The work ideology is not natural nor very old.

• Before the modern era, all cultures thought of work as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
• Once the modern work ethic was established, working patterns started to shift. Between 1800 and 1900, the average working week shrank ...

The work culture has many critics now. 

Ideas that are challenged are the assumptions of modern employers. Another is the American notion that the solution to any problem is to work harder. In the UK, the extent of the work's crises is raised. In France in 2000, a 35-hour week for all emplo...

Post-workists, like David Graeber, argue that the absence of work would produce a richer culture. With people having more time, private life could also become more communal like ‘Red Vienna’ in the early 20th century, when the city government built housing estates with communal laundries, worksho...

• In 1885, socialist William Morris proposed that in the factories of the future, employees should work only four hours a day.
• In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that advances in technology would lead to an age of leisure where people might work 15 hours a week.
• Since the e...