Post-work politics: a critique

Post-work thought seeks to comprehensively challenge our ‘work society’, which is condemned for hampering our freedom in basic ways. In arguing for a ‘post-work society’, post-work thinkers reject the social centrality of work and call for a world where social integration, self-identity, and community would no longer hinge upon work. The policies typically proposed towards that end are universal basic income, shorter working hours, and increased automation. This paper offers a critique of the post-work political platform. My core contention is that the demand for us to cease understanding work as socially central is politically mistaken. This is on account of the inescapability of ‘socially necessary labour’, which throws into doubt the possibility of a post-work future. A further contention is that the main post-work policy proposals do not adequately deal with the problems post-workists and others identify within our work society. In addition, post-work presuppositions and rhetoric combine to undermine the solidarity needed to effect thorough-going political change. This is alongside the failure of post-work thinkers to properly accommodate a key emancipatory political end, the advancement of freedom as collective self-determination and worker control. For these reasons, post-work politics is not a viable path towards a better, freer world.