In a 2017 interview, Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste described the band’s creative process as “incredibly democratic,” a word he had used as early as 2012 to describe its M.O.
Albums took years to develop, decisions were collaborative, and no one rushed to meet arbitrary deadlines. Their ethos was a quiet defiance against a world obsessed with speed and measurable outcomes. Droste’s words felt like a reminder: what if productivity wasn’t about efficiency or grind? What if it centered depth, care, and shared purpose?
Yet, six years later, Droste left music entirely. Burned out by relentless touring and the commodification of creativity, he became a therapist. His pivot wasn’t an escape from work but a shift in purpose—a choice to care for himself and others instead of chasing external validation.
Droste’s story highlights a profound tension: even the most intentional, thoughtful practices exist within capitalism’s constraints.
This tension—the struggle to carve out meaningful ways of working while resisting systems of extraction—is central to reclaiming productivity.
What does it mean to create, care, and connect in a system that values none of these? How can we transform productivity from a tool of oppression into a practice of liberation?
The Machinery of Capitalist Productivity
Capitalist productivity isn’t broken; it functions exactly as designed. It extracts value, disciplines time, isolates individuals, and erases care—all to maximize profit.
1. Extraction, Not Growth
Under capitalism, productivity is about output, not fulfillment. Burnout isn’t a flaw—it’s proof the system is working as intended. Rest, care, and relationships are inefficiencies unless they can be commodified.
Grizzly Bear resisted this logic with their deliberate, layered music, created slowly and intentionally.
But even this ethos was vulnerable. Industry demands for relentless touring eventually eroded their ability to maintain their process. Resistance is necessary but precarious in a system built on extraction.
2. Time as a Weapon
Industrial capitalism transformed time into something you owe. E.P. Thompson’s Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism shows how the factory clock fractured life into measurable units of labor, subordinating existence to profit.
Today, productivity apps and optimization culture extend this logic. Time is no longer yours—it belongs to the system. Autechre, known for their experimental music, reject this rigidity. Their process values exploration and failure, resisting the tyranny of the clock.
3. Isolation as Strategy
Capitalism isolates workers, framing productivity as an individual pursuit. If you fail, it’s your fault. This erodes solidarity and keeps you from imagining collective resistance.
Similar in some ways to Grizzly Bear's, Animal Collective’s collaborative process disrupts this isolation. Their music thrives on blending distinct voices into something greater than the sum of its parts. Connection isn’t a distraction—it’s the foundation of richer outcomes.
4. The Erasure of Care
Care—raising children, supporting loved ones, nurturing communities—is invisible unless it generates profit. Yet, without care, nothing functions.
Threading it back to examples from music, 700 Bliss reframes care as essential to creativity. Their music, rooted in connection and healing, insists that care isn’t secondary to productivity but central to its redefinition.
Toward “From Each According to Their Care”
The phrase “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” envisions equity. But under capitalism, “ability” becomes a mandate to produce until you collapse, and “needs” are met only when convenient.
Reclaiming productivity requires rejecting extraction and centering care, connection, and sustainability. What if productivity wasn’t measured by output but by our capacity to care for ourselves and one another?
1. Care as Contribution
What if care—not output—defined productivity?
Mutual Aid as a Model: Mutual aid networks prioritize care over extraction. They ask, “What can you offer?” instead of, “What can you produce?” Contributions—time, food, emotional support—are valued equally, building resilience without competition.
Time for Each Other: Relational and emotional labor, long dismissed as unproductive, becomes central. Productivity includes tending to one another, not just producing goods.
2. Dignity Over Output
“From each according to their ability” ties worth to capacity. A care-centered framework insists dignity is unconditional.
Universal Basic Income: Decoupling survival from labor through UBI creates space for rest, creativity, and care. It challenges the capitalist notion that worth is tied to output.
Crip Time as Default: Disability activists advocate for “crip time,” which honors life’s natural rhythms over rigid schedules. In a care-centered system, crip time becomes the norm.
3. Collaboration Over Competition
Reclaiming productivity isn’t about individual achievement—it’s about collective creation.
Collective Rhythms: Animal Collective shows how mutual respect and fluid roles strengthen creativity. Productivity becomes a shared act, not a solitary grind.
Temporal Solidarity: Reclaiming productivity means reclaiming time collectively. Shared rhythms prioritize connection over isolation.
What “From Each According to Their Care” Looks Like
Reclaiming productivity requires rethinking how we structure work, time, and value.
Worker-Led Scheduling: Teams collaboratively design schedules that balance labor and care.
Community Time Banks: Contributions of care—childcare, elder care, emotional labor—are valued equally to traditional labor.
Slowness as a Value: Projects embrace deliberate pacing, allowing for depth and intention.
Holding the Contradictions
Droste’s story reveals the contradictions of resistance under capitalism. Even the most thoughtful practices—whether Grizzly Bear’s creative ethos or mutual aid networks—are shaped by systemic pressures. Animal Collective still sells albums. Mutual aid relies on corporate platforms. Resistance exists within, not outside, these systems.
But compromise doesn’t erase value. Reclaiming productivity isn’t about achieving purity—it’s about carving out spaces for care and connection within the mess. Incomplete resistance is still resistance.
Toward a New Rhythm
Reclaiming productivity isn’t just about how we work—it’s about how we live. It asks us to center care, collaboration, and intention over extraction. It insists that value isn’t in what we produce but in how we sustain ourselves and one another.
“From each according to their care, to each according to their dignity” offers a new rhythm—one that prioritizes humanity over profit. You don’t have to give more than you can. You don’t have to prove your worth. Start with care—for yourself, for others, for your community. Together, we can reclaim time, connection, and meaning.
“Crip time is time travel. Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings” - Ellen Samuels, in “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time” (2017)
