Dipping into academic deconstructions of Chapman's work seems a real distraction. As Shane Mage points out, the real issue is political.
In any event, Tom (a.k.a., the Sandwichman) has agreed that no-one on pen-l has prohibited the discussion of cutting hours of labor, which was my point. in addition, Tom writes: >> current overwork actually depresses productivity and wages to the extent >> that total income for given hours may be LESS than it could be if people >> worked average annual hours more in line with the long term trend that >> prevailed up to the 1950s or even up to the 1980s. Of course, if the productivity per hour of labor-power hired rises, in situations of low aggregate demand such as the present capitalists will cut the number of hours of labor-power hired unless there is also an increase in demand and thus real production. This true because total hours of labor-power employed = (output sold)/(output/hours employed), by definition. While it makes sense to cut hours of individual workers in order to give hours to the unemployed (a form of unemployment insurance), rising labor productivity would reduce the total amount of hours to be redistributed. (If the total number of hours hired falls, that puts more of a downward pressure on wages, by the way.) We have to be aware of such costs. It seems that Chapman assumes that we're at full employment, where the amount produced increases with the productivity of labor-power (since the number of hours hired is given). BTW, as a seeming effort to prove that Marx's CAPITAL is relevant, the big thing among management these days is increasing the amount of effort actually exerted during an hour of labor-power hired -- or having workers do their jobs during non-paid time. That raises labor productivity, which with given demand for the product, reduces the number of paid hours of labor-power hired. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
