No More Work

“James Livingston’s manifesto answers the question as to why Americans have such a 'fetish' with the idea of full employment and what happens when work in the United States disappears. Given the current debates about America’s economic status, modern American life, and dependence on Third World labor, Livingston’s new political theory poses a new self-understanding for Americans in an era of long-term unemployment.”—Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

“No More Work is, wonderfully, at once a rude book and a kind one. Livingston is bracingly impolite about the cult of capitalistic productivity, all in the service of the happiness and pleasure that could be ours if we demanded less toil from ourselves and more justice from our society.”—Benjamin Kunkel, author of Utopia or Bust

“Reading No More Work, I get a glimpse of what it must be like to have Jim Livingston as a teacher. Here we are treated to exhilarating leaps of the historical imagination—from the Bible to Daniel Bell—cushioned by a sensibility that is as radical as reality itself. I read this book in one sitting, but, like the best books, it will sit with me long after the sitting is done.”—Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center

“Unrivaled . . . in its audacity and brashness, all in a delightfully amusing little essay that is guaranteed to delight undergrads and provoke them to question their individual collective future. Highly recommended.”—CHOICE

“Pack[s] a verbal blow against all those—on the Right and the Left—who continue to kneel in adoration in the Chapel of Work.”—Dissident Voices

“Livingston is at his most persuasive as a historian. . . . No More Work seek[s] to solve the problem of work through resource redistribution rather than by inviting readers to hack their own lives.”—Public Books