ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of theories of the end of work in the context of the development of social theory in the latter half of the twentieth century. Marcuse's work contains many of the key elements of Classical, Fourierist and Marxist critiques of labour, but is responsive to the changes undergone by capitalist society during the twentieth century. In his essay 'On Hedonism' Marcuse had introduced some of the arguments that were to be central in Eros and Civilization. In Eros and Civilization, Marcuse uses Freud's theory of the instincts to underpin his assertion that society represses the individual's essential urge towards pleasure, towards uninhibited self expression. Marcuse, or the Marcuse of Eros and Civilization and subsequent work, proposes that people could make work play, in a re-eroticised realm of freedom and creative activity. Daniel Bell, whose work we know Marcuse had referred to, later characterised automation as a 'social-science fiction'.
