Ending the Jobs Fetish: Work, Commoning and Leisure with Guy Standing

Thursday January 25th
Doors & drinks 6.30pm; Talk starts 7pm

For thousands of years, most people did their utmost to be out of labour, out of jobs. But for the past two centuries, being in jobs has been put on a pedestal. Karl Marx described jobs as "alienated activity". In reality, for most people a job means being in a position of subordination. The tragedy is that labourists have reduced work to labour.

We now have a wonderful opportunity to rescue work from labour and to revive the idea of commoning and the related idea of leisure as distinct from recreation and consumption. In the process, we need to escape from the fetish of GDP growth, with its ecological neglect, and boost the work, commoning and leisure that most people value and want. This is the desirable "future of work"

Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London, a founding member and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and author of The Precariat, Plunder of the Commons and The Blue Commons. This talk, his second at Kairos, will draw on the ideas in his latest book The Politics of Time: Gaining Control in an Age of Uncertainty, which has just been published.

Kairos, 84 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4TG

Doors open at 6.30pm for drinks. The talk will start at 7pm followed by a one-pot vegan supper and discussion.

£8 members, £15 non-members. Food and drink complimentary.