Sandwichman wrote:
> Henry Ford adopted the five-day week in his auto plants in 1926. In
> response, the National Association of Manufacturers magazine produced a
> special issue asking, "Will the Five Day Week Become Universal?" and
> answering, emphaticallly, "It Will Not!"
This is the kind of intramural conflict of interest and ideology that
I referred to in my long e-missive to CB. Ford couldn't dictate to the
rest of the capitalist class. Nor could they dictate to him.
> ... The argument presented by Ira Steward and George Gunton and championed by
> Samuel Gompers was that shorter hours led to higher pay and thus more
> consumption by workers. Ford's explanation of the five-day week echoed
> Gunton: more leisure meant more consumption.<
Ford himself liked high wages ("the five dollar day") and cut-back in
work hours per week for a different reason, i.e., as a way to reduce
turn-over of employees, so that training costs and the like could be
minimized. The historical literature more and more says that he was
not "Fordist" in the way most lefties use that term. As Mike Davis
pointed out, if we need a capitalist exemplar of "Fordism" a better
one would be Henry J. Kaiser.
> The New Deal ratified a Fordist interpretation of the Steward thesis and by
> 1937 even the National Association of Manufacturers was tacitly
> acknowledging, in a nation-wide billboard campaign, the connection between
> shorter hours, high wages and a high national standard of living.<
Of course, this was after the 1920s, the period that CB and I were
discussing. It _response_ to the massive
over-production/underconsumption of the 1930s, when the macro-impact
of individual capitalist efforts to cut wages and to raise work hours,
work intensity, and labor productivity became clear. The extension of
consumer credit is what allowed consumerism in the 1920s (and helped
preserve prosperity for awhile), but as we know, consumer credit
without higher wages, etc., simply delays the problem.
> Lawrence Glickman wrote in "A Living Wage" about the American working
> class's conversion from a producerist to a consumerist ideology in the 19th
> century and the role of the eight-hour movement in that transition. It is a
> mistake to view American consumerism as strictly an imposition on workers by
> capitalists and as totally lacking in merit. Big business deflected the more
> radical intentions of the eight-hour movement and appropriated the less
> challenging elements.<
you're absolutely right!
>The task today is not to dismiss consumerism as a defeat or sell-out but to
>rediscover and fulfill those more radical intentions that lie at its core.<
To my mind, most consumerism (as I interpret that word) is like
"self-medication": just as someone who's depressed may take narcotics
to paper over the problem, many people respond to the powerlessness
and alienation of their lives by seeking market solutions (because
those are the major institutions they deal with when not at work),
i.e., by buying more and more consumer goods if they can. A lot of
this also involves the "keeping up with the Joneses" motive, seeking
respect by owning a large-screen TV or whatever.
There are radical intentions, too. People can truly deal with
alienation and powerlessness by working (and playing) together with
other people, getting satisfaction from collective activity instead of
individual acquisitions. And ignoring the "Joneses" can be "good for
the soul."
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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