On Young People Avoiding Work
by Wild Youth Collective

Within the walls of school, hundreds of young spirits jump through the hoops of a predatory institution, emerging at the end with a state certified qualification, repressed and/or forgotten desires and a loss of vitality. We all, consciously or not, are intimately familiar with and equally repulsed by the grinding drill of school. Even those who have been deceived by the myth of school and the pseudo-fortunes to be found upon its exemplary completion can’t help but feel an aversion to its onerous demands. An elaboration on school oppression could easily span several pages – as done by many authors - though today such an analysis is not my aim. Though for the purpose of this brief article the three main pillars of schooling can be succinctly described as this: a mechanical preparation for frenetic adult life in industrial capitalism; a near perfect integration into the routine of the factory, office, supermarket or welfare line; and a domesticating process whereby the last vestiges of wildness and visionary childhood are all but lost.

My intentions here are to encourage high school students to question the notion of work. Not post-graduation work, not post-university vocations, but work in the here and now. I feel as though not enough attention as been devoted to this disastrous period of adolescence: the search and procurement of part time/casual/after school work. A plenitude of existing writings elucidate the exploitation of work, the indoctrination of schooling and their commonalities. But that transitional period during high school where students first suffer the burden of work – in the form of a shitty and degrading part-time job – and the impediment of school at the same time, seems to be neglected.

Before continuing, let me make some necessary and crucial points: many high school students simply do not enjoy the liberty of choosing not to work. It’s almost trite to state that many high school students grow up in working class households, under working class parents, in working class neighbourhoods and are thus compelled to sell their labor to survive. In order to put food on their family’s table and clothes on their back, some high school students will work before and after school to assist their parent/s. Others who are fortunate enough to have parents able to secure basic necessities such as food, housing, clothing and health might look for and enter into employment to give themselves the small luxuries that middle class (I use the inept term middle class to signify financial status alone and not ones control over their own and others workplace activity) kids take for granted: money for transportation, the odd movie screening, some lasting shoes, a bike, a strong backpack or a decent hair cut. I understand this and I support indigent and low-income youths in revolt against their unique circumstances and our common enemies. With that said, this discourse is specifically aimed at high school students whose physical existence and attendant comforts are already provided by their parents or guardians. From my public high school experience, such a demographic – that of relative stability, convenience and affluence – represents at least 50% of the student population.

If your socialisation has been anything like mine, you’ve had the work ethic drilled into you a million times, by parents, teachers, employers, socialists and mass media. How many times have you been unquestioningly exhorted to work, to exchange your time and energies for a monetary sum? On how many occasions has working been cast in a virtuous, even saintly light? We high school students are inundated with future career options, each and every one identical in their self-effacing nature. Destined for the world of work, one can’t even find articulations of a radically different future amongst many so-called radicals. Working as a noble pursuit is regularly championed by Right and Left alike, with the only difference in their visions being the terms by which your drudgery will be known and for whom your sacrifices will be made. Anarchist author Bob Black advocates a qualitatively different alternative in The Abolition of Work “Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.”

Lets face it, most people loath working and their experiences concur with Black’s words above. There are the few who truly enjoy the activity that their wage slavery consists of and there are even those who are fortunate enough to have complete control of their working activities and the product of their labour. But even so, as Black states “What might otherwise be play is work if it's forced”. Chances are, you’ll have to work, and sooner rather than later. And unfortunately, not all of us will find a more appetising role in the local workers co-operative, as unfortunately, the local workers co-operative doesn’t exists for the majority of us. So aware of the repetition, submission, and prostitution that lie ahead, why would we precipitate proceedings by voluntarily going to work before our survival necessitates it? To exchange the money we exchanged our life for in return for gadgets and gizmos we really don’t want and we certainly don’t need? To listen to the latest piece of consumer culture, the one that television told us we want? To pump petrol into the cars we drive for reputation and not necessity’s sake. To feed the industrial megamachine that’s killing the ecosphere, real community, authentic dreams and our last chance to revive a meaningful life.

We are in an incredibly advantageous situation, in which we are economically dependent on our parents or guardians who rent out their bodies and minds for eight hours a day to provide us and themselves with the means required to survive. This imparts us with a greater degree of free time, less obligations and consequently more life, but only if we reject work. We don’t need to work right now and we don’t need the commodities we’re told we need, so let’s evade work for as long as practically possible. We abhor school for its sum total of totalitarian controls - supervision, classroom sermons, compulsory exercises, curriculum standards, signing in and out – and taken to its logical conclusion, such an abhorrence of school would mean not subjecting ourselves to the abomination of work in addition to school.

Taking advantage of our parental dependency and its erotic possibilities does not involve a selfish misuse of our parents and their labor, but rather an exploration of unchartered territory in which we assert our sovereignty and support. We initiate dialogue with our parents, enlightening them by challenging conventional family structures and ensuring them that mutual respect, equality and reciprocity are the best ways forward in a parent-adolescent relationship. Once this has been firmly established and the autonomy of all is embraced, our commitment to not working can benefit our parents, as we cooperate with them as equals and as friends to maintain the house, keep the kitchen clean, do the washing and other domestic tasks. Most importantly, once such an interdependent relationship is forged, we can help heal and reverse the afflictions both young and old suffer surviving in a fast-paced technological empire obsessed with Progress.

If all this rhetoric fails to convince you to remain an unemployed high school student or to quit your current job cleaning the floors of McDonalds, then ruminate over the possibilities of a life without work. Surely the time devoured by a part-time job could be joyously consumed in a number of activities. Enjoying the company of friends, riding a bike, organising affinity groups, planning and carrying out direct action, festively fighting adultarchy, healing ourselves and rediscovering wilderness and what it means to be wild are only just a few. The adventures rooted in your imaginations and realised in life are more powerful than anything I could enumerate here.

The idea of avoiding work and seeking fulfilment outside of capitalist comforts will be completely new to some youths, eliciting feelings from curiosity to disgust. Making changes like those described above will be effortless and uncomplicated for some and arduous and difficult for others. But avoiding work for as long as our circumstances allow will make our young lives far more rewarding. These individual changes alone won’t disassemble the schools and they’re not a threat to industrial capitalism, but they can lighten the load. Until we fuse our individual desire to be more than atomised students or workers with a cultural reorientation and a collective revolt, we’ll inevitably be forced back to work. So let us stay clear of work, try to live before it’s too late and help destroy this rotten system while we’re still young enough to fight.

I didn’t go to work today... I don’t think I’ll go to work tomorrow either!

BACK