on work and labor

Of course we have to work. But there is a distinction between work for institutions and the straightforward sustenance of life “where we live” … work done for the household or the community.

Fredy Perlman said that with the rise of statist society most work becomes “zek-like.” A “zek” was an inmate of a Soviet labor camp or prison. The term is derived from the Russian word “zaklyuchënnyi,” meaning “prisoner.”

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan

Marx got a lot of interest talking about “alienated work.” The trouble was his remedy … the chimerical idea that if the enterprises and/or the economy as a whole would be “democratically owned and controlled” — by the workers or by “the working class” or by “society as a whole” — then workers would no longer feel alienated. It was a credulous notion, but it was a fundament of the old delusional Communist ideology. Communism, of course, had a tendency to conflate nationalism with community (so did Fascism).

What’s really odious (and what we really want to be liberated from) — what’s zek-like — is the typical modern “get payment or don’t eat,” time-regimented labor for institutions. Bob Black does a good job describing such:

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

Again, the alternative (what “workers” would really want, though they have no conception given the current socio-economic reality) is — as was the case for most of human pre-history — work done directly for the sustenance of self, family, and community. That’s “right livelihood”:

https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/buddhist-economics/

Work done within that context feels meaningful; it yields direct, immediate recognition and appreciation from significant others.