BUT WE HAVE TO, SO WE DO IT REAL SLOW pdfavailable on haterslife designed by post.chicanx BUT WE HAVE TO, SO WE DO IT REAL SLOW On Anti-Work, Mexican(-American)s and Work By Noche INTRODUCTION I wrote this short essay S years ago at time when anti-work was not as popular a position, or sentiment, within the radical milieu. My intention with ths picce was o highlights clements of anti-work /refusal of labor that alrcady exist among, Mexican(-American)s in the so-called United States. And by doing this extend the criique of work beyond the white radical milieu of the North American Anglosphere. The critique of work is now (thankifully) more widespread, and I hope that others take up the task of extending the critique of work because the pandemic has verily cleared the fog of pro-work propaganda: most of us leamed. first-hand that our work, deemed essential o not, has always been actvity which exists for the immediate beneft of others and not ourselves. We barely float by physically & mentall, while capitalsts retreat further into their well-protected bubbles of wealth (even into space). I's time we reclaim ou time, cnergy & activity. Time for communism & anarchy...which always also means the abolition of work Noche Tovaangar, so-called Los Angeles July 2021 In Los Angeles to be against Capital typically presents itsef in a pro-work/worker position. The problem is never work itself, the nature of work or that work s waged but instead what is desired is extending a sphere of work that is unionized and bolstered with higher wages. Take for instance the CLEAN Carwash ‘campaign', where carwash workers (whom are mostly immigrant men) have been unionized under the representation of United Steclworkers Local 6752 Though this move one is that brings much needed bettermen of working conditions and wages for these workers, what is ultimately not brought up is that the work of a car wash workers can and has already been automated. But the fading labor movement seems to be no longer concerned with the overthrow of capitalism nor the abolition of work. That drea is a dream that has been lost along with the labor movement tself ‘The expression of an anti-wark position has cither been minoritarian or unheard of. In a city where working conditions for immigrants can be well below the legal standards set forth by the State and the Federal Government, the push for more protections and rights within the workplace takes precedence. An anti- work affect (rather than a bonafide position) among Mexican immigrants and/or Mexican-Americans is usually to be found in cultural forms and do not often take on explicit anti-political, o anti-capitalist forms. That said, the playful, tongue- heek cultural forms are plentiful, the other mentioned forms are fow and far in between. T wnwwcucjusice orglcampaigns carvash 2 weasweTSorg ANTI-WORK / ANTI-CAPITALI INTRODUCTION My first encounter with an explicit anti-work position came from Chicans friends who I had met in 2001 who were heavily-influenced by the French Marsist theorist Guy Debord and the Situationist International. In 1953, a young Guy Debord painted on a wall on the Rue de Seine « NE TRAVAILLEZ JAMAIS » (tr. Never Work). A statement that was diffiult for me to understand conceptually at the time but which | immediately gravitated towards (who as a youth looks forward 10.a lfetime of work ahead of them?) Previously, al the anarchist literature I had read on work concerned themselves with how wage labor was theft of our time & of our labor-power and that the solution was not the abolition of work per se but worker self-management. [Think of all the nostalgia that some Left-Anarchisis still have for the revolution lost by the anarcho-syndicalists during the Spanish Civil War ] Anti-work was a scandalous position growing up in a Mexican houschold where what was prized was the opportunity to find well-paying work, as well as a hearly work cthic. Though the starting point for Guy Debord’s opposition to a world of work was not a beatik, bohemian-lifestyle refusal common to the 1950s, but rather a rejection of the bleariness of life under capitalism and part of a whole projeet to overthrow what they called The Spectacle and to once again make life ajoyous. The eritique of wark can be found elsewhere throughout history including Paul Lafargue’s “The Right to be Lazy"(1883) written by Karl Marx’s son-in-law; in the unfortunately notorious post-left Anarchist Bob Black’s “The Abolition of 21BUT WE HAVETO Work'(1985) and Gille Dauve’s “Eclipse & Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement” (1970) where he clarifies what the abolition of work could mean and says “what we want is the abolition of work as an activity separate from the rest of life.” He further explains that the issue at hand is not whether we are active or not, but rather that under capitalism what we do is abstracted into two spheres, both alienated: work-time and leisure-time. This (anti-state) communist critique of work notes that the liberation from Capital is not the liberation of labor but the liberation from labor as it now exists. Currently we assume only those activii which are paid a wage have value and that only those things which are productive, in the capitalist sense. are necessary to human life. MEXICAN-AMERICANS & WORK ‘That said there is no shortage of cultural output from Mexican immigrants, or Mexican-Americans (some of whom identify as Chicanx) that takes a swipe at the way work is made necessary to our social reproduction.’ Take for instance a comedic song from “Up In Smoke” (1978), where the character Pedro de Pacas sings a song trying to upend notions of popular Mexican-American identity and says, “Mexican-Americans don’t like to get up carly n the morning but they have 1050 they do it real slow” Here we catch a key moment in the subjectivity of the racialized Mexican- American worker caught up in a warld where labor is managed and controlled by borders. There is an understanding that work and the preparation for work is drudgery but also that the refusal of work might be impossible; this refusal acknowledged but it gives way 1o a sabotage on social reproductivity, a slow- down. The spectacular production of the Mexican as a worker in the USA (or as a Mexican-American) is often tied up in a binary of cither being hard-working; job-stealing or lazy and welfare-scheming. As scen by the words used by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, there is also the perception of the Mexican as a dangerous criminal, forming a trinity of prejudice that returns when it suits the need of nativist, racist politicians. This type of characterization was. fist seen when the U.S. forcefully annexed the so-called American SouthWest from México and bandits like Tiburcio Vasquez haunted the minds of the waves. of Westward-bound Anglo-Americans. In 1954, this showed up as Operation Wetback where the INS (which later becomes ICE) enacted indiscriminate round- ups of Mexican laborers to put a chilling effect on undocumented migration of Iaborers into the USA. Laborers need only “look Mexican” to be deported and many of those deported were in fact U.S. citizens. 5 DEFINTTION: al he lsbo tht necds o b done sotht workess are prspared 0 work the nest day. this work is oftn ua-pid though t s necssary for ny ok to be done under apialsm,exan pls: doin the aundry child-care sex dish-washing, food reparation, comming. SOWE DO ITREALSLOW /3 To posit an anti-work position and to take into account the racialization of workers in the USA looms as an impossible task. Ofien immigrants internalize a work cthic that can be as entrenched as that of right-wing Anglo-Americans that erroncously describe the USA as a meritoeracy. This is more necessity than reaction by Mexican immigrants under racialized capitalism since they are often forced into the most grueling of work that most native-born, or Anglo-Americans, will simply not take on: picking of fuits & vegetables, construction, food service. child care, landscaping, etc. We work hard because we have to and we make a self- serving mythology around it where we are the hard-working ones but everyone else is the not-harding-working ones, where notably elements of anti-blackness come to the fore. To further the myth of the hard-working immigrant, that does not threaten the colonial-capitalist social order of the USA, i to strip immigrants of the agency to express refusal, resistance and revolt. In a time where nativist racism is peaking once again, we must realize that this myth proliferation is no safety net against ICE sweeps or other racist violence. There is no pride in presenting ourselves as hard-working, since under capitalism working hard merely means we are putting in more labor for the same amount of pay. In effect, we are lowering our wages. by putting in more work than is expected and making ourselves hyper-exploited. If we were to collectively express our reluctance or refusal to work beyond the. bare minimum we could begin to flex the capacity of our labor power across industries. (An inspiring moment of this kind of flexing was the general strike on May Ist, 2006 where immigrants largely self-organized a strike to show how much their labor is integral to the functioning of U.S. capitalism; in Los Angeles. 110 2 million people took to the streets & over 90% of LA Port traffic was shut down) And as it has been noted, more and more Mexicans are returning to Mexico than coming into the USA, the payoff for this hard-work is in decline’. I've heard amongst friends and family that many recent Mexican immigrants find that the work they encounter in the USA s either too dangerous, too difficult or t0o hard to find. AWAY OUT? But this desire to be the most hardworking Mexican in the world wasn't always. the norm. In British historian E.P. Thompson's 1967 text “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” he mentioned how cconomic-growth theorists viewed Mexican mineworkers as “indolent and childlike people” because they lacked discipline. For instance, he notes from a book on the “The Mexican Mining Industry, 1890~ 1950 that Mexican mineworkers had: pm— 1511119/ msicans eavingthan-coming-to-the-u-+ SUBUTWEHAVETO 3 d “[a] lack of initiative, [an] inability to save, absences while celebrating too many holidays, [a] willingness to work for only three or four days a week if that paid for necessities, [and] an insatiable desire for alcohol...” (Bernsiein) It seems that time changes little. OF course, in ‘many ways we always knew that we don't re- ally want to go to work and that we only have disdain for those who don’t have to because we. are not them. That we enjoy the winter break where we fillup on tamales, cervezas and spend the evenings talking about what we'd really like to be doing and dreams for the future. Even the Left’s obsession with the mythologized collec- tive worker that is socially-responsible, punctu- alland whom identifies with their work i largely a fabrication of the dead workers movement.* “the supposed identity that the worker's movement constructed tumed out to be a particular one. It subsumed workers only insofar as they were stamped, or were willing to be stamped. with & very particular character. That is to say. it included workers not as they were in themselves, but only to the extent that they conformed to a certain image of respectability, dignity hard work, family, organisation, sobriety, atheism, and so on." Too often we are given the lie that the way to progress is to submit to the rationalization of the capitalist system; that we simply need to awaken the sleeping giant which represents the possible Latino voting bloc; that the rich are rich because they really know how to handle their money; that if only we could sway Congress to push immigration reform; if only we could get universities 1o tell us back our histories or to enroll us at all...but really the way out s to abolish the social relation that is capitalism....that protects itself by way of the State; that protects itself with borders, police and a standing army; that controls the way we envision our lives with carcers, time management and gender roles; that makes into a commodity even the way we choose to spend our not-working hours, which ‘et are still spent preparing or recovering from those working hours. 5t The iealworke / Darmn! it scan the company it msking the profts tht it should be...vell, Say o more! tomorzow vl qui without ny ki of compensation oranything... how would 1 dare protet 14 athe cal th ant it polce nd have them split my hesd open! 6 A Hisoryof Scparation” by Endcs SOWE DO ITREALSLOW/ 5