ATTENTION BRANDON FREELS!!!!!!! It's Keith Wigdor/Surrealist.
Kwigd144
Please go tell Zazie and Pierre, to remove Surrealist: RICHARD DOTSON's Name(or
Signature) from the Anti-War/Anti-America Document that calls for the Overthrow
and Destruction of the United States! Surrealist RICHARD DOTSON is Number 58
on that Document and I HAVE HIS E-MAIL THAT HE SENT TO ME YESTERDAY, SAYING HE
AGREES WITH ME AND TO KEEP IT UP AT alt.surrealism, Richard told me "AS
AMERICANS WE MUST STAND UNITED"!!!!!!!!!!!! SO PLEASE REMOVE HIS NAME FROM THAT
ANTI-WAR/ANTI-AMERICA DOCUMENT! IF you do not REMOVE his name, THEN DO NOT
WORRY!!!! I HAVE SAVED HIS E-MAIL, WHICH I WILL POST ON MY WEBSITE, and I WILL
CALL UPON MORE SURREALISTS/ARTISTS/and POETS to speak out AGAINST
TERRORISM!!!!! ANYWAY THE E-MAIL THAT HE SENT ME WILL GO ON MY WEBSITE NO
MATTER WHAT, AND EVEN IF YOU DO NOT REMOVE HIS NAME FROM YOUR LIST, I WILL
STILL PLACE HIS E-MAIL THAT HE SENT TO ME, ON MY WEBSITE, AFTER ALL, ANY E-MAIL
THAT IS SENT TO ME, BELONGS TO ME, AND RICHARD DOTSON AGREES WITH WHAT I AM
SAYING HERE IN alt.surrealism, PLUS I WANT TO BREAK YOUR BALLS ANYWAY, BY
SHOWING THE WORLD DISSENT FROM YOUR VERY OWN LIST!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SCUMBAG!!!!!!!!
Dale Houstman
I showed one of your cognitive farts to a child the other day and he
asked me if I knew what was wrong with you. I could only say that you
appear to have been hurt in a hunting accident and were bitter about
your new life as a sub-standard human being. Now at least one person
feels sorry for you. Should help you sleep better in your filthy litter box.
dmh
Marcus Williamson
>I WILL
>CALL UPON MORE SURREALISTS/ARTISTS/and POETS to speak out AGAINST
>TERRORISM!!!!!
Whose terrorism? Here's a brief record of US mover the last 100 or so
years... Seems that a lot of this would qualify as terrorism...
regards
Marcus
US Foreign Policy
For those of you who want facts and figures and have the intellect to
judge 'good' from 'evil' and the courage to know and say out the
truth... Ever since the United States Army massacred 300 Lakotas in
1890, American forces have intervened elsewhere around the globe 100
times. Indeed the United States has sent troops abroad or militarily
struck other countries' territory 216 times since independence from
Britain. Since 1945 the United States has intervened in more than 20
countries yopu? throughout the world. Since World War II, the United
States actually dropped bombs on 23 countries. These include: China
1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958,
Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73,
Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983,
Lebanon 1984, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama
1989, Iraq 1991-1999, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, and Yugoslavia
1999. Post World War II, the United States has also assisted in over
20 different coups throughout the world, and the CIA was responsible
for half a dozen assassinations of political heads of state. The
following is a comprehensive summary of the imperialist strategy of
the United States over the span of the past century:
Argentina - 1890 - Troops sent to Buenos Aires to protect business
interests.
Chile - 1891 - Marines sent to Chile and clashed with nationalist
rebels.
Haiti - 1891 - American troops suppress a revolt by Black workers on
United States-claimed Navassa Island.
Hawaii - 1893 - Navy sent to Hawaii to overthrow the independent
kingdom - Hawaii annexed by the United States.
Nicaragua - 1894 - Troops occupied Bluefields, a city on the Caribbean
Sea, for a month.
China - 1894-95 - Navy, Army, and Marines landed during the
Sino-Japanese War.
Korea - 1894-96 - Troops kept in Seoul during the war.
Panama - 1895 - Army, Navy, and Marines landed in the port city of
Corinto.
China - 1894-1900 - Troops occupied China during the Boxer Rebellion.
Philippines - 1898-1910 - Navy and Army troops landed after the
Philippines fell during the Spanish-American War; 600,000 Filipinos
were killed.
Cuba - 1898-1902 - Troops seized Cuba in the Spanish-American War; the
United States still maintains troops at Guantanamo Bay today.
Puerto Rico - 1898 - present - Troops seized Puerto Rico in the
Spanish-American War and still occupy Puerto Rico today.
Nicaragua - 1898 - Marines landed at the port of San Juan del Sur.
Samoa - 1899 - Troops landed as a result over the battle for
succession to the throne.
Panama - 1901-14 - Navy supported the revolution when Panama claimed
independence from Colombia. American troops have occupied the Canal
Zone since 1901 when construction for the canal began.
Honduras - 1903 - Marines landed to intervene during a revolution.
Dominican Rep 1903-04 - Troops landed to protect American interests
during a revolution.
Korea - 1904-05 - Marines landed during the Russo-Japanese War.
Cuba - 1906-09 - Troops landed during an election.
Nicaragua - 1907 - Troops landed and a protectorate was set up.
Honduras - 1907 - Marines landed during Honduras' war with Nicaragua.
Panama - 1908 - Marines sent in during Panama's election.
Nicaragua - 1910 - Marines landed for a second time in Bluefields and
Corinto.
Honduras - 1911 - Troops sent in to protect American interests during
Honduras' civil war.
China - 1911-41 - Navy and troops sent to China during continuous
flare-ups.
Cuba - 1912 - Troops sent in to protect American interests in Havana.
Panama - 1912 - Marines landed during Panama's election.
Honduras - 1912 - Troops sent in to protect American interests.
Nicaragua - 1912-33 - Troops occupied Nicaragua and fought guerrillas
during its 20-year civil war.
Mexico - 1913 - Navy evacuated Americans during revolution.
Dominican Rep 1914 - Navy fought with rebels over Santo Domingo.
Mexico - 1914-18 - Navy and troops sent in to intervene against
nationalists.
Haiti - 1914-34 - Troops occupied Haiti after a revolution and
occupied Haiti for 19 years.
Dominican Rep 1916-24 - Marines occupied the Dominican Republic for
eight years.
Cuba - 1917-33 - Troops landed and occupied Cuba for 16 years; Cuba
became an economic protectorate. World War I - 1917-18 - Navy and Army
sent to Europe to fight the Axis powers.
Russia - 1918-22 - Navy and troops sent to eastern Russia after the
Bolshevik Revolution; Army made five landings. Honduras - 1919 -
Marines sent during Honduras' national elections.
Guatemala - 1920 - Troops occupied Guatemala for two weeks during a
union strike.
Turkey - 1922 - Troops fought nationalists in Smyrna.
China - 1922-27 - Navy and Army troops deployed during a nationalist
revolt.
Honduras - 1924-25 - Troops landed twice during a national election.
Panama - 1925 - Troops sent in to put down a general strike.
China - 1927-34 - Marines sent in and stationed for seven years
throughout China.
El Salvador - 1932 - Naval warships deployed during the FMLN revolt
under Marti.
World War II - 1941-45 - Military fought the Axis powers: Japan,
Germany, and Italy.
Yugoslavia - 1946 - Navy deployed off the coast of Yugoslavia in
response to the downing of an American plane.
Uruguay - 1947 - Bombers deployed as a show of military force.
Greece - 1947-49 - United States operations insured a victory for the
far right in national "elections."
Germany - 1948 - Military deployed in response to the Berlin blockade;
the Berlin airlift lasts 444 days.
Philippines - 1948-54 - The CIA directed a civil war against the
Filipino Huk revolt.
Puerto Rico - 1950 - Military helped crush an independence rebellion
in Ponce.
Korean War - 1951-53 - Military sent in during the war.
Iran - 1953 - The CIA orchestrated the overthrow of democratically
elected Mossadegh and restored the Shah to power.
Vietnam - 1954 - The United States offered weapons to the French in
the battle against Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh.
Guatemala - 1954 - The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Arbenz
and placed Colonel Armas in power.
Egypt - 1956 - Marines deployed to evacuate foreigners after Nasser
nationalized the Suez Canal.
Lebanon - 1958 - Navy supported an Army occupation of Lebanon during
its civil war.
Panama - 1958 - Troops landed after Panamanians demonstrations
threatened the Canal Zone.
Vietnam - 1950s-75 - Vietnam War.
Cuba - 1961 - The CIA-directed Bay of Pigs invasions failed to
overthrow the Castro government. Cuba - 1962 - The Navy quarantines
Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Laos - 1962 - Military occupied Laos during its civil war against the
Pathet Lao guerrillas.
Panama - 1964 - Troops sent in and Panamanians shot while protesting
the United States presence in the Canal Zone.
Indonesia - 1965 - The CIA orchestrated a military coup.
Dominican Rep- 1965-66 - Troops deployed during a national election.
Guatemala - 1966-67 - Green Berets sent in.
Cambodia - 1969-75 - Military sent in after the Vietnam War expanded
into Cambodia. Oman - 1970 - Marines landed to direct a possible
invasion into Iran.
Laos - 1971-75 - Americans carpet-bomb the countryside during Laos'
civil war.
Chile - 1973 - The CIA orchestrated a coup, killing President Allende
who had been popularly elected. The CIA helped to establish a military
regime under General Pinochet.
Cambodia - 1975 - Twenty-eight Americans killed in an effort to
retrieve the crew of the Mayaquez, which had been seized.
Angola - 1976-92 - The CIA backed South African rebels fighting
against Marxist Angola.
Iran - 1980 - Americans aborted a rescue attempt to liberate 52
hostages seized in the Teheran embassy.
Libya - 1981 - American fighters shoot down two Libyan fighters.
El Salvador - 1981-92 - The CIA, troops, and advisers aid in El
Salvador's war against the FMLN.
Nicaragua - 1981-90 - The CIA and NSC directed the Contra War against
the Sandinistas.
Lebanon - 1982-84 - Marines occupied Beirut during Lebanon's civil
war; 241 were killed in the American barracks and Reagan "redeployed"
the troops to the Mediterranean.
Honduras - 1983-89 - Troops sent in to build bases near the Honduran
border. Grenada -
1983-84 - American invasion overthrew the Maurice Bishop government.
Iran - 1984 - American fighters shot down two Iranian planes over the
Persian Gulf.
Libya - 1986 - American fighters hit targets in and around the capital
city of Tripoli.
Bolivia - 1986 - The Army assisted government troops on raids of
cocaine areas. Iran - 1987-88 - The United States intervened on the
side of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.
Libya - 1989 - Navy shot down two more Libyan jets.
Virgin Islands - 1989 - Troops landed during unrest among Virgin
Island peoples.
Philippines - 1989 - Air Force provided air cover for government
during coup. Panama - 1989-90 - 27,000 Americans landed in overthrow
of President Noriega; over 2,000 Panama civilians were killed.
Liberia - 1990 - Troops entered Liberia to evacuate foreigners during
civil war.
Saudi Arabia - 1990-91 - American troops sent to Saudi Arabia, which
was a staging area in the war against Iraq.
Kuwait - 1991 - Troops sent into Kuwait to turn back Saddam Hussein.
Somalia - 1992-94 - Troops occupied Somalia during civil war.
Bosnia - 1993-95 - Air Force jets bombed "no-fly zone" during civil
war in Yugoslavia.
Haiti - 1994-96 - American troops and Navy provided a blockade against
Haiti's military government. The CIA restored Aristide to power.
Zaire - 1996-97 - Marines sent into Rwanda Hutus' refugee camps in the
area where the Congo revolution began.
Albania - 1997 - Troops deployed during evacuation of foreigners.
Sudan - 1998 - American missiles destroyed a pharmaceutical complex
where alleged nerve gas components were manufactured.
Afghanistan - 1998 - Missiles launched towards alleged Afghan
terrorist training camps.
Yugoslavia - 1999 - Bombings and missile attacks carried out by the
United States in conjunction with NATO in the 11 week war against
Milosevic.
Iraq - 1998-2001 - Missiles launched into Baghdad and other large Iraq
cities for four days. American jets enforced "no-fly zone" and
continued to hit Iraqi targets since December 1998.
These **100** instances of American military intervention did not
include times when the United States: (1) deployed military police
overseas; (2) mobilized the National Guard; (3) sent Navy ships off
the coast of numerous countries as a show of strength; (4) sent
additional troops to areas where Americans were already stationed; (5)
carried out covert actions where American forces were not under the
direct rule of an American command; (6) used small hostage rescue
units; (7) used American pilots to fly foreign planes; (8) carried out
military training and advisory programs which did not involve direct
combat.
http://www.angelfire.com/ar/rawdah/03usforeign.htm
Kwigd144
I do not believe you. Remember you said you were divorced over at Comrade UK!
You never showed my crummy art to any child and you know it!
Jherek Chamaeleo
look he stopped shouting
you hurt him
do it again
Kwigd144
Morpheal
properly. They have not got it right quite yet. Can they practice on you
instead ? I think you would make for a better target.
R.
Brandon Freels
and/or Pierre, not me.
kwig...@aol.com (Kwigd144) wrote in message news:<20030217134157...@mb-ma.aol.com>...
Dale Houstman
Brandon Freels wrote:
> If Richard Dotson wants his name removed he should contact Zazie
> and/or Pierre, not me.
Now you're just confusing the boy: he thinks all of us live in a small
gingerbread castle outside Paris. Just because he and his three
gin-soaked mothers live together in the same packing crate.
dmh
Kwigd144
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DALE, YOU ARE A FAT ASSHOLE AND A LOSER, YOU ALWAYS WILL BE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BRANDON, THAT WAS SOME FUNNY SHIT HEARING YOU WERE MACED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Richard
My point is that while the US has not been completely pure
in it's foreign polcies, Saddam Hussein and other Islamo-fascist terrorist
Organizations (al-quaida) should not be allowed to continue their pursuits
of terror inside or outside their borders. I hear a lot of anti-American
voices coming out of mouths that the US has liberated, protected and fed and
continues to aid. Its seems some are are biting the hand that feeds or fed
them. So much for the better, as total compliance with the US is not
mandatory and should not ever be, but sometimes a choice must be made
between the lesser of the evils.
Will or has Iraq fed the world? Will Russia? Will China? And who will match
or even acknowledge the recent offer of George Bush to give Africa 15
billion dollars towards AIDS medicine?
I was very surprised by this announcement in the State of The Union address.
Non-Americans please remember to look at the good as well as the bad.
In fact, let's not forget anything about ANY nation's foreign policies and
actions as we search for the ultimate existence here on planet Earth. Just
simply staying within one's borders and raping the population within is a
violation of Human Rights that the rest of the world cannot tolerate. Just
staying at home and cooking up some weapons of mass destruction cannot ever
be tolerated. Toleration of such activities only make things worse in the
overall efforts to eventually disarm and balance the powers that be.
You will not find one nation on this earth that is absolutely pure. Nor any
politician. All people worldwide need to unite in voice against war and
oppression, BUT not just in countries where dissent is allowed. That gets
tricky (remember Tiananmen Square?).
When President Clinton sent in armed forces after a so-called Bad Guy in
Kosovo (formerly Yugoslavia) none of the peace movement said a word.
President Clinton chose to act with no diplomatic consulting of the UN.
Still no outcry from the very same groups opposed to war today and no
explanation of this paralysis. Just smug silence.
Now that President Bush is choosing to use the UN as a means for diplomacy
in going after a so-called Bad Guy in Iraq, suddenly everyone has nothing
but bad opinions of him and the US. Why the double standard?
This sort of thing shows me that even our beloved peace movement is impure
and not without faults. But don't misunderstand me, I am for peace and
always will be, however, simply put, all of us (nations and individuals)
need to get our act together and collectively say to any leader unwilling to
allow people everywhere to live and let live in freedom and harmony that
they will be stopped without further allowances. This makes it difficult to
advocate ignoring Islamic Fascists in their effort to terrorize destroy
the western way of life. While I can be against a war, I cannot support
religious fanaticism that wishes to inflict itself upon others.
Unfortunately that may mean a war is coming in Iraq. I personally do not
believe that Bush will do it. I think it is a bluff. My personal opinion is
that he would have already have gone to war by now. I emphasize here that
this is only my opinion.
As far as Keith Wigdor, you can say what you will of him. That doesn't
concern me in the slightest.
However, on the point of Islamic fascists (including Saddam Hussein) hating
the west and wanting to kill or convert
all of it's people, Wigdor happens to be right on the money about that. Let
it be known that on THIS particular point I agree with him, but that is
where it ends between Keith and myself.
See here, Keith Wigdor and I have differences, but we can both see that we
have a common enemy in the Islamic Fascists that seek to destroy the way of
life and freedom that we all enjoy in the free world.
I brought this to Wigdor's attention in an email to him because I figured he
would further amplify this point about the rising threat of Islamic Fascism
that concerns our survival as free people. I was right about that and I
believe he has posted it on his website.
Now, whether one loves me or hates me or Keith Wigdor or anyone else you
don't get full submission and compliance from is irrelevant. Therefore, let
it be known that when terrorists and their networks of thugs seek to
terrorize or harm me, my family, my friends, associates and even those with
whom I do not see eye to eye with while plotting and seeking to restrict my
freedom simply because I am American as do these Islamic Fascists, that is
unacceptable in any way, shape or form. In that case freedom is worth
fighting for. We are not free because people never stood up to their
oppressors.
Louis Aragon put it well when he wrote: "There is no freedom for the enemies
of freedom". That pretty much sums up where I stand on a survival instinct
level.
In ending let me say this:
Be opposed to the war effort if you desire (dissent is one of our rights)
but be opposed to it with your eyes wide open. In my conscience I object to
any efforts to inflict injury on others and this is why I signed the
anti-war statement on Zazie's website. It is my sincere desire that not one
drop of anyone's blood is shed. My name stays there as a representation of
my love for peace, life and my fellow human beings everywhere.
In instances of difference we are all best to agree to disagree, whereas
fascism and religious fanaticism only disagrees and wants to destroy or
oppress everyone else.
Richard Dotson
____________________________________________________________________________
__________
Kwigd144 <kwig...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030217134157...@mb-ma.aol.com...
Morpheal
>
> Brandon Freels wrote:
> > If Richard Dotson wants his name removed he should contact Zazie
> > and/or Pierre, not me.
>
> Now you're just confusing the boy: he thinks all of us live in a small
> gingerbread castle outside Paris. Just because he and his three
> gin-soaked mothers live together in the same packing crate.
>
> dmh
I would love to live in a small gingerbread castle outside or inside of
anywhere, as long as it chanced to be with Floria Sigismondi, or someone
equally interesting.
I don't know any French girls anymore.
And the German girls won't talk to me. I don't speak German.
I'm such a loser. No French. No German.
R.
elag
Richard
Richard Dotson
____________________________________________________________________________
___________
Kwigd144 <kwig...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030217134157...@mb-ma.aol.com...
Morpheal
>
> Very elegant argument, none could or would disagree.
> You're correct, IFTOs shouldn't be allowed to do what they do, and
> we as a people, must do all we can to support action against such
> entities, as has happened recently and for which the world is forever
> grateful to the prowess of the American military. The good done
> peacefully, it is always in our minds and even those actions which
> required a greater force and with justification, are allowed by a
> consensual public, who knew the harm that was being done to an
> innocent populace.
Could you translate that into English ?
Are you a military spokesperson in disguise ?
R.
Morpheal
Richard wrote:
>
> May I have your attention:
BANG. A loud shot rings out.
Richard drops into a rumpled heap on the floor.
"No", says the piano player, "you cannot have our attention".
"Play it again, Sam", says the drunk by the bar.
R.
Morpheal
Where are you, man ?
alt.surrealism needs last rites.
You gotta do it. It's a your job, man. Do it.
We can't have alt.surrealism go to eternal damnation.
R.
Kwigd144
Kwigd144
SURREALIST SCUMBAG SPREADING PRO-TERRORIST RHETORIC UNDER THE GUISE OF FREEDOM
OF SPEECH! BULLSHIT!
Kwigd144
Brandon Freels
kwig...@aol.com (Kwigd144) wrote in message news:<20030219182544...@mb-fr.aol.com>...
> I AM AN AMERICAN!
Kwigd144
Brandon Freels
kwig...@aol.com (Kwigd144) wrote in message news:<20030219235805...@mb-cr.aol.com>...
> WHAT A RESPONSE!
Kwigd144
Morpheal
Show us the tatooed number on your forearm !
R.
Kwigd144 wrote:
>
> I AM AN AMERICAN!
Kwigd144
Brandon Freels
kwig...@aol.com (Kwigd144) wrote in message news:<20030218172155...@mb-df.aol.com>...
Kwigd144
CHOICE: Morpheal or Keith? Well.......????
Brandon Freels
> Brandon, You have a choice: COMMUNISM or CAPITALISM?
The Abolition of Work
by Bob Black
No one should ever work.
Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any
evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world
designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop
working.
That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating
a new way of life based on play; in other words, a *ludic*
conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play
than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective
adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance.
Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer
sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or
occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion
nearly all of us want to act. Oblomovism and Stakhanovism are two
sides of the same debased coin.
The ludic life is totally incompatible with existing reality. So much
the worse for "reality," the gravity hole that sucks the vitality from
the little in life that still distinguishes it from mere survival.
Curiously -- or maybe not -- all the old ideologies are conservative
because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most
brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because
they believe in so little else.
Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should
end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following
Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be
lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except
that I'm not kidding -- I favor full *un*employment. Trotskyists
agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But
if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only
because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely
reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours,
working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll
gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to
do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for
all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they
quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to
sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they
haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by
bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen.
Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses
are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences
over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of
them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep
us working.
You may be wondering if I'm joking or serious. I'm joking *and*
serious. To be ludic is not to be ludicrous. Play doesn't have to be
frivolous, although frivolity isn't triviality: very often we ought to
take frivolity seriously. I'd like life to be a game -- but a game
with high stakes. I want to play *for* *keeps*.
The alternative to work isn't just idleness. To be ludic is not to be
quaaludic. As much as I treasure the pleasure of torpor, it's never
more rewarding than when it punctuates other pleasures and pastimes.
Nor am I promoting the managed time-disciplined safety-valve called
"leisure"; far from it. Leisure is nonwork for the sake of work.
Leisure is the time spent recovering from work and in the frenzied but
hopeless attempt to forget about work. Many people return from
vacation so beat that they look forward to returning to work so they
can rest up. The main difference between work and leisure is that work
at least you get paid for your alienation and enervation.
I am not playing definitional games with anybody. When I say I want to
abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by
defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimum definition of
work is *forced* *labor*, that is, compulsory production. Both
elements are essential. Work is production enforced by economic or
political means, by the carrot or the stick. (The carrot is just the
stick by other means.) But not all creation is work. Work is never
done for its own sake, it's done on account of some product or output
that the worker (or, more often, somebody else) gets out of it. This
is what work necessarily is. To define it is to despise it. But work
is usually even worse than its definition decrees. The dynamic of
domination intrinsic to work tends over time toward elaboration. In
advanced work-riddled societies, including all industrial societies
whether capitalist of "Communist," work invariably acquires other
attributes which accentuate its obnoxiousness.
Usually -- and this is even more true in "Communist" than capitalist
countries, where the state is almost the only employer and everyone is
an employee -- work is employment, i. e., wage-labor, which means
selling yourself on the installment plan. Thus 95% of Americans who
work, work for somebody (or some*thing*) else. In the USSR or Cuba or
Yugoslavia or any other alternative model which might be adduced, the
corresponding figure approaches 100%. Only the embattled Third World
peasant bastions -- Mexico, India, Brazil, Turkey -- temporarily
shelter significant concentrations of agriculturists who perpetuate
the traditional arrangement of most laborers in the last several
millenia, the payment of taxes (= ransom) to the state or rent to
parasitic landlords in return for being otherwise left alone. Even
this raw deal is beginning to look good. *All* industrial (and office)
workers are employees and under the sort of surveillance which ensures
servility.
But modern work has worse implications. People don't just work, they
have "jobs." One person does one productive task all the time on an
or-else basis. Even if the task has a quantum of intrinsic interest
(as increasingly many jobs don't) the monotony of its obligatory
exclusivity drains its ludic potential. A "job" that might engage the
energies of some people, for a reasonably limited time, for the fun of
it, is just a burden on those who have to do it for forty hours a week
with no say in how it should be done, for the profit of owners who
contribute nothing to the project, and with no opportunity for sharing
tasks or spreading the work among those who actually have to do it.
This is the real world of work: a world of bureaucratic blundering, of
sexual harassment and discrimination, of bonehead bosses exploiting
and scapegoating their subordinates who -- by any rational-technical
criteria -- should be calling the shots. But capitalism in the real
world subordinates the rational maximization of productivity and
profit to the exigencies of organizational control.
The degradation which most workers experience on the job is the sum of
assorted indignities which can be denominated as "discipline."
Foucault has complexified this phenomenon but it is simple enough.
Discipline consists of the totality of totalitarian controls at the
workplace -- surveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production
quotas, punching -in and -out, etc. Discipline is what the factory and
the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the
mental hospital. It is something historically original and horrible.
It was beyond the capacities of such demonic dictators of yore as Nero
and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible. For all their bad intentions
they just didn't have the machinery to control their subjects as
thoroughly as modern despots do. Discipline is the distinctively
diabolical modern mode of control, it is an innovative intrusion which
must be interdicted at the earliest opportunity.
Such is "work." Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary.
What might otherwise be play is work if it's forced. This is
axiomatic. Bernie de Koven has defined play as the "suspension of
consequences." This is unacceptable if it implies that play is
inconsequential. The point is not that play is without consequences.
This is to demean play. The point is that the consequences, if any,
are gratuitous. Playing and giving are closely related, they are the
behavioral and transactional facets of the same impulse, the
play-instinct. They share an aristocratic disdain for results. The
player gets something out of playing; that's why he plays. But the
core reward is the experience of the activity itself (whatever it is).
Some otherwise attentive students of play, like Johan Huizinga (*Homo*
*Ludens*), *define* it as game-playing or following rules. I respect
Huizinga's erudition but emphatically reject his constraints. There
are many good games (chess, baseball, Monopoly, bridge) which are
rule-governed but there is much more to play than game-playing.
Conversation, sex, dancing, travel -- these practices aren't
rule-governed but they are surely play if anything is. And rules can
be *played* *with* at least as readily as anything else.
Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have
rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free
like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders
or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under
regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller
details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are
answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent
and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the
authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.
And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern
workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament
totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in
any moderately deStalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary
American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline
in an office or factory as you do in a prison or monastery. In fact,
as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at
about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from
each other's control techniques. A worker is a par-time slave. The
boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the
meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to
carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels
like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom.
With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He
has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on
every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a
worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it
disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. Without necessarily
endorsing it for them either, it is noteworthy that children at home
and in school receive much the same treatment, justified in their case
by their supposed immaturity. What does this say about their parents
and teachers who work?
The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the
waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for
decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not
too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better
still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and
office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are "free" is lying or
stupid. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work,
chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a
much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us
than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and
education. People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to
work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the
nursing home at the end, are habituated to heirarchy and
psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied
that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded
phobias. Their obedience training at work carries over into the
families *they* start, thus reproducing the system in more ways than
one, and into politics, culture and everything else. Once you drain
the vitality from people at work, they'll likely submit to heirarchy
and expertise in everything. They're used to it.
We are so close to the world of work that we can't see what it does to
us. We have to rely on outside observers from other times or other
cultures to appreciate the extremity and the pathology of our present
position. There was a time in our own past when the "work ethic" would
have been incomprehensible, and perhaps Weber was on to something when
he tied its appearance to a religion, Calvinism, which if it emerged
today instead of four centuries ago would immediately and
appropriately be labeled a cult. Be that as it may, we have only to
draw upon the wisdom of antiquity to put work in perspective. The
ancients saw work for what it is, and their view prevailed, the
Calvinist cranks notwithstanding, until overthrown by industrialism --
but not before receiving the endorsement of its prophets.
Let's pretend for a moment that work doesn't turn people into
stultified submissives. Let's pretend, in defiance of any plausible
psychology and the ideology of its boosters, that it has no effect on
the formation of character. And let's pretend that work isn't as
boring and tiring and humiliating as we all know it really is. Even
then, work would *still* make a mockery of all humanistic and
democratic aspirations, just because it usurps so much of our time.
Socrates said that manual laborers make bad friends and bad citizens
because they have no time to fulfill the responsibilities of
friendship and citizenship. He was right. Because of work, no matter
what we do we keep looking at out watches. The only thing "free" about
so-called free time is that it doesn't cost the boss anything. Free
time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work,
returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is a
euphemism for the peculiar way labor as a factor of production not
only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace
but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair.
Coal and steel don't do that. Lathes and typewriters don't do that.
But workers do. No wonder Edward G. Robinson in one of his gangster
movies exclaimed, "Work is for saps!"
Both Plato and Xenophon attribute to Socrates and obviously share with
him an awareness of the destructive effects of work on the worker as a
citizen and a human being. Herodotus identified contempt for work as
an attribute of the classical Greeks at the zenith of their culture.
To take only one Roman example, Cicero said that "whoever gives his
labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves."
His candor is now rare, but contemporary primitive societies which we
are wont to look down upon have provided spokesmen who have
enlightened Western anthropologists. The Kapauku of West Irian,
according to Posposil, have a conception of balance in life and
accordingly work only every other day, the day of rest designed "to
regain the lost power and health." Our ancestors, even as late as the
eighteenth century when they were far along the path to our present
predicament, at least were aware of what we have forgotten, the
underside of industrialization. Their religious devotion to "St.
Monday" -- thus establishing a *de* *facto* five-day week 150-200
years before its legal consecration -- was the despair of the earliest
factory owners. They took a long time in submitting to the tyranny of
the bell, predecessor of the time clock. In fact it was necessary for
a generation or two to replace adult males with women accustomed to
obedience and children who could be molded to fit industrial needs.
Even the exploited peasants of the *ancien* *regime* wrested
substantial time back from their landlord's work. According to
Lafargue, a fourth of the French peasants' calendar was devoted to
Sundays and holidays, and Chayanov's figures from villages in Czarist
Russia -- hardly a progressive society -- likewise show a fourth or
fifth of peasants' days devoted to repose. Controlling for
productivity, we are obviously far behind these backward societies.
The exploited *muzhiks* would wonder why any of us are working at all.
So should we.
To grasp the full enormity of our deterioration, however, consider the
earliest condition of humanity, without government or property, when
we wandered as hunter-gatherers. Hobbes surmised that life was then
nasty, brutish and short. Others assume that life was a desperate
unremitting struggle for subsistence, a war waged against a harsh
Nature with death and disaster awaiting the unlucky or anyone who was
unequal to the challenge of the struggle for existence. Actually, that
was all a projection of fears for the collapse of government authority
over communities unaccustomed to doing without it, like the England of
Hobbes during the Civil War. Hobbes' compatriots had already
encountered alternative forms of society which illustrated other ways
of life -- in North America, particularly -- but already these were
too remote from their experience to be understandable. (The lower
orders, closer to the condition of the Indians, understood it better
and often found it attractive. Throughout the seventeenth century,
English settlers defected to Indian tribes or, captured in war,
refused to return. But the Indians no more defected to white
settlements than Germans climb the Berlin Wall from the west.) The
"survival of the fittest" version -- the Thomas Huxley version -- of
Darwinism was a better account of economic conditions in Victorian
England than it was of natural selection, as the anarchist Kropotkin
showed in his book *Mutual* *Aid,* *A* *Factor* *of* *Evolution*.
(Kropotkin was a scientist -- a geographer -- who'd had ample
involuntary opportunity for fieldwork whilst exiled in Siberia: he
knew what he was talking about.) Like most social and political
theory, the story Hobbes and his successors told was really
unacknowledged autobiography.
The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, surveying the data on
contemporary hunter-gatherers, exploded the Hobbesian myth in an
article entitled "The Original Affluent Society." They work a lot less
than we do, and their work is hard to distinguish from what we regard
as play. Sahlins concluded that "hunters and gatherers work less than
we do; and rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is
intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep
in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of
society." They worked an average of four hours a day, assuming they
were "working" at all. Their "labor," as it appears to us, was skilled
labor which exercised their physical and intellectual capacities;
unskilled labor on any large scale, as Sahlins says, is impossible
except under industrialism. Thus it satisfied Friedrich Schiller's
definition of play, the only occasion on which man realizes his
complete humanity by giving full "play" to both sides of his twofold
nature, thinking and feeling. As he put it: "The animal *works* when
deprivation is the mainspring of its activity, and it *plays* when the
fullness of its strength is this mainspring, when superabundant life
is its own stimulus to activity." (A modern version -- dubiously
developmental -- is Abraham Maslow's counterposition of "deficiency"
and "growth" motivation.) Play and freedom are, as regards production,
coextensive. Even Marx, who belongs (for all his good intentions) in
the productivist pantheon, observed that "the realm of freedom does
not commence until the point is passed where labor under the
compulsion of necessity and external utility is required." He never
could quite bring himself to identify this happy circumstance as what
it is, the abolition of work -- it's rather anomalous, after all, to
be pro-worker and anti-work -- but we can.
The aspiration to go backwards or forwards to a life without work is
evident in every serious social or cultural history of pre-industrial
Europe, among them M. Dorothy George's *England* In* *Transition* and
Peter Burke's *Popular* *Culture* *in* *Early* *Modern* *Europe*. Also
pertinent is Daniel Bell's essay, "Work and its Discontents," the
first text, I believe, to refer to the "revolt against work" in so
many words and, had it been understood, an important correction to the
complacency ordinarily associated with the volume in which it was
collected, *The* *End* *of* *Ideology*. Neither critics nor celebrants
have noticed that Bell's end-of-ideology thesis signaled not the end
of social unrest but the beginning of a new, uncharted phase
unconstrained and uninformed by ideology. It was Seymour Lipset (in
*Political* *Man*), not Bell, who announced at the same time that "the
fundamental problems of the Industrial Revolution have been solved,"
only a few years before the post- or meta-industrial discontents of
college students drove Lipset from UC Berkeley to the relative (and
temporary) tranquility of Harvard.
As Bell notes, Adam Smith in *The* *Wealth* *of* *Nations*, for all
his enthusiasm for the market and the division of labor, was more
alert to (and more honest about) the seamy side of work than Ayn Rand
or the Chicago economists or any of Smith's modern epigones. As Smith
observed: "The understandings of the greater part of men are
necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose life
is spent in performing a few simple operations... has no occasion to
exert his understanding... He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant
as it is possible for a human creature to become." Here, in a few
blunt words, is my critique of work. Bell, writing in 1956, the Golden
Age of Eisenhower imbecility and American self-satisfaction,
identified the unorganized, unorganizable malaise of the 1970's and
since, the one no political tendency is able to harness, the one
identified in HEW's report *Work* *in* *America*, the one which cannot
be exploited and so is ignored. That problem is the revolt against
work. It does not figure in any text by any laissez-faire economist --
Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Richard Posner -- because, in their
terms, as they used to say on *Star* *Trek*, "it does not compute."
If these objections, informed by the love of liberty, fail to persuade
humanists of a utilitarian or even paternalist turn, there are others
which they cannot disregard. Work is hazardous to your health, to
borrow a book title. In fact, work is mass murder or genocide.
Directly or indirectly, work will kill most of the people who read
these words. Between 14,000 and 25,000 workers are killed annually in
this country on the job. Over two million are disabled. Twenty to
twenty-five million are injured every year. And these figures are
based on a very conservative estimation of what constitutes a
work-related injury. Thus they don't count the half million cases of
occupational disease every year. I looked at one medical textbook on
occupational diseases which was 1,200 pages long. Even this barely
scratches the surface. The available statistics count the obvious
cases like the 100,000 miners who have black lung disease, of whom
4,000 die every year, a much higher fatality rate than for AIDS, for
instance, which gets so much media attention. This reflects the
unvoiced assumption that AIDS afflicts perverts who could control
their depravity whereas coal-mining is a sacrosanct activity beyond
question. What the statistics don't show is that tens of millions of
people have heir lifespans shortened by work -- which is all that
homicide means, after all. Consider the doctors who work themselves to
death in their 50's. Consider all the other workaholics.
Even if you aren't killed or crippled while actually working, you very
well might be while going to work, coming from work, looking for work,
or trying to forget about work. The vast majority of victims of the
automobile are either doing one of these work-obligatory activities or
else fall afoul of those who do them. To this augmented body-count
must be added the victims of auto-industrial pollution and
work-induced alcoholism and drug addiction. Both cancer and heart
disease are modern afflictions normally traceable, directly, or
indirectly, to work.
Work, then, institutionalizes homicide as a way of life. People think
the Cambodians were crazy for exterminating themselves, but are we any
different? The Pol Pot regime at least had a vision, however blurred,
of an egalitarian society. We kill people in the six-figure range (at
least) in order to sell Big Macs and Cadillacs to the survivors. Our
forty or fifty thousand annual highway fatalities are victims, not
martyrs. They died for nothing -- or rather, they died for work. But
work is nothing to die for.
Bad news for liberals: regulatory tinkering is useless in this
life-and-death context. The federal Occupational Safety and Health
Administration was designed to police the core part of the problem,
workplace safety. Even before Reagan and the Supreme Court stifled it,
OSHA was a farce. At previous and (by current standards) generous
Carter-era funding levels, a workplace could expect a random visit
from an OSHA inspector once every 46 years.
State control of the economy is no solution. Work is, if anything,
more dangerous in the state-socialist countries than it is here.
Thousands of Russian workers were killed or injured building the
Moscow subway. Stories reverberate about covered-up Soviet nuclear
disasters which make Times Beach and Three-Mile Island look like
elementary-school air-raid drills. On the other hand, deregulation,
currently fashionable, won't help and will probably hurt. From a
health and safety standpoint, among others, work was at its worst in
the days when the economy most closely approximated laissez-faire.
Historians like Eugene Genovese have argued persuasively that -- as
antebellum slavery apologists insisted -- factory wage-workers in the
Northern American states and in Europe were worse off than Southern
plantation slaves. No rearrangement of relations among bureaucrats and
businessmen seems to make much difference at the point of production.
Serious enforcement of even the rather vague standards enforceable in
theory by OSHA would probably bring the economy to a standstill. The
enforcers apparently appreciate this, since they don't even try to
crack down on most malefactors.
What I've said so far ought not to be controversial. Many workers are
fed up with work. There are high and rising rates of absenteeism,
turnover, employee theft and sabotage, wildcat strikes, and overall
goldbricking on the job. There may be some movement toward a conscious
and not just visceral rejection of work. And yet the prevalent
feeling, universal among bosses and their agents and also widespread
among workers themselves is that work itself is inevitable and
necessary.
I disagree. It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar
as it serves useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free
activities. To abolish work requires going at it from two directions,
quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative
side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being done.
At present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid
of it. On the other hand -- and I think this the crux of the matter
and the revolutionary new departure -- we have to take what useful
work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and
craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable
pastimes, except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely
that shouldn't make them *less* enticing to do. Then all the
artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation
could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each
other.
I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then
most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing
fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense
and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal
appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that
just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the
figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs
for food, clothing, and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but
the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work
serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right
off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers,
managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers,
landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them.
There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you
liberate his flunkeys and underlings also. Thus the economy
*implodes*.
Forty percent of the workforce are white-collar workers, most of whom
have some of the most tedious and idiotic jobs ever concocted. Entire
industries, insurance and banking and real estate for instance,
consist of nothing but useless paper-shuffling. It is no accident that
the "tertiary sector," the service sector, is growing while the
"secondary sector" (industry) stagnates and the "primary sector"
(agriculture) nearly disappears. Because work is unnecessary except to
those whose power it secures, workers are shifted from relatively
useful to relatively useless occupations as a measure to assure public
order. Anything is better than nothing. That's why you can't go home
just because you finish early. They want your *time*, enough of it to
make you theirs, even if they have no use for most of it. Otherwise
why hasn't the average work week gone down by more than a few minutes
in the past fifty years?
Next we can take a meat-cleaver to production work itself. No more war
production, nuclear power, junk food, feminine hygiene deodorant --
and above all, no more auto industry to speak of. An occasional
Stanley Steamer or Model-T might be all right, but the auto-eroticism
on which such pestholes as Detroit and Los Angeles depend on is out of
the question. Already, without even trying, we've virtually solved the
energy crisis, the environmental crisis and assorted other insoluble
social problems.
Finally, we must do away with far and away the largest occupation, the
one with the longest hours, the lowest pay and some of the most
tedious tasks around. I refer to *housewives* doing housework and
child-rearing. By abolishing wage-labor and achieving full
unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor. The nuclear
family as we know it is an inevitable adaptation to the division of
labor imposed by modern wage-work. Like it or not, as things have been
for the last century or two it is economically rational for the man to
bring home the bacon, for the woman to do the shitwork to provide him
with a haven in a heartless world, and for the children to be marched
off to youth concentration camps called "schools," primarily to keep
them out of Mom's hair but still under control, but incidentally to
acquire the habits of obedience and punctuality so necessary for
workers. If you would be rid of patriarchy, get rid of the nuclear
family whose unpaid "shadow work," as Ivan Illich says, makes possible
the work-system that makes *it* necessary. Bound up with this no-nukes
strategy is the abolition of childhood and the closing of the schools.
There are more full-time students than full-time workers in this
country. We need children as teachers, not students. They have a lot
to contribute to the ludic revolution because they're better at
playing than grown-ups are. Adults and children are not identical but
they will become equal through interdependence. Only play can bridge
the generation gap.
I haven't as yet even mentioned the possibility of cutting way down on
the little work that remains by automating and cybernizing it. All the
scientists and engineers and technicians freed from bothering with war
research and planned obsolescence would have a good time devising
means to eliminate fatigue and tedium and danger from activities like
mining. Undoubtedly they'll find other projects to amuse themselves
with. Perhaps they'll set up world-wide all-inclusive multi-media
communications systems or found space colonies. Perhaps. I myself am
no gadget freak. I wouldn't care to live in a pushbutton paradise. I
don't what robot slaves to do everything; I want to do things myself.
There is, I think, a place for labor-saving technology, but a modest
place. The historical and pre-historical record is not encouraging.
When productive technology went from hunting-gathering to agriculture
and on to industry, work increased while skills and self-determination
diminished. The further evolution of industrialism has accentuated
what Harry Braverman called the degradation of work. Intelligent
observers have always been aware of this. John Stuart Mill wrote that
all the labor-saving inventions ever devised haven't saved a moment's
labor. Karl Marx wrote that "it would be possible to write a history
of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole purpose of supplying
capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class." The
enthusiastic technophiles -- Saint-Simon, Comte, Lenin, B. F. Skinner
-- have always been unabashed authoritarians also; which is to say,
technocrats. We should be more than sceptical about the promises of
the computer mystics. *They* work like dogs; chances are, if they have
their way, so will the rest of us. But if they have any particularized
contributions more readily subordinated to human purposes than the run
of high tech, let's give them a hearing.
What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to
discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities
that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced
to jobs which certain people, and only those people are forced to do
to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil
painfully in the fields while their air-conditioned masters go home
every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of
permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante
which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs,
just things to do and people to do them.
The secret of turning work into play, as Charles Fourier demonstrated,
is to arrange useful activities to take advantage of whatever it is
that various people at various times in fact enjoy doing. To make it
possible for some people to do the things they could enjoy it will be
enough just to eradicate the irrationalities and distortions which
afflict these activities when they are reduced to work. I, for
instance, would enjoy doing some (not too much) teaching, but I don't
want coerced students and I don't care to suck up to pathetic pedants
for tenure.
Second, there are some things that people like to do from time to
time, but not for too long, and certainly not all the time. You might
enjoy baby-sitting for a few hours in order to share the company of
kids, but not as much as their parents do. The parents meanwhile,
profoundly appreciate the time to themselves that you free up for
them, although they'd get fretful if parted from their progeny for too
long. These differences among individuals are what make a life of free
play possible. The same principle applies to many other areas of
activity, especially the primal ones. Thus many people enjoy cooking
when they can practice it seriously at their leisure, but not when
they're just fueling up human bodies for work.
Third -- other things being equal -- some things that are unsatisfying
if done by yourself or in unpleasant surroundings or at the orders of
an overlord are enjoyable, at least for a while, if these
circumstances are changed. This is probably true, to some extent, of
all work. People deploy their otherwise wasted ingenuity to make a
game of the least inviting drudge-jobs as best they can. Activities
that appeal to some people don't always appeal to all others, but
everyone at least potentially has a variety of interests and an
interest in variety. As the saying goes, "anything once." Fourier was
the master at speculating how aberrant and perverse penchants could be
put to use in post-civilized society, what he called Harmony. He
thought the Emperor Nero would have turned out all right if as a child
he could have indulged his taste for bloodshed by working in a
slaughterhouse. Small children who notoriously relish wallowing in
filth could be organized in "Little Hordes" to clean toilets and empty
the garbage, with medals awarded to the outstanding. I am not arguing
for these precise examples but for the underlying principle, which I
think makes perfect sense as one dimension of an overall revolutionary
transformation. Bear in mind that we don't have to take today's work
just as we find it and match it up with the proper people, some of
whom would have to be perverse indeed. If technology has a role in all
this it is less to automate work out of existence than to open up new
realms for re/creation. To some extent we may want to return to
handicrafts, which William Morris considered a probable and desirable
upshot of communist revolution. Art would be taken back from the snobs
and collectors, abolished as a specialized department catering to an
elite audience, and its qualities of beauty and creation restored to
integral life from which they were stolen by work. It's a sobering
thought that the grecian urns we write odes about and showcase in
museums were used in their own time to store olive oil. I doubt our
everyday artifacts will fare as well in the future, if there is one.
The point is that there's no such thing as progress in the world of
work; if anything it's just the opposite. We shouldn't hesitate to
pilfer the past for what it has to offer, the ancients lose nothing
yet we are enriched.
The reinvention of daily life means marching off the edge of our maps.
There is, it is true, more suggestive speculation than most people
suspect. Besides Fourier and Morris -- and even a hint, here and
there, in Marx -- there are the writings of Kropotkin, the
syndicalists Pataud and Pouget, anarcho-communists old (Berkman) and
new (Bookchin). The Goodman brothers' *Communitas* is exemplary for
illustrating what forms follow from given functions (purposes), and
there is something to be gleaned from the often hazy heralds of
alternative/appropriate/intermediate/convivial technology, like
Schumacher and especially Illich, once you disconnect their fog
machines. The situationists -- as represented by Vaneigem's
*Revolution* *of* *Daily* *Life* and in the *Situationist*
*International* *Anthology* -- are so ruthlessly lucid as to be
exhilarating, even if they never did quite square the endorsement of
the rule of the worker's councils with the abolition of work. Better
their incongruity, though than any extant version of leftism, whose
devotees look to be the last champions of work, for if there were no
work there would be no workers, and without workers, who would the
left have to organize?
So the abolitionists would be largely on their own. No one can say
what would result from unleashing the creative power stultified by
work. Anything can happen. The tiresome debater's problem of freedom
vs. necessity, with its theological overtones, resolves itself
practically once the production of use-values is coextensive with the
consumption of delightful play-activity.
Life will become a game, or rather many games, but not -- as it is now
- -- a zero/sum game. An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of
productive play, The participants potentiate each other's pleasures,
nobody keeps score, and everybody wins. The more you give, the more
you get. In the ludic life, the best of sex will diffuse into the
better part of daily life. Generalized play leads to the
libidinization of life. Sex, in turn, can become less urgent and
desperate, more playful. If we play our cards right, we can all get
more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps.
No one should ever work. Workers of the world... *relax*!
Kwigd144
FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIEF!!!!!!!!!!!
Morpheal
>
> All this proves is that democracy is dead.
Conceptually, yes.
This is not a democracy. This is not a pipe. This is not a conversation.
This is not sex. Etc. Etc. Etc.
It has to be actualized to be.
Being is manifest as being. That is the nature of being. It's beingness.
R.