Jobs, Jive, & Joy

From the author:

Utopianism arose in the 19th century as a response to industrialism. Today a new culture needs to address the immanent disasters of climate catastrophe and resource depletion.

Foundational to this new culture is the desire to live a life of joyful collectivity that seeks individual satisfaction and group accomplishments. The faux luxuries that today tempt submission to toil soon won’t be an option. In the not-too-distant future, we will have no choice but to align our pleasures with goals that center on friendship, on playful production for use and enjoyment, and on the exploration of our better selves. I call this option, to transcend miserablism, radical hedonism.

In this volume I begin with a memoir of my mother’s work experience in the 20s and 30s at the Hawthorne Works factory complex outside of Chicago. At its height employing 40,000 workers, Hawthorne created an afterwork organization, “The Club,” for leisure pursuits to meet the wishes of the employees. This endeavor facilitated sports, wide ranging education beyond skills development, and cultural activities from book clubs to excursions. These leisure time activities were significant to the workers and created a culture that defined them beyond their roles in the factory.

Both historic and contemporary models enrich our understanding of the foundational elements of a convivial society. The mass cooperative movement of three million in Poland between the wars proves that a truly democratic and supportive society is possible. Here I explore examples in the US, such as the unemployed unions in California in the 30s and the forest replanting worker cooperative, the Hoedads, in the 80s and 90s.

And finally, I propose a strategy to confront climate change and cultural collapse, built on worker cooperatives, local agriculture, and diverse grassroots efforts in communities all over the US.

"Bernard Marszalek has spent years refusing the stupidity of our modern world. He is a determined subversive who understands that pleasure and radical hedonism is the beating heart of a deeply different world. . . . Now he’s uncovered a crucial thread of conviviality and shared enjoyment rooted in his own mother’s life that runs through countless examples in the present world. This profoundly human insistence on a shared experience of living well is a wellspring—and our best hope—for a genuine challenge to the twin crises he identifies in climate change and civilizational collapse." — Chris Carlsson, historian and author, whose most recent book is a novel, When Shells Crumble.