Crucially, much of the scepticism surrounding the value of work is not scepticism about the value of work per se but scepticism about the value of work in present day social conditions or scepticism about the veneration of work found in the “Protestant work ethic” (Weber 1904–05) or in work-centred societies. Sceptics about work-centred culture question whether popular enthusiasm for work is rational or well-informed or whether it gives adequate credence to alternatives to work-centred culture (Cholbi 2018b, Sage 2019). Indeed, many critics of contemporary work arrangements essentially argue that good or desirable work is possible but rarer than we suppose. In “Useful Work versus Useful Toil,” (1884), for example, the socialist activist William Morris rejects “the creed of modern morality that all labor is good in itself” and argues for a distinction between work that is “a blessing, a lightening of life” and work that is “a mere curse, a burden to life,” offering us no hope of rest, no hope of producing anything genuinely useful, and no hope of pleasure in its performance. Similarly, the anarchist Bob Black opens his essay “The Abolition of Work” (1985) as follows: