Paths to Paradise

by Gorz, André (1985)

Key Passage

there is every reason to suppose that abolition of the permanent compulsion to work, along with the development of family, community, collective and co-operative life and activity, will encourage people to seek socially determined work for the same reasons as 'housebound women', retired people, the unemployed and sons and daughters of peasants seek waged work, however, unrewarding. It provides an escape from the narrowness and stifling conformity of the domestic unit or village community, a way of meeting other people from other places with whom relationships can be freer, less familiar, than with those who see you first and foremost as daughter or daughter-in-law, sister or cousin, and tie you to a carefully regulated world where everyone must keep to their allotted place.19 It allows you to feel useful to society in a general sense, rather than in a particular way subject to particular relationships, and thus to exist as a fully social individual protected from the pressures of particular groups by anonymous membership of society at large. (p.54)

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Gorz Citations

Translator

Imrie, M.

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