“Work is dispiriting, but also necessary” suggests a reader.

A READER WRITES: “BB, I agree and identify with much of what you say about work being dispiriting and that ambition does not lead to happiness. However, if everyone lived as you suggest (or I, myself, would like to): not working (or at least not working very hard), not focused on achievement, would this necessarily make a better society? After all, we rely on driven types to provide us with things to make our life easier: electricity, roads, medicine etc... And doesn’t our happiness depend, to some degree, on a functioning, rational society (as opposed to, say, an anarchic one)?”

BB SAYS: You make some superb points, and I agree that this is an immensely difficult area. I would invite you to consider the below ideas:

Think about the people you know. What is one of the things that they complain about the most, or that causes them the most agony and misery? Their jobs. They feel imprisoned and trapped in their jobs. They hate it. They sit in traffic for hours everyday, they sit at their desks for hours everyday, they subject themselves to bullying and humiliation from their bosses – and all for nothing.

Here is the big secret of capitalist societies: there is very little work that actually NEEDS to be done. Machines and computers can do most of it. The “work” that actually needs to be done by human beings, could be done without too much fuss or bother. This is why there is unemployment and (more importantly) underemployment or disguised unemployment. It is also why there are so many “jobs” that are not really necessary. The capitalist system manufactures demand for many products and services that people do not really need. The purpose of the system is to create WAGE-SLAVES, in order to keep the masses under control. In advanced capitalist societies, wage-slavery has replaced slavery and serfdom as the chief mechanism for keeping the masses under control. Capitalism is designed to keep most people in a state of DEBT, so that they need to remain in employment and in servitude. As Ambrose Bierce once said “Debt is an ingenious substitute for the slave-driver’s whip”.

Previous revolutions overturned slavery and serfdom. There still needs to be a final revolution to overturn wage-slavery, and eliminate the concept of “employment”, which is inherently an unjust, exploitative, master-slave relationship, that reduces people’s freedom. Although it may be difficult at the moment to see how such revolution or reform could happen, it still needs to happen. In previous eras, people would have had difficulty seeing how slavery or serfdom could be overturned. We need to think in terms of centuries, not decades. As technology improves, the need for work actually decreases – people should have more leisure time, not less leisure time. In a properly organised society, there would be no employment and no corporations. People would still “work”, but on their own terms. They would devote themselves to philosophy, art and genuinely creative pursuits. This may seem idealistic, but I repeat: there was a time when the abolition of slavery and serfdom seemed “idealistic”.

Our main objection should not be to work, invention or creativity. As you point out, these can all be good things. We do not object to people being driven. We do not object to Franklin inventing electricity or Curie inventing penicillin. We do not object to other people making similar inventions in the future. Nor do we object to people doing the things that really need to be done by human beings. Our main objection is to the concept of employment and the concept of the corporation, which cause so much misery and waste. The concept of the Corporation needs to be replaced by the concept of the Co-operative.

On an individual level, how do people respond to the unjust condition of being employed? They rebel in various different ways – either by refusing to work, or by pretending to “work” and engaging in silent rebellion against the forces that oppress them. I hold to the hope that such rebellion and disobedience will eventually create a better future for all of us.

As Oscar Wilde once said: “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion”.

For more information on wage-slavery, look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

Consider the attached analysis from Noam Chomsky, who is currently the world’s most influential intellectual, and who has long been a fierce critic of capitalism, corporations and wage-slavery:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Noam%20Chomsky%20on%20Private%20Tyrannies%20--%20Corporations