the refusal of work about the author David Frayne is a lecturer and social researcher based at Cardiff University. His main research interests are consumer cul- ture, the sociology of happiness, alternative education and radical perspectives on work. Twitter: @theworkdogma THE REFUSAL OF WORK The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work david frayne Zed Books london The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work was first published in 2015 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SE11 5RR, UK www.zedbooks.co.uk Copyright © David Frayne 2015 The right of David Frayne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Typeset in Bulmer by Apex CoVantage, LLC Index: [email protected] Cover designed by Michael Oswell All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-78360-118-9 hb ISBN 978-1-78360-117-2 pb ISBN 978-1-78360-119-6 pdf ISBN 978-1-78360-120-2 epub ISBN 978-1-78360-121-9 mobi For Jen, who loves life. This page intentionally left blank Contents acknowledgements ix Introduction The work dogma 1 one A provocation 11 two Working pains 45 three The colonising power of work 67 four The stronghold of work 95 five The breaking point 118 six Alternative pleasures 157 seven Half a person 189 eight From escapism to autonomy 210 notes 239 bibliography 247 index 259 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements I would like to thank everyone at Zed Books, particularly Kika Sroka-Miller and Ken Barlow, for seeing potential in this project and helping to bring it to fruition. I would also like to thank my mentors Finn Bowring and Ralph Fevre for their years of generosity and guidance, along with a number of others who have kindly commented on my work, including Hannah O’Mahoney, Grace Krause, Stuart Tannock, Françoise Gollain, Gareth Williams and Kate Soper. It should also be recognised that this book would have been impossible without the candour of those interviewees who shared their views and experiences so that they could be included here. Thanks to you all. Closer to home, my warm appreciation goes to my parents, who have long supported my studies, and whose encouragement was especially helpful in the final few months of writing. I would also like to thank my good friends – whether for talking about ideas, listening to me complain, or humbling me with their video game skill. You know who you are, and your ongoing support and wild sense of humour are greatly appreciated. This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awakened almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. Henry Thoreau – ‘Life Without Principle’ (1962: 356) I can’t believe what a continual slog it is, just to make a living. Anonymous (November 2014) introduction The work dogma It’s eight o’clock in the morning. When you come out it will be dark. The sun will not shine for you today. The above quotation is taken from Elio Petri’s 1971 filmLa classe operaia va in paradiso (The Working Class Goes to Heaven). The film gives a fictionalised account of the struggles of the Italian Autonomist movement: a loose coalition of students, workers, fem- inists and unemployed people who protested in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. The quote is a slogan, shouted through a megaphone at eight o’clock in the morning and intended for the ears of the hun- dreds of workers who at that time were filing through the factory gates for another day of repetitive and hazardous labour. I quote it here as a perfect illustration of what the Autonomists were fighting for. Their cause went beyond the traditional union demands for fairer pay and better working conditions. They acknowledged the need for greater freedom and equality within work, but also fought for the right of workers to lead richer lives outside of work. The Autonomists protested at the wasted time, lack of variety, and exces- sive administration of life in capitalist society. They fought for the right of workers to feel the sun on their skin, to play with their chil- dren, to develop interests and skills outside the factory, and to rest peacefully at night. We might say that the appeal of the Autonomists 2 the refusal of work was not just to the injustices of exploitation, but also to the worker’s diminished sensory experience of the world. Mirroring these concerns, a range of social critics (from the authors of the Frankfurt School to related critics such as André Gorz) have set out to question work from an emancipatory stand- point, supporting a vision of social progress based on a reduction of work and an expansion of free-time. These critics did not deny the importance of work, nor did they dismiss the many pleasures to be found in productive activity, but they did propose that a reduc- tion of work might leave people with more time and energy for their own self-development. These critiques of work have provoked their readers by highlighting the casualties of a work-centred society: the time for politics, contemplation, conviviality and spontaneous enjoyment, which have been displaced by capitalism’s narrow focus on commercial production and consumption. For today’s students, who find themselves pushed through an education system focused largely on socialising the young for a future job role, to read these critiques is to receive an education in desire, and a reminder that time could be spent differently. The radical nature of these theor- ies, however, has earned them a marginal position in academic and public debates. Whilst important issues like pay inequalities and poor working conditions are still discussed, it is rarer for social com- mentators to question the ethical status of work itself. Whilst this is certainly true, the alternative vision of social development implied in calls for a less work-centred future has seen a modest resurgence in recent times. Go to any high-street bookshop and alongside those books promising to instruct readers on how to influence others, accumulate fortunes and achieve career success, one can also find a shelf of books telling readers to slow down, find a better ‘work–life balance’, and seek happiness by consuming less. introduction 3 In the context of contemporary capitalist societies, narrowly fixated as they are on the activities of working and spending, the ultimate message of these books is a valuable one, tapping into a rippling disquiet about the ways in which work has crept into and colonised our lives. If these popular critiques have ultimately had a limited influence on society’s priorities, however, it is perhaps because they have tended to stray too far into the genre of self-help. Their mistake has been to approach the domination of work as primarily a prob- lem of individual habits, and it is fair to say that these books have been rather more conservative when it comes to discussing those systemic economic and political changes which might offer people a more genuine range of lifestyle choices. More promising than the stagnant discussion of ‘work–life balance’ is the emergence of a braver critique of the paradigm of eco- nomic growth. Conventionally, governments have treated economic growth and life satisfaction as one and the same thing, measuring both of these via the metric of gross domestic product (or GDP) per capita. GDP is an indicator which quantifies a country’s overall economic activity. It accounts for the total amount of earning and spending that took place in a given year, and it is tacitly accepted that a rising level of GDP indicates an overall improvement in national prosperity. Whilst economic growth is undoubtedly crucial for less developed countries, in which subsistence needs remain unmet, a range of commentators in more affluent societies have questioned the value of GDP growth as a social goal and an index of progress. A report commissioned in 2008 by the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy argues that ‘the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being’ (Stiglitz et al., 2010). The report stresses, among other things, the important role for human flourishing of health, 4 the refusal of work education, relationships and the environment, and represents just one entry in a growing base of evidence to suggest that happiness, security and human progress will no longer flow in an unproblem- atic fashion from a growth in GDP (see Jackson, 2009). This developing uneasiness about the equation of economic growth with life satisfaction has seen sociologists and even some economists returning to the fundamental philosophical question of what it means to live a good life. Critical commentators and the new sociologists of happiness are once again talking about the ars vitae or ‘art of living’, and this has inevitably led them to question whether our well-being is best served by capitalism’s single-minded commitment to economic growth. Some have relied (not always convincingly, it must be said) on statistical measures of people’s sub- jective well-being, whereas others have drawn inspiration from more philosophical sources.