Today unemployment is a cultural, not an economic problem. By this I mean the following: (1) no economic solution to growing unemployment is in view; (2) if it is not necessary that people perform unpleasant work, they should not be forced to do it; and (3) not working will not be viewed individually and socially as undesirable if certain institutional and cultural changes occur. A central political problem of our times is to transform the deprivation resulting from growing unemployment into a celebration of increasing freedom from unpleasant work ("toil"). The economic preconditions of this transformation are present: this is why we have massive unemployment. Political, cultural, and institutional preconditions are as yet absent: this is why we experience the possibility of freedom as widespread deprivation.