Why We Work

“When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music,” -Khalil Gibran

Photo by Zoe Schaeffer on Unsplash

The disastrous Fox News “interview” with Doreen Ford (of the r/AntiWork subreddit) is one of the most frustrating clips ever put to screen. This wasn’t Doreen’s fault: she was failed by those from whom her rhetoric had been derived. There are plenty of unthinking socialists in the world, and having the right opinion doesn’t mean one has thought through a topic rightly.

According to them, r/AntiWork is: “A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.” In essence, its a forum for the discussion of the ills of late-stage capitalism. It is used to disseminate information and provoke class consciousness.

Posts focus on the abuses of delusional employers, the fraud and coercion working against consumers, and stories of people leaving their horrible jobs after far too long.

In a way, the subreddit paints an image that is at-odds with the generic American misconception of a socialist. Hunger, hard labor, and fearful discipline under the eye of an authoritarian government is to be contrasted with what your average Republican assumes to be the socialist of today: lazy, decadent, and unruly.

The interview went horribly. Doreen was laughed at by the interviewer, a scene staged to be so wantonly cruel, its a marvel anyone at Fox thought it would make for an optical win (and absolutely dizzying that they seemed to be correct), and she left the audience no less baffled than they were amused. It was a shitshow.

And while many may respond that it isn’t the job of socialists to dumb down their language to get small — minded people to understand, those people are wrong. We do need class consciousness: it is one of the single greatest needs we have, second only to drastic action to stall climate change. And socialists are the only ones that can create this consciousness.

r/AntiWork people know this, if Doreen’s cancelation from within her community is any indication. Those telling Doreen that she had no right…