Bob Black

About Bob Black

Who is it?: American author
Birth Day: January 04, 1951
Birth Place: Detroit, Michigan, United States
Alma mater: University of Michigan
Era: 20th-century philosophy
Region: Western Philosophy
School: Post-left anarchy
Main interests: refusal of work, post-industrial society, Hunter-gatherer societies, History of anarchism
Notable ideas: The abolition of work

Bob Black

Bob Black was born on January 04, 1951 in Detroit, Michigan, United States, is American author. Bob Black is considered one of the foremost post-left anarchists. He expressed his ideas in his books and essays in his inimitable style described as savagely satirical. He condemned work and called for its abolition. While the leftist sought full-employment, the author felt that society should not revolve around production and consumption. Work, he felt, was forced labor. The reward is either a carrot or a stick and compulsion is involved. Nobody works for the sake of working. Discipline demanded during work is servility. He says that it is possible to abolish work by cutting down the volume of useless work done and replace the useful work with pleasurable pastimes. He called for the abolition of housework done by housewives who, according to him, do the most tedious of tasks, work the longest hours. By achieving full unemployment, we can do away with the sexual division of labor. Yet, the author does not want to be identified with any anarchist group as it would be tantamount to associating himself to a whole lot of associations. He discredited democracy, as it did not guarantee correct decisions. He not only became notorious for his call to abolish work, but he would attack anyone who differed from him.
Bob Black is a member of Philosophers

Does Bob Black Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Bob Black is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).

🎂 Bob Black - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

Currently, Bob Black is 73 years, 2 months and 25 days old. Bob Black will celebrate 74rd birthday on a Saturday 4th of January 2025. Below we countdown to Bob Black upcoming birthday.

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Popular As Bob Black
Occupation Philosophers
Age 72 years old
Zodiac Sign Aquarius
Born January 04, 1951 (Detroit, Michigan, United States)
Birthday January 04
Town/City Detroit, Michigan, United States
Nationality United States

🌙 Zodiac

Bob Black’s zodiac sign is Aquarius. According to astrologers, the presence of Aries always marks the beginning of something energetic and turbulent. They are continuously looking for dynamic, speed and competition, always being the first in everything - from work to social gatherings. Thanks to its ruling planet Mars and the fact it belongs to the element of Fire (just like Leo and Sagittarius), Aries is one of the most active zodiac signs. It is in their nature to take action, sometimes before they think about it well.

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Bob Black was born in the Year of the Rabbit. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Rabbit enjoy being surrounded by family and friends. They’re popular, compassionate, sincere, and they like to avoid conflict and are sometimes seen as pushovers. Rabbits enjoy home and entertaining at home. Compatible with Goat or Pig.

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Famous Quotes:

To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst ... Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade.

— Bob Black, The Libertarian As Conservative, 1984

Biography/Timeline

1969

Black graduated from the University of Michigan and Georgetown Law School. He later took M.A. degrees in jurisprudence and social policy from the University of California (Berkeley), Criminal justice from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, and an LL.M in Criminal law from the SUNY Buffalo School of Law. During his college days (1969–1973) he became disillusioned with the New Left of the 1970s and undertook extensive readings in anarchism, utopian socialism, council communism, and other left tendencies critical of both Marxism–Leninism and social democracy. He found some of these sources at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, a major collection of radical, labor, socialist, and anarchist materials which is now the repository for Black's papers and correspondence. He was soon drawn to Situationist thought, egoist communism, and the anti-authoritarian analyses of John Zerzan and the Detroit magazine Fifth Estate. He produced a series of ironic political posters signed "The Last International", first in Ann Arbor, Michigan, then in San Francisco where he moved in 1978. In the Bay Area he became involved with the publishing and cultural underground, writing reviews and critiques of what he called the "marginals milieu." Since 1988 he has lived in upstate New York.

1980

Some of his work from the early 1980s includes (anthologized in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays) highlights his critiques of the nuclear freeze movement ("Anti-Nuclear Terror"), the editors of Processed World ("Circle A Deceit: A Review of Processed World"), radical feminists ("Feminism as Fascism"), and right wing libertarians ("The Libertarian As Conservative"). Some of these essays previously appeared in "San Francisco's Appeal to Reason" (1981–1984), a leftist and counter-cultural tabloid newspaper for which Black wrote a column.

1985

Black is best known for a 1985 essay, "The Abolition of Work," which has been widely reprinted and translated into at least thirteen languages (most recently, Urdu). In it he argued that work is a fundamental source of domination, comparable to capitalism and the state, which should be transformed into voluntary "productive play." Black acknowledged among his inspirations the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier, the British utopian socialist William Morris, the Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, and the Situationists. The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, published by Loompanics in 1986, included, along with the title essay, some of his short Last International texts, and some essays and reviews reprinted from his column in "San Francisco's Appeal to Reason," a leftist and counter-cultural tabloid published from 1980 to 1984.

1986

The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (1986), draws upon some ideas of the Situationist International, the utopian socialists Charles Fourier and William Morris, anarchists such as Paul Goodman, and anthropologists such as Richard Borshay Lee and Marshall Sahlins. Black criticizes work for its compulsion, and, in industrial society, for taking the form of "jobs"—the restriction of the worker to a single limited task, usually one which involves no creativity and often no skill. Black's alternative is the elimination of what William Morris called "useless toil" and the transformation of useful work into "productive play," with opportunities to participate in a variety of useful yet intrinsically enjoyable activities, as proposed by Charles Fourier. Beneath the Underground (1992) is a collection of texts relating to what Black calls the "marginals milieu"—the do-it-yourself zine subculture which flourished in the 80s and early 90s. Friendly Fire (1992) is, like Black's first book, an eclectic collection touching on many topics including the Art Strike, Nietzsche, the first Gulf War and the Dial-a-Rumor telephone project he conducted with Zack Replica (1981–1983).

1992

Defacing the Currency: Selected Writings, 1992–2012 was published by Little Black Cart Press in 2013. It includes a lengthy (113 pages), previously unpublished critique of Noam Chomsky, "Chomsky on the Nod." A similar collection has been published, in Russian translation, by Hylaea Books in Moscow. Black's most recent book, also from LBC Books, is Instead of Work, which collects "The Abolition of Work" and seven other previously published texts, with a lengthy new update, "Afterthoughts on the Abolition of Work." The introduction is by science fiction Writer Bruce Sterling.

2000

Since 2000, Black has focused on topics reflecting his education and reading in the sociology and the ethnography of law, resulting in writings often published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. His recent interests have included the anarchist implications of dispute resolution institutions in stateless primitive societies (arguing that mediation, arbitration, etc., cannot feasibly be annexed to the U.S. Criminal justice system, because they presuppose anarchism and a relative social equality not found in state/class societies). At the 2011 annual B.A.S.T.A.R.D. anarchist conference in Berkeley, California, Black presented a workshop where he argued that, in society as it is, crime can be an anarchist method of social control, especially for people systematically neglected by the legal system. An article based on this presentation appeared in Anarchy magazine and in his 2013 book, Defacing the Currency: Selected Writings, 1992–2012.

2014

Black has expressed an interest, which grew out of his polemics with Bookchin, in the relation of democracy to anarchism. For Bookchin, democracy—the "direct democracy" of face-to-face assemblies of citizens—is anarchism. Some contemporary anarchists agree, including the academics Cindy Milstein, David Graeber, and Peter Staudenmeier. Black, however, has always rejected the idea that democracy (direct or representative) is anarchist. He made this argument at a presentation at the Long Haul Bookshop (in Berkeley) in 2008. In 2011, C.A.L. Press published as a pamphlet Debunking Democracy, elaborating on the speech and providing citation support. This too is reprinted in Defacing the Currency.

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