Blog post

I don't dream of labour... I dream of the beach

This summer we're dreaming of less time spent at work, and more time spent at the beach.

13 July 2023

I don't dream of labour... I dream of the beach

What kind of world could we build if we fought against our work-obsessed culture and our growth-centered economy? The beach is for dreaming, and we have just the books for it.

See ALL our Summer Reading here.

Don't forget: Verso Book Club members get 50% all book purchases year round, plus other great benefits. Sign up today and get your first month free!

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Troublemaking

by Lydia Hughes and Jamie Woodcock

There has been an explosion of organising among workers many assumed to be unorganisable, from delivery drivers in London to tech workers in Silicon Valley. The culmination of years of conversation...

Post-Growth Living

by Kate Soper

The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposa...

Inventing the Future

by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams

Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite.Inve...

The Future is Degrowth

by Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan and Andrea Vetter

Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalis...

Overtime

by Kyle Lewis and Will Stronge

Overtime is about the politics of time, and specifically the amount of time that we spend labouring within capitalist society. It argues that reactivating the longstanding demand for shorter workin...

Working Girl

by Sophia Giovannitti

Sex and art, we're told, are sacred, two spheres that ought to be kept separate from the ravages of the marketplace. Yet both prop up two incredibly lucrative industries, built on the commodificati...

Half-Earth Socialism

by Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese

‘Building a society that operates within ecological constraints requires an unleashing of our political imaginations, and this book helps us do just that’—Astra Taylor, author of The Age of Insecur...

We Want Everything

by Nanni Balestrini

Introduction by Rachel Kushner

It was the Autumn of 1969, and Italy exploded. Across the north of the country, factory workers stormed out on strike, demanding better pay and working conditions. The slogan “We Want Everything” r...

Work Without the Worker

by Philip Jones

We are told that the future of work will be increasingly automated. Algorithms, processing massive amounts of information at startling speed, will lead us to a new world of effortless labour and a ...

Breaking Things at Work

by Gavin Mueller

In the Nineteenth-century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new technologies on the factory floor by smashing them to bits. For years the Luddites roamed the English country...

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century

by Erik Olin Wright

Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solid...

Automation and the Future of Work

by Aaron Benanav

Silicon Valley titans, politicians, techno-futurists and social critics have united in arguing that we are living on the cusp of an era of rapid technological automation, heralding the end of work ...

Why You Should be a Trade Unionist

by Len McCluskey

In this short and accessible book, Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union, presents the case for joining a trade union. Drawing on anecdotes from his own long involvement in unions, he...

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

by Aaron Bastani

Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone. New technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism ...

Work

by Andrea Komlosy

Translated by Loren Balhorn and Jacob Watson

Andrea Komlosy argues in this important intervention that, when we examine it closely, work changes its meanings according to different historical and regional contexts. Globalizing labour history ...