I was 23 when I found myself on a half-broken IKEA bed with my boyfriend, discussing wage slavery and the anti-work movement. He was younger than me and also worked a lot less than I had at that point in my life, finding it difficult to maintain a job due to his strong beliefs that all work is indeed bullshit. It helped that his mom always provided a roof over his head and some food in the fridge, though often that was scarce. It also began to seem like he was getting a little too comfortable staying at my place and expecting me to pay for his food and expensive pour-over coffees when we went to coffee shops to write together.
I mention this because I think it’s a great example of the inherent tension of being a human alive in the modern world and also being someone who is inherently anti-work. Do I believe the concept of "work" under capitalism is inevitably abusive? Yes. Do I believe that "wage slavery" is real? Absolutely. Do I also not want to feel responsible for buying expensive coffees for my underemployed boyfriends? For sure.
Despite being someone who has coped with my pain, fear, and anxiety mostly through overwork and ambition and pushing myself unreasonably, after my brief foray into underemployment as an adult, I realized that I actually fair quite well, despite the obvious financial implications, when I am not working in the traditional sense, meaning when I do not have a traditional job. In fact, the time away from my last job only made me more aware of the abuses of power I endured over the almost four years I gave often 12 to 14-hour days to my employer.
During my brief time underemployed, I still labored. And I’m not including applying for full-time jobs here, though I did plenty of that. I was astounded to see how much work taking care of myself and others on a daily basis actually took. It gave me compassion for myself in a way I hadn’t felt before. No wonder I felt so overloaded and exhausted most of the time. I was doing all of this mostly by myself, and poorly I will add, in addition to working long hours at multiple jobs. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d done it. I’m still not.
My boyfriend and I spent many hours discussing social anarchism and Derrick Jensen’s Endgame in which he advocates for and imagines "an end to technologized, industrialized civilization and a return to agrarian communal life.“ I still vividly remember a passage about salmon that was so beautiful it made me cry. Growing up in the suburbs outside of Pittsburgh then living in Pittsburgh then New York then San Francisco, I never felt close to the land. I felt the oppressive needs and expectations of people and institutions. The closest I came to feeling any real sense of freedom was riding my bike to and from school and later to and from work. Briefly, I felt like I could do anything and go anywhere while on my bike. I couldn’t name any of the trees around me. Almost all the food I consumed growing up was packaged in plastic in cardboard boxes and was processed except for the bags of corn we got every summer from a farm. I would husk the corn on the front porch with my grandmother and feel immense joy. I loved this task. It made me feel connected to history, to people before me who were more immediately connected to what fed them and the stakes and responsibility it took to sustain the land and thus themselves so immediately, without so many middle men. I found that process beautiful and I was sad to feel so far away from it.
A "wage slave" is defined as:
someone who must work so they can earn enough money to live on and pay for the things they need
The history of "wage slavery“ is long, some citing the idea as far back as ancient Rome with Cicero quoted as saying, "the very wage [wage labourers] receive is a pledge of their slavery.“
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