JF

I refuse to believe "communism is free time and nothing else". The manifest failure of bourgeois society is that "those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work." To assume what comes after is "post-work" is a truly bourgeois fantasy.

is this primarily a question of dignity? i.e. idea that work is uniquely degrading not inherently, but due to its positioning as "the thing you do if you aren't rich enough to avoid it"

or else the old joke about a capitalist parent looking at a garbageman and going "if you dont study that's where you'll end up" and a communist saying "you should be like that guy, working to keep our streets clean"

It's not really about dignity, no. I accept that, to a certain extent, work is regrettable and degrading, but it's also a social necessity and will remain so for the foreseeable future. So for me post-work is both practically unworkable and ideologically suspect.

i think about this a bit because just via eyeball test some of the most electorally effective socdem rhetoric seems to be about restoring dignity to labor, rather than necessarily reducing/eliminating it, vis- "nobody who works a full time job should" etc

like i think this thing does seem to appeal to a voter base in some very basic way, which is important to examine