Anarchist & Radical Book Club discussion

For the next couple months we'll be reading and discussing Crimethinc's newest book, Work. Use this space to share reactions to the text, as well as any other context, links, background, history, or thoughts that seem relevant and will help us understand (or critique!) what we're reading better.

Crimethinc describes the book thisaway:
After so much technological progress, why do we have to work more than ever before? How is it that the harder we work, the poorer we end up compared to our bosses? When the economy crashes, why do people focus on protecting their jobs when no one likes working in the first place? Can capitalism survive another century of crises?

Our newest book, entitled Work, addresses these questions and a great many more. To answer them, we had to revisit our previous analysis of employment and develop a more nuanced understanding of the economy. We spent months studying obscure history and comparing notes about how we experience exploitation in our daily lives, slowly hammering out a grand unified theory of contemporary capitalism.

... From the industrial revolution to the internet, from the colonization of the Americas to the explosion of the service sector and the stock market, from the 2008 financial crisis to the upheavals taking place right now across the globe, Work offers an overview of how capitalism functions in the 21st century and what we can do to get beyond it.

I couldn't find a free version (though they do have this nice poster...), so please link if you have one.

I'm about 2/3 through. I thought the first chunk on "Work" was fairly uninteresting-- sociological analysis without any rigor which didn't really deepen my understanding of anything.

The section on the financial crisis of 2008 and the structures that contributed to it, however, is a totally other story! It's excellent! I've studied the crisis in some depth from the perspective of the global food crisis [example], but this summary is refreshing, clearly researched, and well-articulated! There are a couple theses I'm starting to see in the book: pursuing self interest is NOT in the best interest of everyone; resources flow from the bottom and are concentrated at the top; having money makes more money. I'll try to distill some clearer ideas as I get further along.

Anyone else reading this? What are your thoughts? I'm enjoying the pace and plan to finish in the next few days.

I've just barely started. I agree, thus far it's not super interesting because I've read a lot of crimethinc stuff and am not a total n00b to a lot of these ideas. However, I think it could be a really great intro for people who are new to the idea of work NOT being necessary. I'm excited to read on to the analysis of the 2008 crisis, because I haven't read a lot on it. Also, this is my first time participating in this book club, and I'm stoked!!

I'm about 2/3 the way through now. I have to say: I quite like it! This is the first Crimethinc. book I've read.

I think the book itself is beautiful, the drawings, the colors, the font. I love all the commentary inserted into the pictures. The book itself is a piece of art: I don't want to mark it up with pencil (which is a shame, there is tons I'd love to mark up in this book).

As for the information in the book: I find it helpful yet depressing. The major thesis seems to be: capitalism is a pyramid scheme; and then they describe each and every way we are implicated in the scheme. A sub-theme seems to be how capitalism and feudalism are actually quite similar (something I have definitely been feeling lately!). I am very excited to read the Resistance section. I have high hopes for it.

I also like how the book is interspersed with personal stories of work (and resistance) - some more affecting than others.

Originally I thought it was strange that there weren't any references in the book (I thought it made their writing less plausible). But they have a good excuse for that on p.372.

I thought the Prison section was pretty amazing, but a few other sections left me wanting. I wasn't so sure I bought their argument in the Media section about money being made off of us with our online personas: I mean, I guess I think there are bigger fish to fry than Knopf trying to get me to buy the new Murakami book on FB or Goodreads. Also the argument in the Animals, Plants, Minerals section regarding veganism being no better than meat eating, I thought it was really lazy to equate soy bean monoculture with factory farming. (Or perhaps as a rabid tofu and tempeh eater, I took offense).

Really excited to read what everyone else thinks about the book! I'd also love to hear what others think the main themes are.

I'm about a fourth of the way through, still going through the different roles of economic actors that they summarize. I'm seeing a lot of interesting ideas that don't get more than a mention, or that could be expanded.

A couple of thoughts that caught my attention: that in elections we're terrorized into choosing the least bad candidate instead of one that could be ideally the best. And the distinction they note between agency and liberty, the small business owner has one and not another.

I agree with Demelza that it's a nicely produced book. The illustrations add a lot for me. My favorite illustration is the exec pouring a can of gas (I think) out his office window while he's on the phone.

I'm looking to see how the idea of work gets further defined. I can't quite tell how they're using it.

OK, all done and wrote an epic review. 4 stars.

Demelza-- I disagreed with you about the lack of citations being ok, see my thoughts in the last paragrpah. It's kind of my biggest beef with the book.

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Can't deny the perfect timing on this book's release. A theory of wealth inequality in capitalism, printed late enough to reference and speculate about the Arab Spring movements and early enough to thrust into the hands of USA Occupiers.

Crimethinc wrote a winner here. The clear, thorough breakdown of the 2008 financial crisis is the best I've read so far.* It's like a really knowledgeable friend taking the time to explain the entire system and process from causes to domino effects to far reaching impacts, in easy to follow language and relateable metaphors without diluting anything. I liked how they got into personal responsibility of specific corporations and people, without shirking away from systemic analysis. And the systemic analysis is really, really good. From the focus on the financial crisis, the book moves into a careful, overarching deconstruction of the mechanisms of late capitalism-- and like I said, it's really, really good.

First, it makes fucking sense. There is a gluttony of anti-cap analysis available right now, and most of it is highfaluting, incomprehensible gibberish. Uck. This book is written in down to earth language with logic I follow and can intuit myself as they build arguments. Epistemologically, their conclusions are built from life experience. This is the biggest weakness of one part of the book (see below), but absolutely the biggest strength of the "Mechanics" section, on late-capitalism in the US: their life experience is rooted in the service industry. The rise of the service industry in rich countries is a major shift in how capitalism operates, and is not explained well by earlier anti-capitalist economic theories (in my limited experience). The analysis of late-capitalism via a service industry worker's standpoint, coupled with their research into the inner workings of the financial system, lends a rich perspective that you won't find in something coming out of the academy. Yes! Theory derived from life as experienced by those navigating a system of oppression is awesome and provides a unique standpoint which allows one to see the flip side to the picture as presented by the powerful.

The picture as presented? Capitalism continuously concentrates wealth and poverty. Having resources allows one to access more resources and vice versa. There's a lot more detail into specific mechanisms of how this is done, and it's a valuable read.

HOWEVER, the first part of Work is throwaway. The authors attempt a comprehensive sociological overview of society based on people's economic roles, but the authors are not sociologists, economists, or particularly rigorous lay theorists. The entire section comes off as an extended brainstorm, interesting, on the money sometimes, off it others, and generally assuming significance without proof or theory. This works well when speaking from their own experience in the section on mechanisms of late capitalism, but really fails when they try to extrapolate to the rest of the world's situation.

And this pairs poorly with Crimethinc's decision, again, to refuse to cite from whom their ideas come. I hate this attitude. When you refuse to cite ideas, especially radical critiques of society, the people who you are slighting are not corporate patent-owning fat cats, but the same theorists from whom the corporations and privileged academics appropriate: theorists of color, women writers, Third World authors. These theorists are consistently forgotten & marginalized within the academy (like passed up for tenure and shit) even though their theories and analysis often provide the basis for entire cultural shifts in many fields. It's essential we cite who came up with these ideas so that these theorists become just as entrenched and canonical as some of their white dead dude counterparts, and especially important if we come from various privileged identities (i.e. usa, wealthy, white, male, whatev) because stealing ideas and words without attributing them-- even when writing about anticapitalism and anticolonialism-- is itself a form of colonialism. For a group of authors so often called out on privilege, racism, and sexism, it's disappointing to see Crimethinc's ideas develop without their actions.

* Though do check out this book that details the way the financial crisis caused the 2008 global food crisis: Food Rebellions!: Forging Food Sovereignty to Solve the Global Food Crisis

Well, finished Work and it was good to see a group, whom, in my mind, epitomised bad lifestylist politics, come out with something this refreshing. I have come across Crimethinc and their supporters a number of times over the last eight years and I think this endorses how I thought of them until recently. But has Pannekoek says, the best school for our ideas is struggle, and hence pretty much where alot of us find ourselves.

Like Millie, I thought the sociological bits, were not all that amazing. I would have prefered a book that tried to formulate the macro-structure of society and discussed trends. I also thought when it got down to some of the roles, they were a bit odd, the researcher and medicine parts were almost anti-science. For example it says
"deliberate assaults on traditional healing have reduced us to helpless dependence on an elite class of doctors" pg 235 and describes Doctors as, over-educated drug-dealers pg 238.
I also don't understand why it thinks scientists and doctors are part of the capitalist class. They are sociological m/c, but it seem to suggest their a front for darker things within society.

Reading the sociological profiles reminded me of the programme of,
Class War Federation albeit, Work believes in a two classes analyses, with a lumpen underclass. pg 40 it refers to the underclass as Excluded. Its basic diet of marxist and situationist analysis to temper a post-industrial society with consumerism and service sector jobs taking centre place. I also note that the book has more than a passing similarity to prole.info.

The 'meat and potatos' was in the last few chapters, and it didn't have anything concrete to offer, except to stress the need to keep things fresh and seemed to echo much of what was said in The Coming Insurrection.

The good, explains the crisis, debunks reformism, nonsense about small businesses, and typical leftist stratergies (including trade unions), also criticses lifestyle and sub-cultural choices.

The Meh, sociological profiling - unecessary, some personal reports were again unecessary, misreading of 'direct democracy' (pg 341) and resistance chapters offering no real stratergy. Also noted science bits mentioned above.

In my mind, the thesis of the Resistance section was - we live in a technological abundant society, where we have gone beyond production and consumption, and since these are now meaningless, horizontal information sharing is the way we will abolish capital. Page 355 suggested social movements are dead, and we just have to be effective with our assaults on the body politic and do our utmost for information to spread to other parts of the world.
I read this as rehash of TCI. Personally I understand the horizontal exchange and fetish over information, but unless revolts move into production, into key-areas of the economy, large street-battles are meaningless.

I've just finished Work. I thought the strongest part overall was the section on Mechanics where they explore the functions and effects of some higher level economic trends, but do so in fairly concrete terms. I continued to enjoy the first person accounts interspersed among the chapters. This kind of writing really gives the book a human feel and is consistent with, maybe exemplifies, the appeal to personal resistance to capitalism in the final section, p. 347 for instance. The story about skimming cash from the hardware store is the most memorable section of the whole book for me.

I do wish that the authors had done more to link specifically the Resistance section to the description of roles in the first part. This would require creative thinking, and wouldn't be easy, but would flesh out the otherwise really vague thoughts in the final chapter about how capitalism is supposed to be fought. It isn't really clear for instance how cash register skimming fits into their notion of working together with others for a larger political goal.

Totally agree. The idea is to organise mass expropriation, not individual.

I think the problem of discussing this book is that it ticks alot of boxes, and doesn't say anything too unconventional. Probably makes a fairly good primer, but in retrospect not the book we should ahve chosen.