The Abolition Of Work
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The Abolition Of Work
"The Abolition of Work" is an essay written by Bob Black in 1985. It was part of Black's first book, an anthology of essays entitled ''The Abolition of Work and Other Essays'' published by Loompanics Unlimited. It is an exposition of Black's "type 3 anarchism" – a blend of post-Situationist theory and individualist anarchism – focusing on a critique of the work ethic. Black draws upon certain ideas of Marshall Sahlins, Richard Borshay Lee, Charles Fourier, William Morris, and Paul Goodman. Although "The Abolition of Work" has most often been reprinted by anarchist publishers and Black is well known as an anarchist, the essay's argument is not explicitly anarchist. Black argues that the abolition of work is as important as the abolition of the state. The essay, which is based on a 1981 speech at the Gorilla Grotto in San Francisco, is informal and without academic references, but Black mentions some sources such as the utopian socialist Charles Fourier, the unconventional Mar ...
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Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier (;; 7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837) was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become mainstream thinking in modern society. For instance, Fourier is credited with having originated the word ''feminism'' in 1837. Fourier's social views and proposals inspired a whole movement of intentional communities. Among them in the United States were the community of Utopia, Ohio; La Reunion near present-day Dallas, Texas; Lake Zurich, Illinois; the North American Phalanx in Red Bank, New Jersey; Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts; the Community Place and Sodus Bay Phalanx in New York State; Silkville, Kansas, and several others. In Guise, France, he influenced the . Fourier later inspired a diverse array of revolutionary thinkers and writers. Life Fourier was born in Besançon, France on 7 April 1 ...
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United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
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Production (economics)
Production is the process of combining various inputs, both material (such as metal, wood, glass, or plastics) and immaterial (such as plans, or knowledge) in order to create output. Ideally this output will be a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals. The area of economics that focuses on production is called production theory, and it is closely related to the consumption (or consumer) theory of economics. The production process and output directly result from productively utilising the original inputs (or factors of production). Known as primary producer goods or services, land, labour, and capital are deemed the three fundamental production factors. These primary inputs are not significantly altered in the output process, nor do they become a whole component in the product. Under classical economics, materials and energy are categorised as secondary factors as they are byproducts of land, labour and capital. Delving further, primary factor ...
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The Right To Be Greedy
Egoist anarchism or anarcho-egoism, often shortened as simply egoism, is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a 19th-century philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best known exponents of individualist anarchism". Max Stirner and his philosophy Max Stirner Johann Kaspar Schmidt (October 25, 1806 – June 26, 1856), better known as Max Stirner (the pen name he adopted from a schoolyard nickname he had acquired as a child because of his high brow, which in German is termed ''Stirn''), was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary precursors of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is ''The Ego and Its Own'' (''Der Einzige und sein Eigentum'' in German, which translates literally as ''The Only One and his Property''). This work was first published ...
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Criticisms Of Marxism
Criticism of Marxism (also known as Anti-Marxism) has come from various political ideologies and academic disciplines. This includes general intellectual criticism about dogmatism, a lack of internal consistency, criticism related to materialism (both philosophical and historical materialism, historical), arguments that Marxism is a type of historical determinism or that it necessitates a suppression of individual rights, issues with the implementation of communism and Economics, economic issues such as the distortion or absence of price signals and reduced incentives. In addition, empirical and epistemological problems are frequently identified. General criticism Some democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that societies can achieve socialism only through class conflict and a proletarian revolution. Many anarchists reject the need for a Dictatorship of the proletariat, transitory state phase. Some thinkers have rejected the fundamentals of Marxist theory su ...
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Dignity Of Labor
The dignity of labour is the philosophy that all types of jobs are respected equally, and no occupation is considered superior and none of the jobs should be discriminated on any basis. Regardless of whether one's occupation involves physical work or mental labour, it is held that the job deserves respect. Simply put, any form of work, manual or intellectual, is called labour and respecting any kind of job (manual or intellectual) is called "dignity of labour". About Social reformers such as Basava and his contemporary Sharanas, as well as Mahatma Gandhi, were prominent advocates of the dignity of labour. The dignity of labour is one of the major themes in Christian ethics, and as such, it is upheld by the Anglican Communion, in Catholic social teaching, in Methodist principles, and in Reformed theology. In Roman Catholicism, usually titled "The dignity of work and the rights of workers" the affirmation of the dignity of human labour is found in several papal encyclicals, m ...
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Hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, honey, or anything safe to eat, and/or by hunting game (pursuing and/or trapping and killing wild animals, including catching fish), roughly as most animal omnivores do. Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to the more sedentary agricultural societies, which rely mainly on cultivating crops and raising domesticated animals for food production, although the boundaries between the two ways of living are not completely distinct. Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in ...
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Gift Economy
A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other commodity or service.R. Kranton: ''Reciprocal exchange: a self-sustaining system'', American Economic Review, V. 86 (1996), Issue 4 (September), pp. 830–851 This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received. The nature of gift economies is the subject of a foundational debate in anthropology. Anthropological research into gift economies began with Bronisław Malinowski's description of the Kula ring in the Trobriand Islands during World War I. The Kula trade appeared to be gift-like since Trobrianders would travel great distance ...
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Goldbricking
Goldbricking (also called cyberloafing or cyberslacking) is the practice of doing less work than one is able to, while maintaining the appearance of working. The term originates from the confidence trick of applying a gold coating to a brick of worthless metal—while the worker may appear industrious on the surface, in reality they are less valuable. A 1999 report estimated that cyberslacking cost employers in the United States $1 billion a year in computer resources. Instances of goldbricking increased markedly when broadband Internet connections became commonplace in workplaces. Before that, the slow speed of dial-up connections meant that spending work time browsing on the internet was rarely worthwhile. Many firms employ surveillance software to track employees' Internet activity in an effort to limit liability and improve productivity. Goldbricking became a mainstream topic when Yahoo! announced in late February 2013 that it was banning remote work because it discovered ...
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Homicide
Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm. Homicides can be divided into many overlapping legal categories, such as murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, assassination, killing in war (either following the laws of war or as a war crime), euthanasia, and capital punishment, depending on the circumstances of the death. These different types of homicides are often treated very differently in human societies; some are considered crimes, while others are permitted or even ordered by the legal system. Criminality Criminal homicide takes many forms including accidental killing or murder. Criminal homicide is divided into two broad categories, murder and manslaughter, based upon the state of mind and intent of the person who commits the homicide. A report ...
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Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, Property rights (economics), property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in Capital market, capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets. Economists, historians, political economists and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include ''Laissez-faire capitalism, laissez-faire'' or free-market capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, state capi ...
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Liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for conservatism and for tradition in general, tolerance, and ... individualism". John Dunn. ''Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future'' (1993). Cambridge University Press. . Liberals espouse various views depending on their understanding of these principles. However, they generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern times.Wolfe, p. 23.Adams, p. 11. Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity ...
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