Refusal of work is behavior in which a person refuses regularemployment.[1]
As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures and individuals. It is frequently engaged in by those whocritique the concept of work, and it has a long history. Radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From withinMarxism it has been advocated byPaul Lafargue and the Italianworkerist/autonomists (e.g.Antonio Negri,Mario Tronti),[1] the Frenchultra-left (e.g. Échanges et Mouvement); and withinanarchism (especiallyBob Black and thepost-left anarchy tendency).[2]
International human rights law does not recognize the refusal of work or right not to work by itself except the right tostrike. However theAbolition of Forced Labour Convention adopted byInternational Labour Organization in 1957 prohibits all forms offorced labour.[3]
Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person'slivelihood depends onwages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.[4][5] It is anegatively connoted term used to draw an analogy betweenslavery andwage labor, and to highlight similarities between owning andemploying a person. The term 'wage slavery' has been used to criticizeeconomic exploitation andsocial stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. insweatshops),[6] and the latter as a lack ofworkers' self-management.[7][8][9] The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of ahierarchical social environment (i.e. working for a wage not only under threat ofstarvation orpoverty, but also ofsocial stigma orstatus diminution).[10][11][12]
Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted at least as early asCicero.[13] Before theAmerican Civil War, Southern defenders ofAfrican American slavery invoked the concept to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North.[14][15] With the advent of theIndustrial Revolution, thinkers such asProudhon[16][17] andMarx[18] elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of property not intended for active personal use.
The introduction of wage labor in 18th century Britain was met with resistance—giving rise to the principles ofsyndicalism.[19][20][21][22] Historically, some labor organizations and individual social activists, have espousedworkers' self-management orworker cooperatives as possible alternatives to wage labor.[8][21]
The Right to be Lazy, an essay by Cuban-bornFrench revolutionaryMarxistPaul Lafargue, manifests that "When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the nations where economic prejudices have not yet uprooted the hatred of work ... The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind ... The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods."[23] And so he says "Proletarians, brutalized by the dogma of work, listen to the voice of these philosophers, which has been concealed from you with jealous care: A citizen who gives his labor for money degrades himself to the rank of slaves." (The last sentence paraphrasingCicero.[13])
Raoul Vaneigem, theorist of the post-surrealistSituationist International which was influential in theMay 68 events in France, wroteThe Book of Pleasures. In it he says that "You reverse the perspective of power by returning to pleasure the energies stolen by work and constraint ... As sure as work kills pleasure, pleasure kills work. If you are not resigned to dying of disgust, then you will be happy enough to rid your life of the odious need to work, to give orders (and obey them), to lose and to win, to keep up appearances, and to judge and be judged."[24]
Autonomist philosopherBifo defines refusal of work as not "so much the obvious fact that workers do not like to be exploited, but something more. It means that the capitalist restructuring, the technological change, and the general transformation of social institutions are produced by the daily action of withdrawal from exploitation, of rejection of the obligation to produce surplus value, and to increase the value of capital, reducing the value of life."[1] More simply he states "Refusal of work means ... I don't want to go to work because I prefer to sleep. But this laziness is the source of intelligence, of technology, of progress. Autonomy is the self-regulation of the social body in its independence and in its interaction with the disciplinary norm."[1]
As a social development Bifo remembers,[1]
that one of the strong ideas of the movement of autonomy proletarians during the 70s was the idea "precariousness is good". Job precariousness is a form of autonomy from steady regular work, lasting an entire life. In the 1970s many people used to work for a few months, then to go away for a journey, then back to work for a while. This was possible in times of almost full employment and in times of egalitarian culture. This situation allowed people to work in their own interest and not in the interest of capitalists, but quite obviously this could not last forever, and the neoliberal offensive of the 1980s was aimed to reverse the rapport de force."
As a response to these developments his view is that "the dissemination of self-organized knowledge can create a social framework containing infinite autonomous and self-reliant worlds."[1]
From this possibility ofself-determination even the notion ofworkers' self-management is seen as problematic since "Far from the emergence of proletarian power, ... this self-management as a moment of the self-harnessing of the workers to capitalist production in the period of real subsumption ... Mistaking the individual capitalist (who, in real subsumption disappears into the collective body of share ownership on one side, and hired management on the other) rather than the enterprise as the problem, ... the workers themselves became a collective capitalist, taking on responsibility for the exploitation of their own labor. Thus, far from breaking with 'work', ... the workers maintained the practice of clocking-in, continued to organize themselves and the community around the needs of the factory, paid themselves from profits arising from the sale of watches, maintained determined relations between individual work done and wage, and continued to wear their work shirts throughout the process."[25]
André Gorz was anAustrian andFrenchsocial philosopher. Also ajournalist, he co-foundedLe Nouvel Observateur weekly in 1964. A supporter ofJean-Paul Sartre'sexistentialist version ofMarxism after World War Two, in the aftermath of theMay '68 student riots, he became more concerned withpolitical ecology.[26] His central theme waswage labour issues such as liberation from work, the just distribution of work,social alienation, and aguaranteed basic income.[27]
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Bob Black's 1986 essayThe Abolition of Work proposes a "life based on play" to replace work. He argues that work degrades workers through discipline and habituation, and equates work to social control and mass murder.[28]
In 2022,Green Theory & Praxis Journal published a Total Liberation Pathway which involved "an abolition of compulsory work for all beings." Building on scholar Jason Hribal's description of animals as part of the working class and industries' labels of "working ecosystems" and "energy slaves," the proposal sought to free all animals, ecosystems, plants, minerals, and the planet Earth from exploitation. As part of this transformation, humans would drastically reduce their workweek and transform it into voluntary and self-managed hobbies.[29]
Those who engage in refusal of work break one of the most powerful social norms of contemporary society. Hence they frequently receive harassment from people, sometimes irrespective of whether they made the choice to leave work behind or not. InNazi Germany the so-called, "work-shy" individuals were rounded up and imprisoned inNazi concentration camps asblack triangle prisoners in the so-called "Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich".[30][31]
Cynicism (Greek:κυνισμός), in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancientschool of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics (Greek:Κυνικοί,Latin:Cynici). Their philosophy was that thepurpose of life was to live a life ofVirtue in agreement withNature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires forwealth,power,health, andfame, and by living asimple life free from all possessions. They believed that theworld belonged equally to everyone, and thatsuffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthlesscustoms andconventions which surroundedsociety.
The first philosopher to outline these themes wasAntisthenes, who had been a pupil ofSocrates in the late 5th century BCE. He was followed byDiogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub on the streets ofAthens. Diogenes took Cynicism to itslogical extremes, and came to be seen as the archetypal Cynic philosopher. He was followed byCrates of Thebes who gave away a large fortune so he could live a life of Cynic poverty in Athens. Cynicism spread with the rise ofImperial Rome in the 1st century, and Cynics could be found begging and preaching throughout the cities of theEmpire. It finally disappeared in the late 5th century, although many of itsascetic andrhetorical ideas were adopted byearly Christianity. The name Cynic derives from theGreek word κυνικός,kynikos, "dog-like" and that from κύων,kyôn, "dog" (genitive:kynos).[32]
It seems certain that the worddog was also thrown at the first Cynics as an insult for their shameless rejection of conventional manners, and their decision to live on the streets. Diogenes, in particular, was referred to asthe Dog.[33]
The termslacker is commonly used to refer to a person who avoids work (especiallyBritish English), or (primarily inNorth American English) an educated person who is viewed as anunderachiever.[34][35]
While use of the termslacker dates back to about 1790 or 1898 depending on the source, it gained some recognition during the BritishGezira Scheme, when Sudanese labourers protested their relative powerlessness by working lethargically, a form of protest known as 'slacking'.[36] The term achieved a boost in popularity after its use in the filmsBack to the Future andSlacker.[34][37]
NEET is anacronym for the government classification for people currently "Not inEmployment,Education orTraining". It was first used in theUnited Kingdom but its use has spread to other countries, including theUnited States,Japan,China, andSouth Korea.
In the United Kingdom, the classification comprises people aged between 16 and 24 (some 16-year-olds are still ofcompulsory education age). In Japan, the classification comprises people aged between 15 and 34 who areunemployed, unmarried, not enrolled in school or engaged inhousework, and not seeking work or the technical training needed for work. The "NEET group" is not a uniform set of individuals but consists of those who will be NEET for a short time while essentially testing out a variety of opportunities and those who have major and often multipleissues and are at long term risk of remaining disengaged.
InBrazil, "nem-nem" (short ofnem estudamnem trabalham (neither study nor work) is a term with similar meaning.[38]
In Spanish-speaking countries, "ni-ni" (short ofni estudiani trabaja) is also applied.
Freeter (フリーター,furītā) (other spellings below) is a Japanese expression for people between the age of 15 and 34 who lack full-time employment or are unemployed, excluding homemakers and students. They may also be described asunderemployed orfreelance workers. These people do not start acareer afterhigh school oruniversity but instead usually live as so-calledparasite singles with their parents and earn some money with low-skilled and low-paid jobs.
The wordfreeter orfreeta was first used around 1987 or 1988 and is thought to be an amalgamation of the English wordfree (or perhapsfreelance) and theGerman wordArbeiter ("worker").[39]
Parasite single (パラサイトシングル,parasaito shinguru) is aJapanese term for asingle person who lives with their parents until their late twenties or early thirties in order to enjoy a carefree and comfortable life. In English, the expression "sponge" or "basement dweller" may sometimes be used.
The expression is mainly used in reference to Japanese society, but similar phenomena can also be found in other countries worldwide. InItaly, 30-something singles still relying on their mothers are joked about, being calledBamboccioni (literally: grown-up babies) and in Germany they are known asNesthocker (German for analtricial bird), who are still living atHotel Mama [de].
Such behaviour is considered normal inGreece, both because of the traditional strong family ties and because of thelow wages.[40]
AWelfare queen is a derogatory term for a person, almost exclusively female and usually asingle mother, who lives primarily from welfare and other public assistance funds. The term implies that the person collects welfare, charity, or other handouts either fraudulently or excessively and that the person intentionally chooses to live "on the dole" as opposed to seeking gainful employment, ostensibly due to laziness.
Avagrant is derogatory term for a person in a situation ofpoverty, who wanders from place to place without ahome or regularemployment orincome. Manytowns in thedeveloped world haveshelters for vagrants. Common terminology is a tramp or a 'gentleman of the road'.
Laws against vagrancy in theUnited States have partly been invalidated as violative of thedue process clauses of theU.S. Constitution.[41] However, the FBI report on crime in the United States for 2005 lists 24,359 vagrancy violations.[42]
Ahobo is amigratory worker or homelessvagabond, oftenpenniless.[43] The term originated in thewestern—probablynorthwestern—United States during the last decade of the 19th century.[44] Unliketramps, who worked only when they were forced to, and bums, who did not work at all, hobos were workers who wandered.[44][45]
InBritish English and traditionalAmerican English usage, a tramp is a long termhomeless person who travels from place to place as an itinerantvagrant, traditionally walking orhiking all year round.
While some tramps may do odd jobs from time to time, unlike other temporarily homeless people they do not seek out regular work and support themselves by other means such asbegging orscavenging. This is in contrast to:
Both terms, "tramp" and "hobo" (and the distinction between them), were in common use between the 1880s and the 1940s. Their populations and the usage of the terms increased during theGreat Depression.
Like "hobo" and "bum", the word "tramp" is considered vulgar inAmerican English usage, having beensubsumed in more polite contexts by words such as "homeless person." Incolloquial American English, the word "tramp" can also mean a sexuallypromiscuous female or evenprostitute. Tramps used to be knowneuphemistically inEngland and Wales as "gentlemen of the road".
Tramp is derived from theMiddle English as a verb meaning to "walk with heavy footsteps", and to go hiking.Bart Kennedy, a self-described tramp of 1900 US, once said "I listen to the tramp, tramp of my feet, and wonder where I was going, and why I was going."[46]
Concerning this, political economy, speaking for eternal justice, says: 'producing by one's capital is producing by one's tools.' This is what ought to be called 'producing by a slave, by a thief and by a tyrant.' He, the proprietor, produce?... A robber might as well say: 'I produce.'
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