Why working less makes sense

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André Gorz´s Critique of Economic Reason, apparently a brilliant book, as it happens.

http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/gorz.html

The main points as far as this article is concerned are:

a. reduction of working time is necessary to maintain anything like full employment, when productivity growth outstrips economic growth every year.

b. reduction of working time is the only possible meaning we can give to an industrial society. Fulfillment INSIDE work is impossible; the modern division of labour separates us inevitably from fully comprehending what we make and expressing ourselves fully in it. We should spend continuously less time inside the alienated, opaque industrial machine, in order to have a full and human life OUTSIDE of work.

c. "wages for housework" campaigns miss the point, which is that "work" is the problem not the solution. Couching women´s interests in the language of the employment contract destroys the difference between home and work that makes one´s home life worth living. Doing stuff without getting "paid" is intrinsically rewarding and human. We should do more of this, and spend less time in the office to have the chance to. With a 20 hour week men would lose the excuse to doing equal childcare and housework.

Read the book... it´s great.