[D66] The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought

[A.OUT]

Work? never again...

On 29-06-19 13:19, A.OUT wrote:
> https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030125851
> 
> The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought
> From Charles Fourier to Guy Debord
> 
> Authors: Hemmens, Alastair
> 
>     Offers a critical and historical approach to the meaning of work in
> society
> 
> 
>     What is work? Why do we do it? Since time immemorial the answer to
> these questions, from both the left and the right, has been that work is
> both a natural necessity and, barring exploitation, a social good. One
> might criticise its management, its compensation and who benefits from
> it the most, but never work itself, never work as such. In this book,
> Alastair Hemmens seeks to challenge these received ideas. Drawing on the
> new ‘critique-of-value’ school of Marxian critical theory, Hemmens
> demonstrates that capitalism and its final crisis cannot be properly
> understood except in terms of the historically specific and socially
> destructive character of labour. It is from this radical perspective
> that Hemmens turns to an innovative critical analysis of the rich
> history of radical French thinkers who, over the past two centuries,
> have challenged the labour form head on: from the utopian-socialist
> Charles Fourier, who called for the abolition of the separation between
> work and play, and Marx’s wayward son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, who
> demanded The Right to Laziness (1880), to the father of Surrealism,
> André Breton, who inaugurated a ‘war on work’, and, of course, the
> French Situationist, Guy Debord, author of the famous graffito, ‘never
> work’. Ultimately, Hemmens considers normative changes in attitudes to
> work since the 1960s and the future of anti-capitalist social movements
> today. This book will be a crucial point of reference for contemporary
> debates about labour and the anti-work tradition in France.
> 
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