Furthermore, the commensuration of wage and labor by virtue of the time signified by wage goods will always be uncertain because there is a basic difference between these two forms of time. Time given up in work is real time. On the other hand, time indexed by wage goods is hypothetical, in the sense that using those goods is conditional on having actual free time (as well as enough energy, complementary resources and access to an appropriate setting). Workers, at least in afluent countries, where wage levels are well above absolute subsistence levels, thus give up chunks of their lives in exchange for a store of potential free activity represented by a set of wage goods. However, it is unclear how the merely potential activity indexed by consumer commodities could serve as adequate compensation for the real time and energy spent at work. The commodities accumulated by spending the wage amount to a kind of promissory note (much like the warranty), to the efect that commensuration will be achieved at some point in the indefinite future through using those commodities in free activities. But the perturbing question remains of whether that will in fact come to pass.
In the absence of clear, objective criteria for determining a fair rate of exchange between labor and its wage, action oriented by the norm of fair wage exchange becomes open-ended. It becomes guided by an end that is presupposed as being achievable but, at the same time, lacks criteria for establishing whether or not it has been achieved.2 In the public realm, this leads to unending debates about what constitutes a fair wage, with diferent competing conceptions of the conditions under which wage labor is fairly compensated. In industrial relations, it leads to a tendency for labor to push for ever more purchasing power (as opposed to shorter hours, for reasons set out in Chapter 3), at least in part on the assumption that at some level of real wages, commensuration with work will be self-evidently achieved. To the individual wage-earning consumer, however, it will be ambiguous whether the failure of any given amount of wages to seem like objectively commensurate compensation for the work given in exchange for it, is the result of an inadequate wage or simply spending the wage on the wrong set of goods.
Conclusion
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