“Work is slavery, not worship, and work is inevitable killing of the soul.”
In his short story, “The Sweetheart,” Dostoyevsky tells us about a girl who published this advertisement in the newspaper:
“A girl is looking for work and does not ask for a salary. She is satisfied with her food as wages.”
Because Dostoyevsky warned the reader that he was telling a “fictional” story, it did not occur to many people that things would get so bad that some would have to look for work that would only provide them with food!
A job through which a person cannot achieve a decent life, open a house, or realize a dream.
If only the matter was not limited to the absurdity of the ridiculous wages given to the worker, but rather the slavery that the workers face at work.
At work, a person begins to work with bosses who enjoy humiliating those who work under their command.
This negative view that Dostoyevsky presents to the work would not have been possible if the conditions in Russia at that time were not so tragic. If the working conditions were healthy, the writer would have found a thousand opinions criticizing him, and his works would not have become widespread and well-known.
Was Dostoyevsky being sarcastic when he described his story as fictional, and that he wanted to say that this is the next future of humanity?
I think, as many things are, this level of "work" is cyclical.
I don't believe Dostoyevsky was being "sarcastic". I believe he was writing allegorically, using "fiction" as the device to portray the current and perceived future of "work" and the burden it places upon those not born unto "nobility", as he saw it.
For example, in the current fiat based, central bank run world, we can see this on the rise even in America where many of us refer to work as "wage-slavery" or "debt-slavery".
This is what happens when the elite are allowed to control the money supply with no ties to a "hard" backing to something with intrinsic value.
Since "money" is only a medium of exchange: one cannot eat it. "Money" is simply a way to offer a receipt of ones "time" traded via "work"... when the elite can manipulate the supply the "money" at will (fiat), they can manipulate the value of said "money" by diluting it and thus devaluing our "time" traded for said money.
By doing this, they control and devalue our lives, as we trade our "time" for "money" and they enjoy the benefits of it, leeching it from all of us, a grain of sand at a time - like the ocean erodes the beach.
Until one day, when the beach is nearly gone and the ocean has robbed it of all it's sand... a tidal wave surges forth and the sand is restored.