Freedom From or Freedom in Work? Post-Work Proposals and Hannah Arendt's Conception of Political Freedom

Abstract

Universal basic income and collective working-time reductions are familiar features of a ‘post-work’ politics that seeks to reduce the unfreedom associated with the workplace. Proponents appeal to an image of freedom where citizens are liberated from the compulsive aspects of wage-labor and free to engage in self-determined projects and activities. In this article, I critically evaluate these ideas of freedom in relation to work and offer an alternative interpretation of this relationship by turning to Hannah Arendt's thought. I argue that Arendt's conception of political freedom and concern with the ‘worldly’ dimension of the economic demonstrate the normative priority of establishing institutions for the exercise of democratic power at work and in the economy compared to post-work ideals of freedom from work as the basis for human flourishing. Rather than staking the meaning of freedom on liberation from work, Arendt's understanding of freedom compels us to transform it.