“From burnout to teleworking, Frédéric Schiffter ridicules the latest discoveries of capitalism”

By publishing a Indispensable specific detestation of work, Frédéric Schiffter took a big risk: that of making critics want to strike like him. Certainly, I read his pamphlet to the end because it is very short. Let us recognize that reading Schiffter has never been a job justifying a hardship bonus. It is concise, scathing, always funny, and here clearly more upbeat than in his Morose delights (2009). We can even say that this primer on office life is his most Marxist work.

He follows in the footsteps of Right to laziness by Paul Lafargue (1880) and Against work by Giuseppe Rensi (1923), updating them to the 21^e century. His main fault is not explaining to me how I pay my taxes if I stop working, but I don't care: he brilliantly ridicules the new discoveries of capitalism, from start-ups to burn-outs. The tastiest passages are those which make fun of managerial vocabulary. The word “box”…