Criticizing the labor market under capitalism is not only justifiable but rational and necessary. Opting out of the labor market in the face of exploitation is likewise justifiable. But it is a step down from organizing to change the conditions of work. As Albert O. Hirschman noted more than fifty years ago, beating a retreat can empower bosses by weakening the collective capacity of workers. “Exiting” the workplace entirely eventually leads to workers losing what he called “voice.” And in an age where the institutions that amplify workers’ voices — unions, cooperatives, workplace democracy — have already been weakened, the temptation to exit may be stronger than ever.

Be that as it may, for the foreseeable future — artificial intelligence notwithstanding — human labor will be a nonnegotiable part of social life and the survival of the species. Workers would be better off if this labor was organized through a socialist economy rather than a capitalist one. But changing how work is coordinated is not the same as eliminating work altogether.

A vibrant civic culture and the renewal of shared social purpose that we desperately need exists in part as a function of certain kinds of labor. Caring for the ill, teaching others, operating public transportation systems, running museums, growing food, writing books, collecting waste, and keeping facilities clean and accessible are forms of socially necessary labor we’d want under any economic system — even if the model of wage labor were altered. But we might not need all manners of, ah, work.

Bertrand Russell captured the alienation of modern work in 1932 when he wrote that “Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.” Russell anticipated a critique that has now become commonplace.

“The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid,” he wrote. “The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders but those who give advice as to what orders should be given.”

Russel’s conception of labor captures the twentieth century’s turn toward managerial and professional work, as more labor — and eventually politics itself — moved to Madison Avenue.

In the twenty-first century, there are plenty of astute contemporary critiques of labor under capitalism, most of which Karl Marx would have recognized. But iterations of the dropout sensibility based on perceptions that it takes a high-six-figure salary to find happiness, and that anything requiring more than a few hours a day and a laptop — or smartphone — is oppression miss the mark.

Humans like to engage in socially useful undertakings. Low wages, exploitative working conditions, and the absence of worker control over workplaces alienate us from the social good of useful work. But so, too, do what Thorstein Veblen called “invidious comparisons”: measuring ourselves against others through social status, wealth display, educational attainment, and other markers of success.

In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen wrote of nineteenth-century consumers drawn to “pecuniary emulation”: competition through conspicuous consumption and the deployment of wealth as competitive display in and of itself. Invidious comparison is the habit of evaluating ourselves and others according to visible markers of luxury and ostentatiousness.

The logic remains the same. The same forces run through the nineteenth century to the present. But the status jockeying of today takes place through social media, where personal brands and influencer aspirations fill all of our feeds. Who wants to labor when you can sell “content” instead?

It’s tough to blame the dreamer. Survey the labor market, catch the stench of decay wafting up from late-stage capitalism, or remember that every moment of hope seems to be interrupted by wildfires, floods, and heat waves, and the question becomes almost unavoidable: “What else would you have people do? I mean, look at the state of the place.”

Support for the critique itself provides an answer. Anton Jäger, author of Hyperpolitics, argues that a decline in institutionalization — cultures and norms of joining, especially among workers’ organizations — after 1989 has given way to runaway politicization without the roots established by gathering and belonging.

In the space left by the death of institutionalization, hyperpolitics thrives while the customs of collective organization atrophy. The resulting loneliness and anomie make individualized escape — through personal branding and the like — seem more plausible than collective action. In tandem with the globalization of mass communication and a contemporary culture of instant gratification and attention, the rags-to-riches influencer dream seems a natural way to fill the void.

It won’t. But reinstitutionalization would. Particularly as part of a greater movement to rebuild social trust and capital through strengthening offline social bonds and movements alongside worker-led (and owned) workplaces.

On a social level, reconnecting with one another in the world, and democratizing opportunities to shape and run labor spaces, would provide greater meaning to both communities and work, encouraging a culture of dropping in — and staying for a while. It is also the only way to rebuild the institutions through which workers can recover their collective voice and power, pushing back against hyperpolitics and opening more space beyond work for each of us to create online and offline, to our heart’s content.