Paths to Paradise

by Gorz, André (1985)

Key Passage

This, then, is the fundamental aim of keeping full-time work as the norm - to maintain the relations of domination based on the work ethic. This political preservation of the ideological bases of domination has a high social cost. It leads inevitably to a dualistic division of the active population: on one side, acting as the repository of industrialism's traditional values, an elite of permanent, secure, full-time workers, attached to their work and their social status; on the other, a mass of unemployed and precarious casual workers, without qualifications ' or status , performing menial tasks. All industrial societies are moving towards this 'dualism' (which has always been conspicuous in Japan) in which the class of permanent workers is destined to play a conservative role as defender of the old order. On the other hand, the mass of disaffected non-workers is the possible social subject of the struggle for work-sharing, generalised reduction of work time, gradual abolition of waged work by the expansion of autoproduction, and for a living income for all.
(p.35)

Translator

Imrie M

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