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