Als werken echt zo geweldig was…

If work was really so fucking wonderful then nobody would resent people living on meagre unemployment benefits. It might even be seen as a noble and selfless thing – to give up the wonderful opportunity that work offers – so that another can bask in the joys of daily toil. The truth, that now goes almost unspoken, is that hardly anyone wants to go to work. Nobody who wins the lottery really carries on working in ASDA. For those at the lower end of the jobs market work is a shit deal – poverty pay for a lifetime of monotonous and often back-breaking labour. That is why the entire apparatus of the state is now being mobilised against those who can’t find work, or worst of all don’t want it. To be unemployed, or workless, is now akin to being a criminal. And if the economy doesn’t provide enough jobs, then that is the fault of the worker, for not working hard enough. The capitalist class regards us all as nothing more than thieving scroungers, ever ready to skive if we are given half a chance. And it is not the payment of benefits that really irks the rich – it is the refusal to put our human capital – our minds and bodies – into their service that enrages them. How dare we not work to fatten their wallets.

Johnny Void in It’s Never Been More Important To Ask What’s Wrong With Work (the void)