Sahlins had already remarked upon the superior “quality of working life” enjoyed by primitive producers, to borrow a catchphrase from the pseudo-humanist experts in job redesign and job enrichment. In addition to shorter hours, “flextime” and the more reliable “safety net” afforded by general food sharing, forager’s work is more satisfying than most modern work. We awaken to the alarm clock; they sleep a lot, night and day. We are sedentary in our buildings in our polluted cities; they move about breathing the fresh air of the open country. We have bosses; they have companions. Our work typically implicates one, or at most a few hyper-specialized skills, if any; theirs combines handwork and brainwork in a versatile variety of activities, exactly as the great utopians called for. Our “commute” is dead time, and unpaid to boot; they cannot even leave the campsite without “reading” the landscape in a potentially productive way. Our children are subject to compulsory school attendance laws; their unsupervised offspring play at adult activities until almost imperceptibly they take their place doing them. They are the makers and masters of their simple yet effective toolkits; we work for our machines, and this will soon be no metaphor, according to an expert from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration: “In general, robots will work for men, but there may be exceptions in which some robots are higher in the hierarchy than some humans.” The last word in equal employment opportunity.

— Primitive Affluence: A Postscript to Sahlins

I thought this did an ok job of discussing (or rehashing) the ridiculous amounts of extraneous/unenjoyable/fairly unnecessary work that we do (in comparison to subsistence work) without engaging in too much fetishization of the ‘primitive’.

I have had a couple bad weeks at work and Bob Black is really speaking to me as a result.

Now, finally, the anarchists are free to be themselves. But freedom is a frightening, uncertain prospect, whereas the old ways, the leftist cliches and rituals, are as comfortable as a pair of old shoes (including wooden shoes). What’s more, since the left is no longer any kind of threat, anarcho-leftists are in no danger of state repression when they remember and reenact their ancient, mythic glories. That’s about as revolutionary as smoking hash, and the state tolerates both for the same reason.

— “Theses on Anarchism After Post-Modernism” by Bob Black

To speak of anarchist standards and values, then, is not necessarily nonsensical — but it does involve risks, often avoidable risks. In a society still saturated with Christianity and its secular surrogates, the risk is that the traditionally absolutist use of these moralistic words will carry over to the way the anarchists use them. Do you have standards and values or do they have you? It is usually better (but, of course, not necessarily or absolutely better) for anarchists to avoid the treacherous vocabulary of moralism and just say directly what they want, why they want it, and why they want everybody to want it. In other words, to put our cards on the table.

— “Theses on Anarchism After Post-Modernism” by Bob Black