CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery

Welcome to CLAWS at whywork.org. We're a pro-leisure and anti-wage-slavery group of people dedicated to exploring the question: why work? This site provides information, support, and resources for those looking for alternatives to traditional employment.

We actively promote alternatives to the wage slavery mindset and what we call "The Cult of the Job" which automatically equates having a job with making a living.

If you start asking yourself "why work?" you may see a connection between wage slavery, misunderstandings of leisure, lifestyles based on consumption, corporate welfare, education that often amounts to little more than conditioning, and the global social, environmental, and economic crises we are now facing. We hope that the materials we feature here will encourage critical thinking about such things. This site is primarily about ideas and encouragement, so our focus is more philosophical than practical. However, ideas and action go hand-in-hand, so we're currently expanding the "practicality" sections.


WE'RE FEATURED IN
CONSCIOUS CHOICE MAGAZINE!

Writer Patrick McGaugh calls our
views "extreme." His article asks
"Do you wanna work,
or do you wanna job?"

CLAWS Features

We feature essays, book excerpts and articles by Bob Black, Robert Anton Wilson, Bertrand Russell, Buckminster Fuller, Jean Liedloff and many other inspiring thinkers.

Don't miss our list of unconventional replies to the question "So, what do you do for a living?"
Our spotlight essay of the moment is "We Don't Want Full Employment, We Want Full Lives!" translated by Ken Knabb from the Bureau of Public Secrets.

Books: CLAWS recommends Critical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller as well as Ishmael and Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn as good books to start with which are aligned with the mission and goals of CLAWS. Want to read more? We have an extensive list of book recommendations and will be adding more book reviews soon.

"Considering the alternatives, I prefer self-employment to employment. After all, you usually make a lot more when you work for yourself and have much more independence. But my real choice is comfortable and creative unemployment."
- Steve Solomon

"Perhaps it is time the 'work ethic' was redefined and its idea reclaimed from the banal men who invoke it."
- Studs Terkel,

Working

"The United States desperately needs a public discussion that challenges the prevailing belief that a person's worth and social contribution can and should be measured primarily (or exclusively) by his or her income from paid work."
- Katherine McFate, "A Debate we Need," from Philippe Van Parijs'

What's Wrong With a Free Lunch?

"There is more for us in life than the nine to five work ethic and a life of clocks, finances, and shallow living."
- Tom Brown Jr.,

The Quest

"I would like to see people refusing to work in any job they felt was wrong. I would like to see work-dodgers: honourable and brave people who refuse to continue to feed this monstrous culture."
- Chris Busby,
in his foreword to Molly Scott Cato's book
Seven Myths About Work

Bron: Why work