Laboring Under an Illusion
“Post-work” Marxism aims to liberate us from the coercion of wage labor. But without a program for reorganizing production, it can only return us to the tyranny of the market.
A barista helps a customer on September 6, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan. Andrew Burton / Getty
In a recent article for Jacobin, Anton Jäger offered a critical analysis of the “post-work” tradition of Marxist thought, which flourished in the 1960s and remains prominent today among many advocates of a universal basic income. Jäger argued that any serious effort to grapple with the oppressive aspects of labor under capitalism requires “reorganizing and reinventing work beyond the market imperative.”
In a discussion on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News (which you can listen to when you subscribe to Jacobin Radio), Jäger elaborated on his critique. Reviewing the long history of anti-work politics on the Left, he concludes that, ultimately, “if you don’t control production, then you’ll never be able to fully seek freedom in the sphere of consumption.” Below is an edited version of his interview.
Doug Henwood
Work has a complicated history on the Left — the Marxist and the non-Marxist left. We have people like the early Bolsheviks, who seem to want to make us all into over-workers. But you have also an anti-work tradition going way back, at least to Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue. Let’s talk about that a little bit, the anti-work tradition. What are the highlights of it? How does it figure in the history of the Left?
Anton Jäger
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