“The struggle against work has always been central to
anarchist organizing. By this I mean, not the struggle
for better worker conditions or higher wages, but the
struggle to eliminate work, as a relation of domina-
tion, entirely. Hence the IWW slogan “against the
wage system.” This is a long-term goal of course. In
the shorter term, what can’t be eliminated can at least
be reduced. Around the turn of the century, the
Wobblies and other anarchists played the central role
in winning workers the 5-day week and 8-hour day.
In Western Europe social democratic govern-
ments are now, for the first time in almost a century,
once again reducing the working week. They are only
instituting trifling changes (from a 40-hour week to
35), but in the US no one’s even discussing that much.
Instead they are discussing whether to eliminate time-
and-a-half for overtime. This despite the fact that
Americans now spend more hours working than any
other population in the world, including Japan. So the
Wobblies have reappeared, with what was to be the
next step in their program, even back in the ‘20s: the
16-hour week. (“4-day week, 4-hour day.”) Again, on
the face of it, this seems completely unrealistic, even
insane. But has anyone carried out a feasibility study?
After all, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that a
considerable chunk of the hours worked in America
are only actually necessary to compensate for prob-
lems created by the fact that Americans work too
much. (Consider here such jobs as all-night pizza
deliveryman or dog-washer, or those women who run
nighttime day care centers for the children of women
who have to work nights providing child care for
businesswomen…not to mention the endless hours
spent by specialists cleaning up the emotional and
physical damage caused by overwork, the injuries,
suicides, divorces, murderous rampages, producing
the drugs to pacify the children…)
So what jobs are really necessary?
Well, for starters, there are lots of jobs whose
disappearance, almost everyone would agree, would
be a net gain for humanity. Consider here telemar-
keters, stretch-SUV manufacturers, or for that matter,
corporate lawyers. We could also eliminate the entire
advertising and PR industries, fire all politicians and
their staffs, eliminate anyone remotely connected with
an HMO, without even beginning to get near essen-
tial social functions. The elimination of advertising
would also reduce the production, shipping, and
selling of unnecessary products, since those items
people actually do want or need, they will still figure
out a way to find out about. The elimination of
radical inequalities would mean we would no longer
require the services of most of the millions currently
employed as doormen, private security forces, prison
guards, or SWAT teams—not to mention the military.
Beyond that, we’d have to do research. Financiers,
insurers, and investment bankers are all essentially
parasitic beings, but there might be some useful func-
tions in these sectors that could not simply be
replaced with software. All in all we might discover
that if we identified the work that really did need to
be done to maintain a comfortable and ecologically
sustainable standard of living, and redistribute the
hours, it may turn out that the Wobbly platform is
perfectly realistic. Especially if we bear in mind that
it’s not like anyone would be forced to stop working
after four hours if they didn’t feel like it. A lot of
people do enjoy their jobs, certainly more than they
would lounging around doing nothing all day (that’s
why in prisons, when they want to punish inmates,
they take away their right to work), and if one has
eliminated the endless indignities and sadomasochistic
games that inevitably follow from top-down organiza-
tion, one would expect a lot more would. It might
even turn out that no one will have to work more
than they particularly want to.”

-David Graeber, from ‘Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology’