Threshold or genuinely transitional ways to reducing aggregate, social labour-time?

[Die Neue Zeit]

An old Heteconomist blog:

Approaches to the Reduction of Aggregate Labor Time (http://heteconomist.com/approaches-to-the-reduction-of-aggregate-labor-time)


Technology has reached the point where nobody should be compelled to spend most of their waking hours working in dangerous, menial or otherwise unpleasant jobs (‘bad jobs’, for short). It is increasingly possible to mechanize most menial and repetitive tasks. But of the bad jobs that continue for a time, there remains the question of how best to share the burden they impose. Even with better jobs, there is the potential to reduce standard working hours and create more free time for those who want it. Here, too, there is the question of how to manage such an overall reduction in working hours. Since some people will desire to maintain or increase their current working hours, ideally there should be latitude for them to do so, just as there should be latitude for others, so inclined, to shorten their labor-time commitment.

The blog apparently presented three alternatives: universal job sharing, optional job sharing, and job-and-income guarantee.

These approaches can be supported on the left for reasons other than the reduction of aggregate labour time. I’ve just read key parts or Robert LaJeunesse’s Work Time Regulation, and this book reminds me of one Tom Walker’s works on working hours. That’s what’s inspiring this post.

I’ll start with an unusual critique of JIG and ELR by itself, unusual coming from a usual supporter. These facilitate the commodification of work previously outside the labour market, like household work and eldercare, so by definition aggregate labour time is increased!

The two job sharing policies, meanwhile, may have quite a radical impact. However, such impact is only at first. It doesn’t have the protracted but more systemic impact that, say, the more successful anti-smoking campaigns and regulations have had – essentially limiting smoking to individual residences. This same problem is shared by the most optimistic and sympathetic interpretation of the Trotskyist sacred cow known as the “sliding scale of hours” (i.e., assuming no upward adjustments to working hours), the sloganeering of which is put forward for reasons other than reducing aggregate, social labour-time.

A few years ago I wrote about behavioural political economy and economy-wide indicative planning, but I made only one scant comment about working hours. After this re-acquaintance with working hours, I think there’s a better approach, one that may not look as radical at first, but one that is more protracted and systemic.

We all know about stagnant or depressed real wages, if not about stagnant or depressed real disposable income, over the past three-and-a-half decades or so. However, based on the references cited above, I think there may be one justifiable anchor for the policy-based maintenance of stagnant (not depressed) real discretionary income: slow but long-term decline in working hours.

Each increment of such decline could be made on an annual basis and tied for the most part to inflation, some cost of living measure, or some productivity per capita measure. Unlike a sliding scale, however, there would be no upward adjustments to working hours. Some math is necessary below to show the slow but long-term decline in working hours under such actually radical policy.

Assuming end-of-period compounding calculations, a 1% annual decline in working hours, and a base value of 40 hours:

Year 1 working hours = 39.6000
Year 5 working hours = 38.0396
Year 10 working hours = 36.1753
Year 20 working hours = 32.7163
Year 30 working hours = 29.5880
Year 50 working hours = 24.2002

Assuming end-of-period compounding calculations, a 2% annual decline in working hours, and a base value of 40 hours:

Year 1 working hours = 39.2000
Year 5 working hours = 36.1568
Year 10 working hours = 32.6829
Year 20 working hours = 26.7043
Year 30 working hours = 21.8194
Year 50 working hours = 14.5668

Now that is work time / working hours "regulation," no? Just think of further declines if immediate pressure for a 4-day, 32-hour workweek (without loss of pay or benefits) were to erupt and succeed.



Having said all that, could the above in fact be directional or genuinely transitional? Both the big corporate capitalist and the small business capitalist would prefer a real wage increase for their employees over an equivalent reduction in working week hours.

On the usual labour side, there has never been such creative approach to work time / working hours "regulation." First came the 10-hour day, then the 8-hour day, then what?

[ckaihatsu]

Sorry, DNZ, but this whole line is rather utopian in conception.

Sure, people shouldn't be *obligated* to work -- not even *at all*, if they really don't want to since society has been able to produce a surplus of life-necessities for centuries now, but that doesn't mean that the world should be directed to the reduction of hours across-the-board as a *societal* goal, necessarily.

I don't mean to be arguing for a *standard*, or an *increase* in the average workweek, either, because the context we're currently in is one of exploitative capitalism, so the fact is that much labor value goes to the system anyway.

But even if we were in a *post*-capitalist context, there could very well be numerous collective efforts deserving of people's optional labor that would go against the idea of a flat reduction of labor hours.

I'm currently developing a 'societal philosophical' framework that posits three divergent (triangular) poles of trans-historical opinion on societal efforts: population vs. participation vs. productivity. Attentions and motivations will generally favor one of the three, while a focus on any of the two will definitely exclude the remaining one.

So, using this framework to translate, the position of this initial post would be 'Maintain present levels of productivity while decreasing participation for a static or growing population and its current standard of living.'

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sorry, DNZ, but this whole line is rather utopian in conception.

How so? :confused:


Sure, people shouldn't be *obligated* to work -- not even *at all*, if they really don't want to since society has been able to produce a surplus of life-necessities for centuries now, but that doesn't mean that the world should be directed to the reduction of hours across-the-board as a *societal* goal, necessarily.

The first-order reasoning is similar to less economistic arguments for reducing the working day to 10 hours and then to 8 hours, and then the working week from 40 hours to 32: it allows for political participation, and it facilitates environmental sustainability.


But even if we were in a *post*-capitalist context, there could very well be numerous collective efforts deserving of people's optional labor that would go against the idea of a flat reduction of labor hours.

The proliferation of robotics and other technology should facilitate the indexed reduction of which I write.


I'm currently developing a 'societal philosophical' framework that posits three divergent (triangular) poles of trans-historical opinion on societal efforts: population vs. participation vs. productivity. Attentions and motivations will generally favor one of the three, while a focus on any of the two will definitely exclude the remaining one.

So, using this framework to translate, the position of this initial post would be 'Maintain present levels of productivity while decreasing participation for a static or growing population and its current standard of living.'

I look forward to reading your alternative.

[ckaihatsu]

How so? :confused:


From the last line:





So, using this framework to translate, the position of this initial post would be 'Maintain present levels of productivity while decreasing participation for a static or growing population and its current standard of living.'


Assuming your acknowledgement of this, and with no reduction of labor exploitation, the call is for exactly this, which is economically untenable.





The first-order reasoning is similar to less economistic arguments for reducing the working day to 10 hours and then to 8 hours, and then the working week from 40 hours to 32: it allows for political participation, and it facilitates environmental sustainability.


There's the change in the equation that would be *required* to displace the status quo, for a different outcome: political participation -- meaning class struggle that effects a reduction of labor exploitation, so as to realize an upkeep of the present standard of living for a static or growing population, despite the reduction in total hours of labor.





The proliferation of robotics and other technology should facilitate the indexed reduction of which I write.


Assuming that productivity gains from increased automation would benefit the working class' standard of living (wages and benefits), which is far from a given.





I look forward to reading your alternative.


I don't mean to bicker -- I'll wait this round out. (grin)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Assuming your acknowledgement of this, and with no reduction of labor exploitation, the call is for exactly this, which is economically untenable.

I think I get what you're saying:


So, using this framework to translate, the position of this initial post would be 'Maintain present levels of productivity while decreasing participation for a static or growing population and its current standard of living.'

Assuming that's your translation of what I'm getting at, I think you're missing one key element, and that's productivity per capita.

In your words, I would say instead: Maintain present levels of real productivity per capita, while decreasing participation for a static or growing population and its current standard of living. That would make more sense, because "present levels of productivity" and "growing population" would be economically untenable in the long run.

I do apologize if my OP didn't indicate productivity per capita in the beginning. It has been edited for clarity accordingly. :o

[ckaihatsu]

I think I get what you're saying




Assuming that's your translation of what I'm getting at, I think you're missing one key element, and that's productivity per capita.

In your words, I would say instead: Maintain present levels of real productivity per capita, while decreasing participation for a static or growing population and its current standard of living. That would make more sense, because "present levels of productivity" and "growing population" would be economically untenable in the long run.

I do apologize if my OP didn't indicate productivity per capita in the beginning. It has been edited for clarity accordingly. :o


No prob, DNZ, but that level of specificity doesn't alter the *overall* meaning, or structure, of what's being proposed.

Allow me to use your composition, with the components labeled numerically:





[1] Maintain present levels of real productivity per capita, while [2] decreasing participation [3] for a static or growing population and its current standard of living.


For comparison, the *status quo* would be read as:

[1] Maintain present levels of real productivity per capita, while [2] retaining participation [3] for a static population and its current standard of living.


In *your* formulation you're looking to *decrease* one variable, an *input* -- participation -- and expecting that the same kind of output can be maintained without compensating for that decrease in input.

As I mentioned in post #4, we can find suitable compensation for the reduction in input by either reducing the levels of labor exploitation (through class struggle that increases wages and benefits), or by productivity gains that benefit workers -- an unlikely possibility.

[Die Neue Zeit]

For comparison, the *status quo* would be read as:

[1] Maintain present levels of real productivity per capita, while [2] retaining participation [3] for a static population and its current standard of living.

Not quite on the status quo, comrade:

[1] Maintain or increase present levels of real productivity per capita, while [2] retaining or increasing participation (via precarity and longer hours but not at a single job) [3] for a static or growing population and its current standard of living.


In *your* formulation you're looking to *decrease* one variable, an *input* -- participation -- and expecting that the same kind of output can be maintained without compensating for that decrease in input.

As I mentioned in post #4, we can find suitable compensation for the reduction in input by either reducing the levels of labor exploitation (through class struggle that increases wages and benefits), or by productivity gains that benefit workers -- an unlikely possibility.

I did pose the question about whether this measure is on the threshold like the ELR / job guarantee (i.e., the absolute maximum reform that bourgeois forces via even a left soc-dem regime could implement, and which could facilitate no further reforms), or whether it is in fact directional or genuinely transitional.

Going back to the technical side, Marx mentioned the distinction between absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. My proposed left policy would mean that society would have to rely more and more on relative surplus value.