"I didn't go to work today… I don't think I'll go tomorrow. Let's take control of our lives and live for pleasure not pain."

“I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.”

— Søren Kierkegaard,
Either/Or (Vol I) (chapter 1)

“We dabble in many things; but the one great real idea of our age, not copied from any other, not pretended, not raised to life by any conjuration, is the Much Making of Things, — not the making of beautiful things, not the joy of spending living energy in creative work; rather the shameless, merciless driving and over-driving, wasting and draining of the last bit of energy, only to produce heaps and heaps of things, — things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best largely unnecessary. To what end are they produced? Mostly the producer does not know; still less does he care. But he is possessed with the idea that he must do it, every one is doing it, and every year the making of things goes on more and faster; there are mountain ranges of things made and making, and still men go about desperately seeking to increase the list of created things, to start fresh heaps and to add to the existing heaps. And with what agony of body, under what stress and strain of danger and fear of danger, with what mutilations and maimings and lamings they struggle on, dashing themselves out against these rocks of wealth! Verily, if the vision of the Mediæval Soul is painful in its blind staring and pathetic striving, grotesque in its senseless tortures, the Soul of the Modern is most amazing with its restless, nervous eyes, ever searching the corners of the universe, its restless, nervous hands ever reaching and grasping for some useless toil.”

— Voltairine de Cleyre, The Dominant Idea

“As the communists first declare free activity to be human essence, they, like all work-day dispositions, need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need a God, an uplifting and edification alongside their witless ‘labor’.

That the communist sees in you the human, the brother, is only the Sunday side of communism. According to the work-day side he does not by any means take you as human simply, but as human laborer or laboring human. The first view has in it the liberal principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed. If you were a ‘lazybones’, he would not indeed fail to recognize the human in you, but would endeavor to cleanse them [you] as a ‘lazy human’ from laziness and to convert you to the faith that labor is man's ‘destiny and calling’.”

— Max Stirner,
The Ego and Its Own (First part. II. 3. §2)

It may be noted that Stirner's criticism of "Communism" (or "Socialism") is directed specifically towards certain strands of "communism", especially those which were prevalent in Stirner's time...

Stirner was not against socialism or communism. In Stirner's own words, he was “not against socialists, but against sacred socialists” (see Stirner's Critics)

It could be argued that he was in favor of a sort of anti-work communism; that, his idea of the union of egoists is especially compatible with such an association, etc.

“In the last analysis, what is the significance of life? If we divide mankind into two great classes, we may say that one works for a living, the other does not need to. But working for a living cannot be the meaning of life, since it would be a contradiction to say that the perpetual production of the conditions for subsistence is an answer to the question about its significance, which by the help of this, must be conditioned. The lives of the other class have in general no other significance than that they consume the conditions of subsistence. And to say that the significance of life is death, seems again a contradiction.”

— Søren Kierkegaard,
Either/Or (Vol I) (chapter 1)

The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
–  Why aren’t you fishing?, said the industrialist.
–  Because I have caught enough fish for the day.
–  Why don’t you catch some more?
–  What would I do with them?
–  Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats, even a fleet of boats. Then you could be rich like me.
–  What would I do then?
–  Then you could sit back and enjoy life.
–  What do you think I’m doing now?

from Timeless Simplicity by John Lane

Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society by John Lane (illustrations by Clifford Harper)

It is with morality [Sittlichkeit] like it is with the family. Many people break with morals [Sitte], but with the conception of ‘morality’ it is more difficult. Morality is the ‘idea’ of morals, their spiritual power, their power over the conscience; morals, on the other hand, are too material to rule over the spirit, and do not hold captive a ‘spiritual’ man, a so­-called independent, a ‘freethinker.’*

* Freigeist : literally ‘free spirit’; can refer both to freethinkers and to libertines.

Because faith in Protestantism became a more inward faith, the enslavement has also become a more inward enslavement; the person has taken these sanctities into himself, intertwined them with all his hopes and endeavors, made them into a ‘matter of conscience,’ prepared from them a ‘sacred duty’ for himself. Therefore, what the Protestant's conscience cannot get away from is sacred to him, and conscientiousness most clearly defines his character.

Protestantism has actually made the human being into a ‘secret police state.’ The spy and lookout, ‘conscience,’ monitors every movement of the mind, and every thought and action is a ‘matter of conscience,’ i.e., a police matter. The Protestant consists in this frag­mentation of the human being into ‘natural desire’ [Naturtrieb] and ‘conscience’ (inner populace [Pöbel] and inner police). Biblical reason (in the place of the Catholic ‘Church reason’) is considered sacred, and this feeling and consciousness that the biblical word is sacred is called—conscience. With this, then, sacredness gets ‘shoved into one's conscience.’ If one doesn't free himself from conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he can indeed act unconscientiously, but never without conscience.

The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfills the command; the Protestant acts to ‘the best of his knowledge [Wissen] and conscience [Gewissen].’ The Catholic is in fact only a layman; the Protestant is himself a clergyman [Geistlicher]. This is precisely the progress of the Reformation period over the Middle Ages, and also its curse: that the spiritual [Geistliche] became complete.

— Max Stirner, The Unique and Its Property

Apply this same critique to the Protestant work ethic and the capitalist morality of work influenced by it, how it transforms the worker into a self-policing slave.

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

(Bertrand Russell)

"If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?"

— Tuco from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1966

“Let your competence take effect, collect yourselves, and there will be no lack of money — of your money, the money of your stamp. But working I do not call ‘letting your competence take effect’. Those who are only ‘looking for work’ and ‘willing to work hard’ are preparing for their own selves the infallible upshot — to be out of work.”

— Max Stirner,
The Ego and Its Own (Second part. II. 2)