评论
打印
Work.
工作。
The defining task of our lives.
是我们生命中的决定性任务。
An indicator of status, a generator of wealth, and a necessity to live.
是身份的重要指标，财富的创造者，生活的必需品。
The world we exist in is built around work.
我们所处的世界是围绕着工作而建立的。
You set an alarm for work, drive to work, do your work, stress about work, commute home from work, and even relax to try to get away from work.
你会为工作设置闹钟，开车去工作，做你的工作，因工作感到压力，或者工作完回家，甚至放松来试图摆脱工作。
For many, work is hell.
对许多人来说，工作就是地狱。
Horror stories of oppressive bosses and exploitative conditions are not uncommon in our work-to-live economy.
在我们为生活而工作的经济中，有关暴虐的老板和剥削环境的可怕故事并不少见。
This is the story of work.
这就是工作的故事。
How it's come to define our lives and destroy our environment.
讲述了工作是如何定义我们的生活并破坏我们的环境的。
But this is also the story of how we might carve new paths away from work towards modes of living that embrace play, happiness and a rich relationship with land and people.
但这也是另外一个故事：讲述我们可能如何开辟新的道路，从工作转向拥抱娱乐、幸福并与土地和人建立丰富关系的生活模式。
Before we go any further we need to understand what work means under capitalism.
在我们进一步讨论之前，我们需要了解，在资本主义制度下，工作意味着什么。
Because as feminist scholar Kathi Weeks describes in her book, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, “Wage work remains today the centerpiece of late capitalist economic systems...”
因为正如女权主义学者凯西·威克斯在她的书《工作的问题:女性主义、马克思主义、反抗工作的政治,以及后工作想象》中所描述的那样，“今天，日薪工作仍然是晚期资本主义经济制度的核心……”
She goes on to add that wage work “is not only the primary mechanism by which income is distributed, it is also the basic means by which status is allocated, and by which most people gain access to health care and retirement.”
她还补充说，日薪工作“不仅是收入分配的主要机制，也是分配地位的基本手段，是大多数人获得医疗保健和退休服务的基本途径。”
In short, under capitalism we need to work in order to live.
简而言之，在资本主义制度下，我们需要工作才能生存。
Without a job we lose social status, and our very means of subsistence.
没有工作，我们就失去了社会地位，也失去了我们的谋生手段。
So, when we critique work under capitalism, we're not saying there is no labor that needs to be done.
因此，当我们批评资本主义制度下的工作时，我们并不是说没有需要做的劳动。
Cooking, cleaning, construction, farming, and childcare are all examples of forms of labor that we would need no matter what economic system we live in.
烹饪、清洁、建筑、耕种和照看儿童都是我们无论生活在什么经济体系中都需要的劳动形式的例子。
I’m specifically critiquing wage work, which can be thought of as the commodification of your productive labor.
我特别批评的是日薪工作，它可以被认为是对生产性劳动的商品化。
Or in other words the act of selling your labor power (aka your ability to produce goods) for cash or wages.
或者换句话说，是出售劳动力(也就是生产商品的能力)以换取现金或工资的行为。
A system wherein, instead of cooking to feed yourself or your neighbors, you sell your time and expertise slicing cucumbers to a company and in return receive money.
在这种系统中，你不是为了养活自己或邻居而做饭，而是把你的时间和切黄瓜的专业知识卖给一家公司，作为回报，你会收到钱。
This is, as Kathi Weeks, and indeed Marx, argue, the lifeblood of capitalism.
正如凯西·威克斯和马克思所说，这是资本主义的命脉。
And to make matters worse, within capitalism, the profit incentive means that employers inevitably try to minimize the amount they are paying you while maximizing your productive output.
更糟糕的是，在资本主义内部，利润激励意味着雇主不可避免地试图向你支付最少的金额，同时得到你最多的生产性产出。
The less they pay you for your time and the more you can produce, the larger their bank account grows.
他们付给你的时间越少，你能生产的越多，他们的银行存款就会变得越多。
As a result, wage work under capitalism is necessarily a system of exploitation of employees by employers.
因此，资本主义制度下的日薪工作必然是雇主剥削雇员的制度。
But because there are few alternatives, we are forced into this exploitation, selling our labor in order to live.
但是，因为几乎没有其他选择，我们被迫进入这种剥削环境，为了生存而出卖劳动力。
You’re at a party.
你在一个派对上。
The lights are dim, the music a little louder than you’d like, and a friend of a friend comes over to you and strikes up a conversation.
灯光很暗，音乐的声音比你想的要大一点，一位朋友的朋友走到你跟前，然后开始交谈。
They immediately dive in with a question: “What do you do for a living?”
他们立刻问了一个问题：“你是做什么工作的？”
In the bastion of capitalism that is the U.S. this is a common turn of phrase that speaks volumes of our puritanical relationship with work.
在资本主义的堡垒--美国，这是一种常见的说法，充分说明了我们与工作的清教徒式关系。
Quite literally we spend most of our times on the job.
毫不夸张地说，我们把大部分时间都花在了工作上。
In 2017, the average US worker spent 1,757 hours working per year, which is just under half of their total waking hours.
2017年，美国工人平均每年工作1757小时，只比他们清醒时间的一半少一点。
We work for a myriad of reasons: to eat, pay rent at the end of the month, pay utilities and medical bills, pay off debt, and even to fit in with our neighbors and friends.
我们工作的原因有很多：吃饭、月底交房租、付水电费和医药费、还债，甚至是为了与邻居和朋友相处融洽。
Without resources held in common, wage work is the dominate means by which we’re able to provide for ourselves, and to make matters worse, this kind of work has become intertwined with virtue -- if you work hard, if you get down in the muck, you’re a productive member of society and you’ll be rewarded.
没有共同的资源，日薪工作是我们能够养活自己的主要手段，更糟糕的是，这种工作还与美德交织在一起--如果你努力工作，陷入困境，你就是社会中有生产力的一员，并且会得到回报。
A sentiment routed in a Puritan work ethic, that is epitomized in modern hustle culture and the dream job mentality.
这是一种清教徒式的职业道德，是现代忙乱文化和理想工作心态的缩影。
So now, we must not only report to work to put food on our plates, but we must also be passionate about how we make our money.
因此，现在，我们不仅要为了吃饭而报到上班，还必须对如何赚钱充满热情。
If we care enough, the thinking goes, exploitative and inhumane working conditions are acceptable.
这种想法认为，如果我们足够在乎，剥削和不人道的工作条件是可以接受的。
How many times have you heard “do what you love” and “find your dream job？”
你听过多少次“做你喜欢的事”和“找到你梦想的工作”？
Journalist and author, Sarah Jaffee suggests that this is yet another way to exploit workers: “So you see this ‘labor of love’ story then just seeping into everything...
记者兼作家萨拉·贾菲认为，这是剥削工人的另一种方式：“你会看到这个‘爱的劳动’的故事渗透到所有事情中……
This myth has become so pervasive in this economy, and it accompanies worsening conditions broadly across the entire economy.
这种神话在这个经济体中已经变得如此普遍，而且与此同时，整个经济状况普遍恶化。
So you’re getting more sort of verbal pressure to love your job at the same time as your job is giving you less back.”
因此，你会受到更多的口头压力，要求你在工作带来的回报越来越少的同时，热爱自己的工作。”
This “love your job” framing is insidious.
这种“热爱你的工作”的说法是阴险的。
If a company convinces you to work for passion or for a cause, then you might be willing to work for less compensation.
如果一家公司说服了你为激情或事业而工作，那你可能会愿意少拿点报酬。
This is the case for mission driven non-profits, where burnout runs rampant, for creative industries like film and animation, and the “working for a cause” mentality that is now being used to lure workers into the oppressive warehouses of companies like Amazon.
使命驱动型非营利组织的情况就是如此，工作倦怠现象非常猖獗，电影和动画等创意产业也是如此，而这种“为事业而工作”的心态，正被用来引诱员工进入亚马逊等公司压抑的仓库中工作。
Our work shapes who we are, whether we like it or not.
我们的工作塑造了我们现在的样子，不管我们喜欢与否。
And it not only defines our personal lives, it defines our environments and communities.
它不仅定义了我们的个人生活，还定义了我们所处的环境和社区。
One study in the US found “strong evidence that households with longer work hours have significantly larger carbon footprints.”
美国的一项研究发现，“强有力的证据表明，工作时间更长的家庭的碳足迹明显更大。”
The authors point towards the fact that longer hours at work leave little room for tasks like cooking or grocery shopping, which often leads to an increase in carbon intensive activities like getting take-out and home delivery.
研究作者指出，由于工作时间较长，他们几乎没有时间完成烹饪或去杂货店购物等任务，这往往会导致外卖和送货上门等碳密集型活动的增加。
In short the more work we’re made to do, the more emissions we create.
简而言之，我们被要求做的工作越多，我们产生的排放量就越多。
And there are also a number of studies that reveal that the opposite is true.
也有多项研究表明，事实恰恰相反。
The fewer hours we work, the less emissions we create, but we’ll get into the specifics of that research a little later on.
我们工作的时间越少，我们产生的排放量就越少，但我们将稍后再讨论这项研究的细节。
Because there is also a social toll to capitalist wage work.
因为资本主义的日薪工作也有社会代价。
Because our employers get us to work during the bulk of our waking day, we have very little free time for organizing, deliberating, being in community, and finding passion and play outside of our job, all of which are crucial parts to a true democratic system.
由于我们的雇主让我们在醒着的大部分时间里工作，我们几乎没有空闲时间在工作之外组织活动、思考、融入社区以及寻找激情和娱乐，所有这些都是真正民主制度的关键部分。
Perhaps this is purposeful.
也许这是有目的的。
The more free time we have, the more we recognize the exploitation of work, the flaws and destruction of capitalism, and ultimately the necessity to end work as we know it.
我们的空闲时间越多，我们就越能意识到工作的剥削性、资本主义的缺陷和破坏性，并且最终意识到终止我们所知的工作的必要性。
But before we end wage work, we need to understand just how meaningless some work under capitalism really is.
但在我们结束日薪工作之前，我们需要了解在资本主义制度下，一些工作实际上是多么没有意义。
