Nick Srnicek

There is little doubt that contemporary work, even in the relatively privileged regions of the Global North, is increasingly intense, unrewarding, and precarious.7 While some believe the goal should therefore be to improve the conditions of work and create decent jobs,8 for post-work thinkers this remains insufficient. The problems of work lie not only in its contemporary incarnation, but also in its general capitalist form. Work, understood as wage labour, is doubly unfree. We see this most obviously in the daily forms of subjection workers experience during their time on the job (and increasingly outside of it).

Post-work begins from these premises – that wage labour is doubly unfree, regardless of working conditions – and proposes alternative visions of the world that aim to abolish this social form.14

The recent renaissance of post-work perspectives has, however, tended to miss the full spectrum of work. In particular, postwork thinking has almost entirely focused on wage labour – and primarily on industries and jobs that are dominated by men. As a result, the work of social reproduction – the work which nurtures future workers, regenerates the current workforce, and maintains those who cannot work, while also reproducing and sustaining societies – has largely been neglected in speculations about the ‘end of work’.1

Earlier radical proposals against domestic work have been forgotten and we appear at an impasse: post-work has nothing to say about the organisation of reproductive labour.

dominant argument for reducing unpaid work, however, is that it enables women to enter into waged work. This proposal has a long history and many proponents, ranging from revolutionaries like Friedrich Engels and Alexandra Kollontai to middle-class second-wave feminists like Betty Friedan, to archcapitalists such as Sheryl Sandberg, and has been widely accepted and adopted by contemporary welfare states.40 For many, it is an established fact that the emancipation of women comes through the labour market. While waged work has undoubtedly granted women a measure of financial independence and social recognition, the generalised expectation that everybody must earn a wage is hardly something to be celebrated. A

The struggle against work – in all its forms – is the fight for free time.

1970s saw the continued development of self-serve culture, as customers were increasingly expected to do work that had previously been carried out by waged workers.85 ATMs became widespread, self-serve gas stations popped up, and today, self-checkouts are increasingly ubiquitous – not least after the pandemic-fuelled push for social distancing.86 Often mistaken for ‘automation’, these technologies are in fact labour-displacement machines used to shift work from a waged worker to an unwaged user. More recently, platforms have become another means to offload work to users: planning a trip or organising something like life insurance are tasks which used to be done by waged workers but are now provided as a user-led service through the internet.

As wages have stagnated for many, and as inequality has risen across many countries, it has become easier and more cost-effective for wealthier households to turn to servants.92 The end result has been the creation of global chains of care as demand has risen for domestic labourers to replace wealthier women as they moved into the waged workplace.93

a means to outsource traditional household labour, digital platforms have been one of the most significant technological transformations in recent decades. They are not a reduction of work, of course, but rather a transfer of work from the household to the market.

is clear that household shopping is undergoing changes, with potentially significant shifts of work out of the home and into the market. While many millennials will have memories of spending an entire day of the weekend travelling around, getting groceries, and crossing items off our shopping lists, things are now increasingly being delivered directly to our doors.