Work, Work, Working...

In contemporary society, we cannot escape work. It has completely infiltrated all aspects of our lives and triumphed over all other ways of existing. Yet, this has occurred at the very moment workers have become superfluous. Here in an excerpt from ‘The Coming Insurrection’ by an anonymous group of French writers, The Invisible Committee.

“Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanisation, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labour necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us.”

New modes of production, i.e. automation, increasingly render obsolete the input of human labour in the production process. Yet, more than ever, our subjectivity is defined by work. This has a profound impact on our leisure time. Furthermore those in work are subject to the increasing precarity of labour, through zero-hour contracts and outsourcing. As a result of this, workers become flexible and replaceable. The psychological trauma associated with this kind of work is well documented.

Is it possible to escape work and have any real time to ourselves?

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