The anti-work ethic states that labor tends to cause unhappiness, therefore, the quantity of labor ought to be lessened. The ethic appears to have originated in anarchist circles[citation needed] and to have come to prominence with essays such as In praise of idleness by Bertrand Russell, The Right to Useful Unemployment by Ivan Illich, and The Abolition of Work by Bob Black [1], published in 1985. Paul Lafargue's The Right to Be Lazy essay is one of the most classical works on the subject (Lafargue was Karl Marx's son-in-law).
The followers of this ethic typically argue that capitalist and communist societies tend to encourage a "labor" mentality towards life either directly or indirectly through the cost of living, labor markets, the work week, applying normative values to economics, and social conventions. The critics then ask why with increasing mechanization the number of hours in the average work week have not fallen significantly; for example, Bob Black asks, "Why hasn't the average work week gone down by more than a few minutes in the past fifty years?" The devotees of the anti-work movement therefore attempt to find answers and practical solutions towards reducing the volume of work for a typical person and encouraging the activities they see as conducive to happiness.
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