As I sit down to write this post, my mind swirls with frustration at the utter disappointment that is modern-day capitalist societies. This is because today marks another day of human involuntary work. Despite the rapid technological advances witnessed by humankind during modern history, somehow, the glaring inconsistency remains where humans have to labour for survival. Remember those proclamations made by numerous experts claiming the dawn of a new age of automation where machines supplant work entirely? Well, this vision remains as distant today as it was when it first emerged decades ago. I know many folks will scoff at this tired old rant, and retort: "well, someone has to keep the world running". But I just don't buy that anymore.

When did we lose hope on alternatives?

It seems like there was once a time — albeit quite long ago, even before my parents were born — where people pondered what life could look like if freed of the burdens of earning a living. A quick peek at newspapers from a century ago would reveal similar laments over how the Four Horsemen of industrialism plagued men & women alike; monotony, Puritanic notions of industriousness, social inequality, and perpetually seeking a means to profitability beyond merely selling necessities. In the early 20th century, people believed that greater efficiency via scientific management almost logically entailed reducing working hours and ultimately abolishing work. They took it for granted that an abundant material goods brought about by technological advancement will eventually lead to a situation where we will have more leisure time to devote to personal interests or creative pursuit without the constant pressure to produce and consume. Such predictions were completely rational and stemmed from an honest desire to create meaningful lives devoid of superfluous strife.

One famous example is Bertrand Russell’s 1932 essay, "In Praise of Idleness." Russell argued for a reduction of the working day to four hours where leisure time is prioritised, stating that "If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment." In Russell's vision, idleness isn't synonymous with laziness or doing nothing; rather, it's the opportunity to engage in activities that feed one's intellect, nurture creativity, and contribute to personal growth and happiness. In this future, people would be freed from the burden of overwork and would spend time on fulfilling activities—such as learning, inventing, creating art, and participating in community activities.

Hell, even Keynes himself predicted society moving toward three-hour workdays by 2030 (though he may have undershot things by a few decades). After finally reaching a post-work transition, he says in the surest of ways, that

…for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well. […] But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

But somewhere along the line, efforts to achieve this goal fell flat (or worse). We stand today stuck in a rut caused by institutional shortcomings and intransigence, struggling to imagine anything beyond ceaseless labour, often in work neither meaningful nor enjoyable. The idea that we haven’t figured out how to construct something better after so many years and so little experimentation fills me with melancholy. If someone had told Russell et al. that, in 2023, we would still have to spend most of our lives toiling, they wouldn't have believed it possible.

What made these twentieth-century predictions dissolve into fantasy? What's keeping us locked in this strange feedback loop of ever-more efficient productivity, trapping us within a vicious cycle of production and consumption? It’s not like we don’t have the knowledge and means to reduce labour hours or even abolish it entirely. One hears of celestial milestones almost every other week; “first Mars mission”; “first confirmed exoplanets”; “first artificial intelligence outperforming human capabilities”. Despite technological capabilities surpassing anything the Futurama expo could have imagined, “productivity” continues to skyrocket even though fewer individuals are needed in industrialised sectors. Improved production techniques should, in principle, mean fewer hours needed for subsistence, leaving ample opportunities for exploration and “fun”. But what instead happened was the proliferation of white-collar office work or service gigs, positions that later became paradoxical traps; while they provide financial stability, they also keep employees confined within the realm of drudgery and soul-sucking busywork.

With the innovations of the Industrial Revolution and later, the Digital Revolution, surely someone, somewhere throughout the past hundred years came up with a solution to liberate society from the shackles of labor and open up limitless possibilities?

There are no alternatives

Countless proposals were put forth in the mid-twentieth century, such as Keynesianism, which sought to mitigate excesses through federal intervention, before giving way to neoliberalism's laissez-faire approach that retreated away from that level of authority under moniker "Reaganite" / "Thatcherite", and Milton Friedman’s free marketeering. None delivered on their promises. We are still stuck oscillating between never-ending stream of ideas that haven't amounted to anything tangible, all the while the futurist visions elude us amidst squabbles over resources and power. We struggle with what is in essence two key ideological divides, whether to prioritise individual liberty, property rights, or corporatocracy via deregulation (libertarian leanings) or enforce stronger environmental protectionism, social democratic measures, and redistribution of wealth (progressivism). While plenty advocate for moderation somewhere along this spectrum, the debate over how much control authorities should exert over industry vs citizens continues to rage. Ultimately everyone seeks safety and stability albeit via very divergent routes. But the mainstream debate remains ensconced within these confounds, without ever questioning the need for work.

Primitivists and anarchists have since argued that the focus on employment and jobs hinders society's search for better quality of life, proposing scrapping this notion and instead addressing essential needs, fulfilling passions, or reducing waste. Others advocate for more modern reform, yet they then quickly encounter conflict regarding distribution of resources and wealth given inherent inequality of skill levels; for example, not everyone possesses the talent necessary to compose operas and symphonies or create breathtaking sculptures. To this, the revolutionaries and anarchists retort that such divisions arise from unequal access to education and encouragement, not biologically predestined genetic superiority and other discrepancies in individual talent. This discussion remains highly charged with emotion regardless. And while these countless revolutionary voices rail against centralised systems, they simultaneously crave security in a fully independent anarchy, oscillating wildly between opposites and unable to compromise for pragmatic balance.

And proposed alternatives like Universal Basic Income sure sound nice as a patchwork but does not completely alleviate the need for employment or change the nature of work in the way our grandparents, and their parents, thought things will and ought to be. The best we were able to muster is disparate and practically unheard of movements on producing 'Right to Disconnect' laws or pushes for a four-day work week that - though will probably never see the light of day on any legislation - serve as coping fuel for the disgruntled masses.

The lack of experimental solutions following Thatcher’s “There Are No Alternatives” pro-market slogan and to which Mark Fisher contemptibly called “capitalist realism” - has lead many to seek solace in dystopian fiction, imagining apocalyptic scenarios or authoritarian regimes (on the Right and the Left) that can offer answers. They long for an escape, and believe that total transformation or complete destruction offers better odds of survival than slow incrementalism, reform and adaptation. Some propose returning to small towns for community living or rejecting industrial civilisation wholesale, while others scoff at this and believe that “technology will solve all”.

Often caught between daydream fantasies and stark, somber realpolitik, it becomes challenging to navigate these conflicting thoughts and emotions without descending into despair. I am continuously in awe of those who feel positive about such things as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, renewable energy, genetic engineering, and other inventions that, considering the gravity of our circumstances, act as floppy bandaids on a deeply wounded system.

The obsession with productivity

There is nothing new in this, every generation pines for a "life after work". Throughout modern history, we've spun stories about an indeterminate and elusive future where a revolutionary invention - be it the railway, the factory system, or computers - would get rid of labour for good. Yet we cannot ignore dark clouds hanging above our heads, particularly when reflecting upon the countless examples in which every such technology is invariably channeled strictly to line market tycoons' wallets and commandeered to fuel capitalist ambitions. Genetic engineering is instead funnelled into research on designer babies while machine learning algorithms are used to make virtual reality indistinguishable from reality to satiate escapism needs. Or consider the evolution of the internet: once a beacon of hope, now sadly reduced into a tool primarily for consumption, data harvesting and advertising clickbait content to feed the voracious appetites of big business. And today, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, VISA et al. are all currently investing vast amounts of money into AI and machine learning research, yet merely to serve another layer upon which capital accumulation rests rather than addressing the perennial struggles against labour. Every innovation that was supposed to make life easier and reduce the necessity of employment just ends up making up new acquired needs for jobs in order to increase efficiency and productivity, therefore exacerbating the problem rather than solving it.

This idea - where increased productive capacity just ends up increasing consumption, driven by capitalist ambitions for generating evermore capital (guided by measures like “increase GDP”) and thereby increasing labour needs - was predicted by Russell almost a century ago when he proposed a thought experiment:

Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

At an individual level, this is verified by the Easterlin Paradox, based on economist Richard Easterlin’s paper "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence". The paradox suggests that once your income reaches a certain level, any additional increase in earnings won't impact your overall happiness. He also found that consumption levels directly correlate with income levels, meaning that when people reach a certain satisfaction point, any increase in consumption also does not make them any more happier. So it seems like our generational credo is economic growth for growths sake, come what may in terms of social and ecological harm!

Do we even deserve salvation?

As I look back on the last century, it is heartbreaking to contemplate how little our species has advanced in terms of reducing work. Not only have we failed to eliminate the need for remunerative labour, we haven’t even managed to reduce working hours since 1919. Faith in traditional Protestant ethics about slothfulness exemplified in the old Christian proverb ‘Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do’ still hold their grip on our attitudes as strong as they had been during the Reformation. They ensure that countless generations remain mired in economic servitude through perpetuating the myth of compulsory work, despite advancement, and the fetishisation of efficiency and productivity .

One thing that gives me little comfort comes from questioning why exactly civilisation deserves to continue in its current form anyways, especially when one thinks of the spectres of resource depletion, ecological catastrophe, and climate change looming heavily in the background. I don’t think we merit the bounty of natural endowments at our disposal if we insist on remaining captives to archaic forms of organisation and behaviour rooted in avarice. And if we examine the situation closely, the possibility of societal collapse resulting in the death of billions feels almost preferable compared to perpetuating a system where billions around the world must suffer needlessly for generations to come. There is little point to maintaining a species dedicated to self-preservation if the price exacted consists of tolerating widespread affliction that, in any case, will ultimately lead to collective extinction.

So unless we begin to radically transform society towards postcapitalism, antinatalism serves as a legitimate option. I have done my job of neutering myself and avoid bringing new souls into a flawed setup guaranteed to cause suffering. Yes, stopping reproduction isn't ideal either, but at least it prevents further heartache, less mouths to feed, and ensures no generations beyond owe us gratitude. After all, nobody wants the responsibility of apologising to hypothetical grandchildren.