For too long, we have been enslaved to an economy that exists to churn out superfluous wares and calls us redundant if we don’t contribute to its self-defeating cycle of production and consumption, binge and bust. Marx told workers that they had nothing to lose but their chains. All that consumers have to lose is their artificially bloated appetites.
The present emergency is our chance to think again about the significance of work and its centrality to our lives. Man the worker was supposed to be perfecting a world left unfinished and unfurnished by God the creator; instead, our industrial rapacity has come close to destroying that world. This alone is reason enough to down tools, whether we want to or not.
Peter Conrad teaches English literature at Oxford University.
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