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In Das Kapital, Marx goes to some lengths to prove that capitalism tends towards longer working hours. I can't remember if I liked the argument on its own terms

In Das Kapital, Marx goes to some lengths to prove that capitalism tends towards longer working hours. I can't remember if I liked the argument on its own terms, but it's absolutely been borne out by the facts. Working hours have been a really good inverse barometer for labour power. I think if you were going to start and advocacy org, you'd probably want to work out if it's something, at a basic structural level, that capitalism can budge on. If not, that doesn't mean you can't still push, it just means you can expect a lot more resistance than you would get for a normal common-sense adjustment to legislation.

readonthegoapp 5y ago
guess i have to read Das Kapital one of these days -- i have a feeling i wouldn't understand most of it. maybe a Das Kaptial for Kids/Beginners. not sure on that capitalism->longer working hours arg. probably? take, say, america. we got weekends around the 1930s maybe? don't quote me. we have a state capitalist economy. which, i guess means we're technically more capitalist than socialist? (even tho it doesn't feel that way to me) and the nature of the US economy as state capitalist has, afaik, been largely the same for our entire history. and yet we started getting days off 100+ years into our existence. and now, 250 years later, there's a movement to get another day off. i don't know that capitalism has much to say about 4-day vs x-day work weeks. maybe? i tend to think in terms of, "OK, hypothetical, if I'm rich, how do I keep everyone below me not-rich? right -- make sure they don't have any free time, and if they do have any free time, make sure they're exhausted and/or broke and/or hopeless and/or distracted and/or atomized."
- sokoloff 5y ago
  How has average household paid labor hours changed in the last 100 years in the US? I suspect it’s gone up (and substantially). I think this is a good change overall based on the underlying driver of increasing equality, but it’s far from a Pareto improvement.
  - readonthegoapp 5y ago
    guess i want to point out that we're presumably talking about _paid_ work, not unpaid work -- like childcare -- which women have, and continue to, do a disproportionate share of. good point -- women entering the workforce -- presumably, largely due to the WWII economy (I guess?) -- all the men shipped out, so factories needed women -- i tried to find some stats on household hours per week, and it seemed to suggest they went up, but not sure. if they did go up, is that because of (state) capitalism? or womens' rights? or war? https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ that page says about 200 years ago, artisan-type work started moving to industrialization/factories, and workers then started agitating for max-10-hours-per-day work day (no weekends until about 100 more years later). average per person weekly work hours seems to have been declining since about the 1820s (200 years), but women entering the workforce possibly changed things. when it comes to 'the workforce', should we start referring to it as 'the paid workforce'? i would guess slavery is tied in too -- but even that didn't _require_ state capitalism, even if there was a symbiosis there. and you could argue that the jim crow south was even more profitable than slavery itself - b/c prison laborers were not paid, and slaveowners -- in this case, semi/privatized but state-funded prisons took on the cost of feeding/housing the prisoners, etc. -- point being, if we're not counting paid work (childcare/slavery/prison labor), we're leaving out a lot of work.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Seems wise to look at the impacts on both paid and unpaid work with any change, but if you’re contemplating changing the arrangement of paid work, you surely want to look at the impact on paid work.

readonthegoapp 5y ago

guess i have to read Das Kapital one of these days -- i have a feeling i wouldn't understand most of it. maybe a Das Kaptial for Kids/Beginners. not sure on that capitalism->longer working hours arg. probably? take, say, america. we got weekends around the 1930s maybe? don't quote me. we have a state capitalist economy. which, i guess means we're technically more capitalist than socialist? (even tho it doesn't feel that way to me) and the nature of the US economy as state capitalist has, afaik, been largely the same for our entire history. and yet we started getting days off 100+ years into our existence. and now, 250 years later, there's a movement to get another day off. i don't know that capitalism has much to say about 4-day vs x-day work weeks. maybe? i tend to think in terms of, "OK, hypothetical, if I'm rich, how do I keep everyone below me not-rich? right -- make sure they don't have any free time, and if they do have any free time, make sure they're exhausted and/or broke and/or hopeless and/or distracted and/or atomized."

sokoloff 5y ago
How has average household paid labor hours changed in the last 100 years in the US? I suspect it’s gone up (and substantially). I think this is a good change overall based on the underlying driver of increasing equality, but it’s far from a Pareto improvement.
- readonthegoapp 5y ago
  guess i want to point out that we're presumably talking about _paid_ work, not unpaid work -- like childcare -- which women have, and continue to, do a disproportionate share of. good point -- women entering the workforce -- presumably, largely due to the WWII economy (I guess?) -- all the men shipped out, so factories needed women -- i tried to find some stats on household hours per week, and it seemed to suggest they went up, but not sure. if they did go up, is that because of (state) capitalism? or womens' rights? or war? https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ that page says about 200 years ago, artisan-type work started moving to industrialization/factories, and workers then started agitating for max-10-hours-per-day work day (no weekends until about 100 more years later). average per person weekly work hours seems to have been declining since about the 1820s (200 years), but women entering the workforce possibly changed things. when it comes to 'the workforce', should we start referring to it as 'the paid workforce'? i would guess slavery is tied in too -- but even that didn't _require_ state capitalism, even if there was a symbiosis there. and you could argue that the jim crow south was even more profitable than slavery itself - b/c prison laborers were not paid, and slaveowners -- in this case, semi/privatized but state-funded prisons took on the cost of feeding/housing the prisoners, etc. -- point being, if we're not counting paid work (childcare/slavery/prison labor), we're leaving out a lot of work.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Seems wise to look at the impacts on both paid and unpaid work with any change, but if you’re contemplating changing the arrangement of paid work, you surely want to look at the impact on paid work.