From work to right livelihood

Steven Welzer
1 min readJan 21, 2022

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/21/take-this-job-and-shove-it-the-growing-revolt-against-work/

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/solving-plastic/2021/05/10/why-are-we-expected-to-love-our-jobs

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work/

You know that I advocate living in locally-oriented ecovillages (rural settlements or urban neighborhoods) characterized by:
. communitarian self-reliance
. identity with and commitment to a particular place-on-Earth
. support, sharing, and caring commitment to a stable group of familiar other people

To sustain such communities takes a lot of work. That’s in addition to what it takes to maintain our domestic households. When we go off to labor for the institutions of the Leviathan we neglect our families and our communities.

Right livelihood means sticking around. Do directly, together, what really needs to be done for your real place. Divvy up the work. Bond and relate. It doesn’t involve commuting. It’s not nine-to-five. It’s more fun.

By the way, school is an institution of the Leviathan. Don’t send the kids off to school. Don’t segregate them from the real world of the real adult role models within the real community:

https://stevenwelzer.medium.com/paul-goodmans-conception-of-community-based-education-490f826f4388

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Steven Welzer

The editor of Green Horizon Magazine, Steve has been a movement activist for many years (he was an original co-editor of DSA’s “Ecosocialist Review”).