A-Infos (en) Turkey, Yeryuzu Postasi: Frequently Asked Questions About Ultra-Sol - Ediciones Inéditas (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

We often receive similar questions about what our positions are in terms 
of organization, work, communization, the self-abolition of the 
proletariat, and our experience of our own activities in this 
environment. We hope to provide some quick answers to these questions in 
this FAQ. This will continue to be a work in progress. ---- Negation of 
work is the name of the process that eliminates work. Discussions of 
work elimination can be confusing because different theorists writing on 
the subject sometimes use the terms labor and work interchangeably, 
while others have specific definitions for each term.

This is an English-specific problem though, as other languages usually 
have one word for work rather than two. (Spanish: trabajo; French: travail).

The ultra-left generally sees the abolition of work as 1) a necessary 
part of the process of proletariat self-destruction, 2) because in order 
to liberate the proletariat from capitalism, the proletariat must 
self-destruct through revolution.

As an aside, the proletariat is not just 'workers' but EVERYONE who 
needs money to live, whether legal or not, directly or through someone 
else. This includes those who are unable to work, the unemployed, 
caregivers who are not directly paid, sex workers, etc. is included.

3) What the elimination of work essentially points to is the fact that 
work as we know it is a product of history and has not always existed. 
Just as wage labor and capitalism did not always exist. Therefore, for 
the ultra-left, the elimination of work is necessary to the creation of 
communism because work as we know it is something that arises from 
capitalism itself. It is a unique social category. 4) For the 
ultra-left, communism is not just about having what you want and/or 
need, but about getting rid of our proletarian status altogether. 
Communism would therefore be the abolition of the work/non-work duality, 
because even in capitalism non-work time (leisure) is a necessary part 
of work, where we are freed from the work of the day, the week, the 
month (in Marx's terms: the recovery of our labour-power). It is seen 
as. 5) So how to eliminate this duality? By breaking down the false 
distinction between work and non-work in our activities. This does not 
mean that all our time will be ONLY work or ONLY non-work, but rather 
that our life paths will no longer find it necessary to divide our time 
into such categories.

An example sometimes used: A bear is wandering through the forest, 
scratching himself on trees, attacking insects, and then comes across a 
stream with fish. The bear feels hungry and decides it's time to catch a 
fish. He dives into the stream and catches one after a few tries. He 
enjoys his meal as the sun begins to set. Now, at some point the bear 
decides it's working? Is catching fish fun? Or is it work? Or does such 
a dilemma not even make sense?

This may sound utopian, as human societies are often much more complex 
than the life of a bear, but there was a time like this when human 
activities were not so uniquely driven by the false capitalist scarcity 
under which we live. 6) If the activity we need to do in order to live 
is directly tied to our true needs and desires, then it ceases to be 
work and becomes not another timetable to be punched, another 
imposition, but simply doing the things that need to be done so that we 
can live the lives we desire. This is part of the process of ceasing to 
be workers and beginning to reconstitute the human community(ies). Even 
Karl Marx, whom many Marxists see as a defender of labor rather than the 
abolition of labor, states in The German Ideology that one of the 
features of communist society is that our scope of activity has greatly 
expanded and we no longer have overly specialized roles as in capitalism.

Of course, this doesn't mean that housework will magically stop being 
housework; Rather, housework will cease to be something that only takes 
place at home and remains gendered. A fair amount of prestructuring will 
need to occur to dismantle the patriarchal (and often racialized) 
gendering of activity required of our homes. But this activity will 
necessarily become communal and will not depend only on people with high 
social isolation and will not be transferred to those with lower social 
status (i.e. racialized immigrants, etc.).

7) This points to another important feature of communism. Communism is 
not a mode of production like capitalism. Rather, it is a way of life 
that collapses the social categories of production and consumption. In 
other words, it is not just another way of running the business world as 
some communists and anarchists see it. These social categories, 
production and consumption, exist under capitalism because ALL 
production and consumption are focused on the extraction of surplus 
value from the labor of the proletariat and not on the direct needs 
and/or desires of those forced to work. This explains the social 
division within capitalist time and space: we go to the store to consume 
and we go to work 'to produce'. Many of the destructive aspects of 
industrial society will likely disappear because the vast majority of 
work is based on making profits, not meeting human needs or desires. In 
capitalism, unless you're getting paid to get by, who wants to sit in a 
shop making junk that no one really needs? 9) Communism, then, is not 
about human domination over the natural world, but about reintegration 
with it. There is also a collapse between city and country. And to 
achieve this, work must necessarily be eliminated so that our social 
relations are fundamentally changed and not just managed differently.

8) So, what is anti-work? It's a term we use to describe our position 
when it comes to business and capitalism. Bruno Astarian wrote a long 
article on the history of anti-workism and its differentiation from the 
rejection of labor. You can access it here. Saidiya Saidiya Hartman has 
also written a speculative historical essay around a young black woman, 
Esther Brown, that illuminates a racialized and gendered rejection of 
work in which work is seen as opposed to a directly lived, unalienated 
life. You can find it here (pdf).

Of course, the horizon of a communist future seems incredibly far and 
distant, but just a few generations ago people were living in communal, 
non-capitalist societies around the world.

Source: Ultra-Left FAQ - The abolition of work / negation of work / 
Anti-work

Translation: heimatloskultu / Konzept

https://www.yeryuzupostasi.org/2024/04/10/ultra-sol-hakkinda-sikca-sorulan-sorular-ediciones-ineditas/
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