Radical Worker: Autonomous Labour as Reality-Maintaining Practice

This paper develops the theoretical foundations of Radical Worker (first published 2019, new edition 2025), arguing that self-determined work is not merely a political right but a structural requirement for preventing societies from collapsing into simulation. Autonomous labour is defined here as work that arises from internal resonance rather than external command, organised around long-term responsibility to reality rather than short-term deliverables. Building on the books Speeds Arbeit / Speed's Work and Radical Worker, the paper distinguishes three dimensions of labour: output-production, reality-maintenance, and simulation. It argues that only self-determined work can perform reality-maintaining labour in complex societies, because only autonomous workers have the structural freedom to correct institutions, preserve diversity, and generate new forms of meaning that are not pre-formatted by market or algorithmic expectations. By contrast, wage labour under contemporary capitalism is increasingly organised as simulation-management: the production and maintenance of appearances that satisfy metrics, dashboards and bureaucratic expectations without necessarily improving social or ecological reality. Automation and AI intensify this tendency by rewarding behaviours that imitate machine logic and punishing forms of work that cannot be simulated. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and long-term field research, the paper shows that self-determined workers are structurally targeted by labour markets, welfare bureaucracies and algorithmic governance precisely when their work increases reality-contact. The conclusion is that autonomous labour is not a luxury, hobby, or exception, but civilizational infrastructure. Societies that suppress self-determined work will progressively lose the capacity for correction, democratic reflexivity and ecological survival.