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3 unusual facts about Bob Black


Bob Black

The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986), draws upon some ideas of the Situationist International, the utopian socialists Charles Fourier and William Morris, anarchists such as Paul Goodman, and anthropologists such as Richard Borshay Lee and Marshall Sahlins.

Black is best known for a 1985 essay, "The Abolition of Work," which has been widely reprinted and translated into at least thirteen languages (most recently, Urdu).

In it he argued that work is a fundamental source of domination, comparable to capitalism and the state, which should be transformed into voluntary "productive play." Black acknowledged among his inspirations the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier, the British utopian socialist William Morris, the Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, and the Situationists.



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