regain control over our lives , Munich, 2013, ISBN 978-3-453-28050-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. the etymology to robots
- ↑ Work in the Wiktionary
- ↑ Karl Marx: Economic-philosophical manuscripts from 1844 , mlwerke.de
- ^ Karl Marx: The German Ideology . MEW Vol. 3, pp. 5-530, mlwerke.de
- ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Dawn. Thoughts on moral prejudices , third book, aphorism 173 “The eulogists of work” ( KSA 2, textlog.de ).
- ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: The happy science , fourth book, aphorism 329 "Leisure and idleness" ( KSA 3, p. 557, textlog.de ).
- ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: Menschliches, Allzumenschliches , Fifth main part: Signs of higher and lower culture, 283. "Main shortage of active people" http://www.textlog.de/21872.html
- ↑ The Abolition of Labor . Theory magazine streifzuege.org
- ↑ Gustav Landauer - The Working Day (May 1, 1912) ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on anarchismus.at
- ↑ a b Manifesto Against Work on krisis.org.
- ↑ Bend Up Lyrics
- ↑ Birth, School, Work, Deat Lyrics
- ↑ http://www.golyr.de/morgenrot/songtext-frank-gende-krank-im-änke-356552.html
- ↑ Yuppieschweine Lyrics
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
