Marxism has, and had for a quite a long time, a problem with the question of work. This is not to say that Marxism can be confused with the insistence of its antagonist, capitalism, over the relations of labor and production – nowhere in Marx’s own writings do we find the glorification of work elevated to the despotic cult of personality, as we currently see from policies recommended by the left and the right, from the popular media, from psychiatric practice and prison ‘reform’ programs, and even from the worker his or herself. One would have had to wait until the Soviet Union’s bureaucracy was cemented in place for work to become a machine-like force, subsumed in the highly-regimented activities of daily life. It must be pointed out, however, that this bureaucratic governance only reached its full realization after Lenin’s New Economy Policy, when the floodgates of market activity, Fordist…