At 07:22 23/06/01 -0700, Tom Walker wrote an extensive reply to my message
-- and almost immediate too!
I won't comment at anywhere near the same length because, as you say, we
differ and are not likely to persuade each other.
I'll just make the point here that I'm surprised that you even bothered to
look for a source of the "lump of labour fallacy" (except in so far that
there was probably was a single creator of the phrase, "lump of labour")
because it's not a theory that anybody would advance (unlike Piltdown Man
hoax). It simple describes a fallacious way of thinking. And, like many
other fallacious ways of thinking, it is pretty widespread.
And there's another similar fallacy which you are guilty of when you write:
(TW)
>About a third of the people working part-time say they would rather have a
>full-time job but can't find one and many of the people working long hours
>would gladly forgo income for more time off. So what happens when unions or
>social activists suggest that perhaps we could solve both dilemmas and
>reduce unemployment in the bargain by redistributing the hours of work --
>perhaps even try something like the 35-hour work week brought in recently by
>the French government?
>
>What happens is we're scolded by financial commentators and think-tank
>experts like Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute that to even consider
>such a thing is proof of "economic ignorance".
This could be called the "equivalence of labour fallacy" -- that is, that
the skills of those who complain of overwork could be easily supplied by
those who work part-time (or who are unemployed) and would like to work
full-time.
So let's leave it there and hope that someone else might like to take part.
Keith Hudson
:
>Keith Hudson wrote,
>
>>It's no use throwing confrontational language at me -- in rows of upper
>>case words or not.
>
>The "confrontational language" was a slightly modified quote from David F.
>Schloss (in the original he referred specifically to the "length of the
>working day" rather than generally to the "hours of work" because the issue
>was the 8-hour day and not the 35-hour week). I'm not throwing any language
>at YOU, Keith. I'm all too familiar with your style of argument. I'm only
>replying to you on the off chance that someone else will eavesdrop on the
>(non)conversation.
>
>>I did indeed go to the summary of your chapter, but didn't understand much
>>of it due to the sociological/academic type language. But it seems to me
>>that your argument (as in your message below) makes use of the trick of
>>referring to some authority somewhere else -- but never adequately
>explained.
>>
>>If you can't explain your case in simple language that ordinary folk can
>>understand, weigh and consider, then I'm afraid I will continue to be
>>unconvinced and will rest upon a sensible interpretation of the facts.
>
>I can explain the case in simple language that ordinary folk can understand
>(and I will below) but it is hard for anyone, ordinary or not to grasp the
>rather remarkable finding that a "scientific discipline" (economics) turned
>its back on its own established theoretical tradition and instead embraced a
>flimsy piece of anti-trade union propaganda from a discredited source.
>That's the plain case.
>
>It took 54 years for the Piltdown man to be edited out of the "evolutionary
>chain" and even longer for Cyril Burt's twin studies to be recognized as
>forgeries. In simple language, the "lump of labour fallacy" is a scientific
>hoax.
>
>It's all very well to dismiss the plain case as a unsupported allegation and
>to dismiss the deliberate presentation of a preponderance of evidence as
>"sociological/academic type language". In addition to the "executive
>summary", I've also got a popularization of the scholarly argument, which I
>will copy at the end of this message.
>
>Now, you don't have to agree with what I say in the plain case, the
>scholarly paper, the executive summary or the popularization. But please
>don't attack the scholarly for not being popular and the popular for not
>being scholarly; dismiss the nuanced as not being clear and the clear as not
>being nuanced. It leaves me with no way of communicating.
>
>What is this "trick of referring to some authority somewhere else?" In my
>chapter all my authorities and sources are carefully noted, which I suppose
>you would object to as part of the "sociological/academic type language".
>The funny part of this citation game is that in the course of my research I
>have followed up on every citation (hundreds) of the lump-of-labour,
>lump-of-work or lump-of-output fallacy that I could find through full text
>searches of several journal databases and through index searches and visual
>scans of textbooks and scholarly and popular books in the subject area. I
>have also sent written enquiries to several "authorities" who themselves
>cited the lump of labour fallacy as authoritative. I hunted down and ordered
>photocopies from distant libraries so I could scrutinize obscure pamplets.
>
>Paul Samuelson, in a gracious letter, could offer no source for the lump of
>labour fallacy he discussed in his textbook for fifty years. Evidently it
>was just something he was taught in school and he duly passed it on without
>questioning it. One of my respondents guessed that J.S. Mill was the source
>of the expression and argument. Well, he wasn't but there is nevertheless an
>interesting connection between Mill, the wages-fund doctrine and its
>refutation and the lump-of-labour fallacy that I won't go into because it is
>a digression.
>
>>I will repeat my message in simple terms in one paragraph and if you can't
>>reply to this in equally brief, simple terms without resorting to all sorts
>>of other inaccessible authorities, then I'll remain unconvinced.
>
>No, by conviction you will remain unconvinced regardless.
>
>>Reducing the working week can only extend employment in the case of a
>>particular business if: (a) the firm has enough "slack" to be able improve
>>its efficiency to compensate for the reduction in working hours by its
>>employees, and, (b) the market for its goods or services can be extended --
>>and thus be able to take on more employees.
>
>There is nothing in the above paragraph that I dispute. I would only
>emphasize that there is abundant "slack" in _most_ firms in the form of
>inefficiently excess or deficient hours of work. (Yes, Keith too short hours
>can also be inefficient). Part of Chapman's demonstration is that under
>competitive conditions firms will tend to employ workers at hours of work
>that are longer than would be optimal. In the context of extensive fringe
>benefits and capped payroll taxes, Chapman's theory would have to be
>modified to include another tendency for firms to employ workers at hours
>that are shorter than optimal. No, the two tendencies don't "cancel each
>other out." They are non-continuous and apply to different classifications
>of employees.
>
>>This will only apply to some businesses. Once these have become more
>>efficient and taken on more employees, then no more progress can be made
>>until entirely new technological processes are adopted by the firms
>>concerned. New processes don;t grow on trees. They only come along
>>episodically. The French government are now up against a brick wall (in the
>>case of firms of over 20 employees) and won't be able to produce more
>>empoyment.
>
>Think of it as a reciprocating process -- technical improvements create the
>conditions (fatigue, increased output, unemployment) for shorter hours of
>work and the reduced hours of work in turn create an incentive (labour
>scarcity, upward wage pressure) for introducing further technical
>improvements, which in turn create a demand for further reductions in the
>hours of labour and so on... It is a dynamic process that lays the golden
>egg, not one side of it. The claim of a "lump of labour fallacy" implies
>that the reduction of the hours of work has no place in the dynamic process.
>There would be a lump of labour fallacy if advocates of shorter work time
>took the view that is falsely ascribed to them, but they don't.
>
>>I note that you haven't challenged my reductio ad impossibile argument.
>>I'll repeat it: If reducing the working week from 39 to 35 hours is so
>>successful in extending employment, why doesn't the French government
>>reduce the working week to 30 hours, or 25 hours, or 20 hours . . . ?
>
>Gee, that's a real toughie. ;-) Let's say you're driving along the
>expressway at 40 kilometres an hour and the speed limit is 80. I tell you
>you would be safer and get where you're going quicker to drive at 80. Well,
>if what I say is true why wouldn't you be even safer at 90 or 100 or 120?
>
>The relationship between hours, output and hourly productivity is expressed
>by a curve, not a straight line. That means, given a particular set of
>technical conditions, productivity first increases with an increase in the
>hours worked and then, after a certain point decreases (BTW Chapman's curve
>and his explanation of it are available on my website at
>http://www.vcn.bc.ca/worksite.htm).
>
>During the time that productivity increases and part of the time that it is
>decreasing, total output also increases. However there also comes a point on
>the curve where any further increase in total output during the current
>period is at the cost of a decrease in the subsequent period. Just think of
>how much output you will produce the day after working a 24-hour shift.
>
>Admittedly it is simpler to think of the relationship between hours,
>productivity and output as a straight line and I apologize for the
>difficulty introduced by the requirement of thinking in curves.
>
>There are also complexities introduced by the intricacies of adjusting to a
>new regime of hours from an old one. It could be that "ideally" a 25-hour
>week would be more efficient and create more jobs than a 35-hour week, once
>it was in place. But the cost of getting there might be more than a
>particular society could afford at one time. In the early 19th century,
>typical hours of work ranged up to 70 hours a week. In the 1950s people
>produced much greater total output in 40 hours. That doesn't mean, though,
>that a 40 hour week in 1830 would have been more productive than a 70 hour
>week.
>
>Below is the popularization I mentioned:
>
>Remembrance of Work Time Standards Lost
>
>Twenty-five years ago, two-thirds of the Canadian work force worked a
>standard 35 to 40 hour a week. And they received a full-time pay cheque with
>holiday and vacation pay for doing so.
>
>By 1995, the proportion of the work-force working standard hours had
>declined to a bare majority. Many of the rest of us have migrated to
>part-time jobs with substandard pay and benefits or to long hours of work
>often without compensation for overtime.
>
>About a third of the people working part-time say they would rather have a
>full-time job but can't find one and many of the people working long hours
>would gladly forgo income for more time off. So what happens when unions or
>social activists suggest that perhaps we could solve both dilemmas and
>reduce unemployment in the bargain by redistributing the hours of work --
>perhaps even try something like the 35-hour work week brought in recently by
>the French government?
>
>What happens is we're scolded by financial commentators and think-tank
>experts like Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute that to even consider
>such a thing is proof of "economic ignorance". According to National Post
>columnist Peter Foster, for example, the French 35-hour policy is based on a
>"fundamental economic misunderstanding known as the 'lump-of-labor fallacy'."
>
>What the heck is a "lump of labor" and why did I spend the last two years
>studying and writing about it? The simple answer is that the lump of labor
>is a "theory" that isn't a theory; it is an "economic fallacy" that is not
>an economic fallacy.
>
>Like the chemically-aged skull of a modern man and jawbone of an orangutan
>dug up at Piltdown, England in 1911, the lump-of-labor fallacy is a
>scientific hoax. Unlike the counterfeit missing link, however, the
>lump-of-labor fallacy may be making our work lives miserable -- eroding our
>job security, piling up our workload, gobbling our pay cheques and spoiling
>our weekends.
>
>You don't need to know exactly what the lump-of-labor fallacy is or says.
>It's a relic of sheer nonsense that has been reverently handed down from
>generation to generation of mainstream economists. If you insist on learning
>the details, you can read my chapter debunking the lump-of-labor claim in a
>recent scholarly volume on working time.
>
>What you DO need to know is that mainstream economists have completely blown
>the issue of working time. There once was an economic theory of the hours of
>labor, a very good theory indeed presented by Sir Sydney Chapman -- an
>esteemed and excruciatingly orthodox Cambridge economist -- in Winnipeg in
1909.
>
>Economics, as it is taught at universities, has managed to "lose" its own
>theory, though. It's in the library, but few economists bother to look for
>it there. Instead they look in their textbooks, where the theory isn't.
>
>During the 1950s and 1960s the most widely-used introductory textbook in
>first year economics courses across North America was a book affectionately
>known as "Samuelson". Its official title was Economics: An Introduction by
>Paul Samuelson.
>
>Edition after revised edition of that ubiquitous textbook carried a breezy
>discussion of why union demands or policy proposals for shorter hours of
>work -- though admittedly well-intentioned -- are hare-brained panaceas not
>worth considering seriously. Why? Because they are based on the venerable
>lump-of-labor fallacy.
>
>The claim makes about as much sense as saying that caring about nutrition is
>based on a lump-of-food fallacy or that personal hygiene is based on a
>lump-of-soap fallacy. That hasn't prevented financial page editorialists and
>business lobbyists from banging the fallacy gong any time a shorter work
>time proposal makes it onto the agenda of public debate. I first read the
>phrase in a column written by Jock Finlayson, vice president for research of
>the B.C. Business Council, who invoked it several times in the mid-1990s to
>ward off the grim spectre of Jeremy Rifkin's The End of Work.
>
>The bottom line is North America is choking from overwork, underemployment
>and just plain misallocation of working time. Governments are loath to do
>anything about it, because they're afraid that if they do, corporate
>lobbyists and financial page editorialists will humiliate them with mocking
>cries of "fallacy" and "panacea".
>
>As I mentioned earlier, you don't need to know what the lump-of-labor
>fallacy is. All you need to know is that something is profoundly wrong with
>the way that the hours of work are being regulated -- subtly and
>unofficially being de-regulated, really -- in North America and that the
>arguments against doing something about it are utterly groundless.
>
>Isn't it about time we called the bluff of the textbook-thumping experts who
>seem to think that a toxic cocktail of overwork and underemployment is "good
>for the economy"? Isn't it about time we buried the bogus lump-of-labor
>fallacy alongside the remains of that other scientific hoax, the Piltdown
Man?
>
>------------------
>
>Tom Walker is a social policy analyst and advocate of shorter working
>time. His chapter on "The 'lump-of-labor' case against work-sharing" is in
>_Working Time: International trends, theory and policy perspectives_
>edited by Lonnie Golden and Deborah Figart, published by Routledge.
>Tom Walker
>Bowen Island, BC
>604 947 2213
>
>
>
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
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