Aphorisms Against Work
by Len Bracken

Suggestions to the Slacker Generation on
Commencing a Post-Workerist Revolution

Humans are congenitally allergic to work -
they don't want to work whenever they have a chance not to work.

The sacrosanct notion of work is the cause of most of humanity's woes. Never trust the priests of work because they've poisoned their minds with it. For example, the quantity of economically necessary work declines, yet politicians and economists tell us that the only way to end unemployment is with more useless work. Why couldn't more people do much less?

The invention of workerism gradually, and even then only partially, subverted our natural inclination to be lazy and our disinclination to work.

The ugly brown dye of work spills across this miserable civilization, saturating the fabric of everyday life, day after back-breaking day.

The masses martyr themselves with work.

Work surrounds us and lays siege to our souls.

Going to work is like hurling yourself into an abyss.

The time has come to prepare the sacred cow of work for slaughter.

There are three types of labor - wage work, domestic labor and autonomous activity, the latter being (in most cases) exempt from charges of drudgery and slavery.

Slaves feel tired just thinking of all the work they've yet to do.

Many waters cannot quench our thirst for laziness, nor floods drown it.

Creativity constrains the return of work; be creative and put severe constraints on work.

Laziness is a comedy in which we can all play a part, a veritable field of sunblown flowers where the unruly colors of the universe dance with the wind.

Fling your work schedule into the river of time.

The legends of paradise teach us to curse work, reminding us that laziness is the essential goal of humanity.

All power to zeroworker councils - impose a strict regime of laziness!

The right to work is the right to misery and always implies the possibility of the right not to work.

Now more than ever, we've got to fight the measures designed to make those who refuse to work, work.

Laziness is the source of all virtue.

Work is the graveyard of bad intentions.

Authentic humans feel degraded by those who preach the religion of work.

Pay your debts with an effigy of your boss.

Wage labor perpetuates the archaic system whereby armies and courts consume the profits of overproduction.

In a ton of work, there's not an ounce of love.

Work or perish - what choice is that? I'd rather die than work.

A life of labor always diminishes one's love of life, so become a verb like Bucky Fuller and cease to be the lowly noun spoken of so fondly, once a year, on Labor Day.

If you haven't started working, don't do it - fuller.

"Elite" workers are allied with bosses against fellow humans who are either incapable or, praise them, idle.

Work inhibits the noble passions of humanity.

Workers betray their natural instincts to be lazy and lose their vitality - stop being workers and never work again.

Laziness is the mother of passion, a veritable bed of lust.

Disgrace to the proletariat that gives into work.

For Oblomov, there was the world of work and boredom, and the world of rest and enjoyment. We need more works that display such love of idleness.

Work isn't a task, it's torture.

The plague of work, the bulimia of work, the homicide of work - give work its proper attributes.

Work is a ball and chain.

Work brings dishonor to your house.

No pity for those tormented by a passion for work.

Labor only sustains life by stunting it. Tell me how much you work and I'll tell you what you are.

The only place to contemplate the wisdom of humanity is on the throne of laziness.

Now we have a system where most work and few are lazy. The rejection of work is the basis of sub-proletarian revolution, so take victories over work where you can get them.

Put your best efforts into laziness and prepare for the coming inaction.

Waiting for the Waterloo of work...

The biggest tragedy of the teen years? Sublime beings become workers.

Work for full unemployment.

The culture of productivism employes work for social discipline and control - in a word, domination. Look around you in the subway - you share the world with masses of domestic slaves on the way to, or recovering from, their latest paroxysm of work.

Work is long; the boss a beast.

Instead of the penitentiary of the salary, we want guaranteed social incomes, in addition and unrelated to, the number of hours we work.

Kick the work habit.

Death to Malthus, religion and the dogma of work.

Laziness is the religion of the XXIst Century.

Worship the oracle of laziness.

Every prison is built with work.

Inhibit, as best you can, the vice of work.

Workers and consumers are the miserable servants of machines and their endless demands.

Because of the dogma of workerism, unemployment is a problem rather than the boon to humanity that it should be.

The tragedy is that those who do work, work so much they are no longer human.

Those who don't work are reduced to a miserable existence amidst the spectacle of plenty.

Work is not the continuation of divine creation, rather a contest of life and death whereby work triumphs over wisdom, and (vice versa).

After all, if God doesn't work, why should I?

Augustine (the so-called "saint") tied monastic work to divine creation and denounced laziness. The confusion engendered by the mama's boy from Hippo (between divine work and ordinary labor) opened the door to the condemnation of leisure.

The Augustinian classification of licit and illicit jobs should be applied by a revolutionary federation of zeroworker councils making much of what is now called "work" taboo.

Recall that Paul's "Second Epistle to the Thessalonians" is used to invoke the need to work: the Thessalonians were convinced that the second coming of Christ was at hand; hence work useless. I've never liked Paul - not his style, nor his dictum: no work, no eat.

Thomas Aquinas, reacting to the fact that the number of illicit jobs had been reduced as commerce and craft grew, came up with the category of common utility that revalued many jobs, including commerce. This revaluing must be revalued.

Sacrifice work for the sake of life (or at least snarl at your boss and give him the finger).

Production for the sake of production is as vapid as art for art's sake.

The system is bent on economizing time, but it's afraid to give free time to people.

The ethics of effort and competition are ultimately rewarded with the demolition of solidarity.

The seeds of universal solidarity are found in the process of taking time back from work.

According to the priests of work, everything can become a job. The monetizing of all activity disguises work as leisure (and vice versa) and creates a society of impoverished servants, many of whom are still without work.

For the Greeks, to work is to be enslaved by necessity.

To paraphrase Marx: Labor dominates necessity by producing surplus and simultaneously submits to the instruments of this domination.

Bad workers can't be controlled by management, especially when they're ready to pretend to be loyal employees and otherwise lie to the enemy.

For Hegel, work is "refrained desire," a force that only adequately negates the object of desire. Desire frees itself from work by consuming commodities in the fires of South Central Los Angeles.

Everything that requires effort and supports the market - shopping, cleaning, watching television - has become work, albeit invisible work.

Work dies on the comfy pillory of laziness, putting a momentary end to the system that sublimates sex with work.

No herb will cure work.

Between wages and salaries flows a river of tears.

Laziness is my food, love my wine.

Work is to life as a wall is to the wind.

Laziness and hedonism prevail over productivism and puritanism.

In other words, workerism is a pile of shit - only mad cocks get on it and crow.

Work sits, as the saying goes, at the brave rider's back.

Freedom begins where work ends.

"The Crisis of overproduction worsens as unemployment grow to staggering proportions (1/5th of the global population). If more people produced much less, the ecology of the planet would prosper." L.B.

Also by Len Bracken

Guy Debord - Revolutionary: a critical biography (Feral House, Venice)

Of related interest, the renowned fake:

The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy by Gianfranco Sanguinetti - translated by Len Bracken (Flatland POB 2420, Fort Bragg, California 95437)

"Prepare for the coming inaction - be lazy." L.B.

"To do what the boss orders you to do is slavery,
to do so for money is prostitution." L.B.

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