When workers who are hungry, owing to wage-squeezing, go on strike, their act is a direct result of their economic situation. The same applies to the man who steals food because he is hungry. That a man steals because he is hungry, or that workers strike because they are being exploited, needs no further psychological clarification. In both cases ideology and action are commensurate with economic pressure. Economic situation and ideology coincide with one another.

Reactionary psychology is wont to explain the theft and the strike in terms of supposed irrational motives; reactionary rationalizations are invariably the result.

Social psychology sees the problem in an entirely different light: what has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why the majority of those who are hungry don't steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don’t strike.

— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (chapter 1)

From a social point of view ... the work of the twentieth century is altogether ruled by the law of duty and the necessity of subsistence. The work of hundreds of millions of wage earners throughout the world does not afford them the least bit of pleasure or biologic gratification. Essentially it is based on the pattern of compulsory work. It is characterized by the fact that it is opposed to the worker’s biologic need of pleasure. It ensues from duty and conscience, in order not to go to pieces, and is usually done for others. The worker has no interest in the product of his work; hence, work is onerous and devoid of pleasure. Work that is based on compulsion, regardless of what kind of compulsion, and not on pleasure, is not only non fulfilling biologically, but not very productive in terms of economy.

— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (chapter 10)

It is clear that mechanistic, biologically unsatisfying work is a product of the widespread mechanistic view of life and the machine civilization. Can the biologic function of work be reconciled with the social function of work? This is possible, but firmly entrenched ideas and institutions must be radically corrected first.

The craftsman of the nineteenth century still had a full relationship to the product of his work. But when, as in a Ford factory, a worker has to perform one and the same manipulation year in and year out, always working on one detail and never the product as a whole, it is out of the question to speak of satisfying work. The specialized and mechanized division of labor, together with the system of paid labor in general, produce the effect that the working man has no relationship to the machine.

— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (chapter 10)

Only when one is objectively and intimately related to one’s work is one capable of comprehending just how destructive the dictatorial and formal democratic forms of work are, not only for work itself but also for the pleasure of work.

When a man takes pleasure in his work, we call his relationship to it “libidinous.” Since work and sexuality (in both the strict and broad senses of the word) are intimately interwoven, man’s relationship to work is also a question of the sex-economy of masses of people. The hygiene of the work process is dependent upon the way masses of people use and gratify their biologic energy. Work and sexuality derive from the same biologic energy.

— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (chapter 10)

In any society the degree to which work kills the joy of life, the degree to which it is represented as a duty (whether to a “fatherland,” the “proletariat,” the “nation,” or whatever other names these illusions may have), is a sure yardstick on which to measure the anti-democratic character of the ruling class of this society. Just as “duty,” “state,” “discipline and order,” “sacrifice,” etc., are intimately related to one another, so too “joy of life,” “work-democracy,” “self-regulation,” “pleasurable work,” “natural sexuality,” belong together inseparably.

— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (chapter 10)

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.

— Nikola Tesla, My Inventions (I)

Unemployment is not a disease; so it has no “cure.”

If there is one proposition which currently wins the assent of nearly everybody, it is that we need more jobs. “A cure for unemployment” is promised, or earnestly sought, by every Heavy Thinker from Jimmy Carter to the Communist Party USA, from Ronald Reagan to the head of the economics department at the local university, from the Birchers to the New Left.

I would like to challenge that idea. I don't think there is, or ever again can be, a cure for unemployment. I propose that unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society.

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

Suppose, for a moment, we challenge this Calvinistic mind-set. Let us regard wage-work – as most people do, in fact, regard it – as a curse, a drag, a nuisance, a barrier that stands between us and what we really want to do. In that case, your job is the disease, and unemployment is the cure.

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

What I am proposing, in brief, is that the Work Ethic (find a Master to employ you for wages, or live in squalid poverty) is obsolete. A Work Esthetic will have to arise to replace this old Stone Age syndrome of the slave, the peasant, the serf, the prole, the wage-worker – the human labor-machine who is not fully a person but, as Marx said, “a tool, an automaton.” Delivered from the role of things and robots, people will learn to become fully developed persons, in the sense of the Human Potential movement. They will not seek work out of economic necessity, but out of psychological necessity – as an outlet for their creative potential.

(“Creative potential” is not a panchreston. It refers to the inborn drive to play, to tinker, to explore, and to experiment, shown by every child before his or her mental processes are stunted by authoritarian education and operant-conditioned wage-robotry.)

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

As Bucky Fuller says, the first thought of people, once they are delivered from wage slavery, will be, “What was it that I was so interested in as a youth, before I was told I had to earn a living?” The answer to that question, coming from millions and then billions of persons liberated from mechanical toil, will make the Renaissance look like a high school science fair or a Greenwich Village art show.

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being.

No more of such vague formulas as “The right to work,” or “To each the whole result of his labour.” What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!

— Peter Kropotkin,
The Conquest of Bread (chapter 1)

The “right to well-being” means the possibility of living like human beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a society better than ours, whilst the “right to work” only means the right to be always a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the [bourgeoisie] of the future. The right to well-being is the Social Revolution, the right to work means nothing but the Treadmill of Commercialism. It is high time for the worker to assert his right to the common inheritance, and to enter into possession of it.

— Peter Kropotkin,
The Conquest of Bread (chapter 2)

“A day unemployed is like a bagel — even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.

I stayed home from work one day and never went back.”

— CrimethInc., Evasion (three)

“When Alexander addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied: ‘Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine.’”

— Plutarch, Alexander (§14. 4)

“It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, ‘But verily, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.’”

— Plutarch, Alexander (§14. 5)

Diogenes supposedly replied thus: “If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes.”

“Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases.”

— Plutarch, On Exile (§12)

“Diogenes [of Sinope] was seized and dragged off to King Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, ‘A spy upon your insatiable greed.’”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 43)

“Once Diogenes saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, ‘The great thieves are leading away the little thief.’”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 45)

“The love of money he [Diogenes] declared to be the mother-city of all evils.​”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 50)

“Asked where he came from, Diogenes said, ‘I am a citizen of the world.’”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 63)