Of course, it can be immediately speculated here that such a constant expresses the ‘necessary'amount of time which a society requires in order to preserve itself, where the level of ‘self-preservation' is variable. But such speculations are idle, particularly if a freely available residual time' is to be deduced from them. The machine age was, at any rate, directed towards the exploitation of all available reserves of time. Life was divided into those two areas described by Marx and others: the time for production, which was spent at the machine, and the time of reproduction needed for the mental and physical restoration of the capacity for work. Given the far shorter life expectancy and the minimal time at school in comparison with today, there were no reserves of time for the overwhelming majority of the population: few for old age, and almost none for what is called free time or consumer time today. Women were integrated into the production process above all before they were married, and had to shoulder the main burden of the urgently needed work of reproduction in their families. Thus what is concealed by an artificially constructed constant like that of the thirty-eight years of human work has to be seen in the context of more comprehensive changes.
One of these concerns the status of work in the nineteenth century, and that given to the concept of free time in the twentieth century. For the political thinkers of the nineteenth century, as well as for the activists of the labour movement, work was regarded as the source of economic wealth, as an essential human need. If the social struggle was conducted in terms of the demand for the right to work', then this meant a declaration of the right to share in economic surplus value, of the right to work which served the development of human beings and their abilities, and which did not run counter to the idea of satisfaction, but promoted it. Work was to be redeemed', via the radical changes in social relations. Whereas the twentieth century is still governed, one is tempted to say, by the hope for free time, though whether 'the miracle of liberation from totally being taken up with work'o will ever become a reality, whether the time 'released' will become a source of freedom, emancipation and self-realization, or whether it is merely a question of an illusion, the destruction of which is followed by fresh hopes, remains a basic topic for social reflection.
Politics of Time
117