I recently came across the term "scotosis", which refers to a kind of
cultivated collective blind spot that we develop to ward off knowledge that
might upset our customary way of viewing the world. My guilty secret is that
my earliest fascination with the hours of work question had nothing to do
with economics but with the apoplectic indignation proposals for shorter
work time evoked from people who styled themselves sensible and
well-informed. It's interesting (if annoying) that such folks invariably
*know* what I'm thinking and why without paying attention to anything I
might have to say.
At this point it is really not so much a matter of whether or not a 35-hour
week or less would make life more pleasant or at least do no harm for a
whole lot of folks. For me, it is a question of the role that this
remarkable scotosis about the hours of work plays in upholding an untenable
world view -- in propping up a house of cards.
I am talking about the founding myth of our industrial hierarchy. That
hierarchy has hypertropied out of any proportion or relation to its supposed
foundation, presumably the exchange of labour services at market prices. To
question the foundation is to threaten the hierarchy. And it is for the sake
of preserving that hierarchy that we must insist on the inviolability of the
utterly corroded foundation.
Or maybe I'm the one whose got it all wrong with my base/superstructure
fetish. And the real foundation of industrial society is the entrepreneurial
free-market blimp from which dangles suspended the structurally superfluous
but eternally indebted undercarriage of wage labour.
Is that a left-handed or a right-handed sky hook?
Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213
