The Commonplace of “Work as Freedom” and why the Left is so attached to its virtues

Article (billet) de blog Mediapart : La longue marche de Gregory LeeIn recent years, there has been a growing political interest in the idea of a basic guaranteed revenue for all. In the current French presidential election campaign, the Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon in his political programme initially proposed a “universal revenue”, or basic income for all. However, in the face of widespread dismay at the very idea of paying people not to work, even from within his own party, he has gradually whittled down his proposition to a means-tested allowance for those in or out of work for 18 to 25 year-olds with a revenue of less than 1.9 times the minimum wage.In attempting to understand this politically global (left-wing and right-wing) attachment to the “virtue” of work, we may turn to Jacques Ellul’s work. “Work as freedom” is one of the “commonplaces” that the late political theorist, ecological activist, protestant and anarchist, Jacques Ellul analysed in his 1966 book Exégèse des nouveaux lieux communs [Exegesis of new commonplaces];new or nouveaux since the title alludes to the turn-of-the-century work Exégèses des lieux communs by the essayist and polemicist Léon Bloy (1846-1917)