on the job), so that what he says should be uncontroversial; however, it is controversial only because people are too close to the work-system to see its flaws. Play, in contrast, is not necessarily rule-governed, and is performed voluntarily, in complete freedom, as a gift economy . He points out that hunter-gatherer societies are typified by play, a view he backs up with the work of Marshall Sahlins ; he recounts the rise of hierarchal societies, through which work is cumulatively imposed, so that the compulsive work of today would seem incomprehensibly oppressive even to ancients and medieval peasants. He responds to the view that "work," if not simply effort or energy, is necessary to get important but unpleasant tasks done, by claiming that first of all, most important tasks can be rendered ludic, or "salvaged" by being turned into game-like and craft-like activities, and secondly that the vast majority of work does not need doing at all. The latter tasks are unnecessary because they only serve functions of commerce and social control that exist only to maintain the work-system as a whole. As for what is left, he advocates Charles Fourier's approach of arranging activities so that people will want to do them. He is also skeptical but open-minded about the possibility of eliminating work through labor-saving technologies. He feels the left cannot go far enough in its critiques because of its attachment to building its power on the category of workers , which requires a valorization of work.