Many times online, when asked what their dream job is, some users will reply that they “do not dream of labor.” The statment broadly means that in their fantasies, they do not do (ostensibely employment-related) work, and can instead merely relax and do other things. Typically this statement is also used to imply the speaker is somehow trapped within the confines of capitalism and can’t dream of a future beyond it.

It’s also one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in my life.

Because you do fuckin’ dream of labor. You just discount its value.

If you dream of making art? That’s labor. If you dream of tending to your own crops in a self-sustaining home? That’s labor. If your fantasies involve the creation of something, then newsflash, dickweed, that is labor. Labor is not just “when I do work for money”, it’s “when I do”. It’s “when I create”.

And if your dreams involve no creation? If they involve you travelling the world, relaxing on the beach, eating delicious food? Well, second newsflash, that’s someone else’s labor. Someone had to harvest the crops, refuel the plane, pick the grapes you eat out of a basket. You don’t dream of being free of capitalism, you dream of being the bourgeoisie¹.

Is that necessarily wrong? To dream of being on top of the social food chain? It’s a common fantasy and there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, even if I will judge you somewhat, but what annoys me more is the hypocrisy. You didn’t escape the cave, you found a new shadow to leer at.