the (im)moral value of work ...

“I am forced to accept the notion of work as a material necessity, and in this regard I strongly favor its better, that is fairer, division. I admit that life’s grim obligations make it a necessity, but never that I should believe in its value, revere my own or that of other men. I prefer, once again, walking by night to believing myself a man who walks by daylight. There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life’s meaning – that event which I may not have found, but on whose path I seek myself – is not earned by work.”

(André Breton, Nadja. Trans. Richard Howard)