For all the stubbornness of time, however, which cannot yet be fully substituted by money, in which something is still left of the natural currency of time for time, and which is subordinated to a norm of reciprocity based on this, a process of structural alignment still takes place between the two patterns of optimizing and flexibilization: the approximation to economic calculation. Of course, it is the mixed forms which will make the way there a long and complex one. The time of professional helpers is valuable, and a considerable portion remains of contributions to be made by oneself. The user-friendly omnipresence of communication technologies invites a more efficient shaping and more efficient mixing of the time of both. Partial solutions dominate any total solution. But the final exchange relation is dictated by the market, is fixed by the universal medium of exchange, money. The natural currency of time for time remains an endearing form of archaic convention, a residual ritual of social existence. It is not to be wholly ruled out, but is destined to be an exception. It already belongs to the other, 'sacred' time which is withdrawn from economically structured processes for a brief period. It retains a value which cannot be precisely specified in economic terms, but for this very reason it becomes more valuable, because it is rarer. Thus the law of economics – scarcity – is confirmed even where it is deprived of its phenomenon. Because a few moments of human time are able to escape the money nexus, they receive a significance which makes them unmistakable. Thus time receives its temporarily valid individuality. Paradoxically, as a Western obsession, it can be realized precisely when Western rationality and rationalization subject all time to the anonymity of market relations and their mutual capacity for substitution. At this very moment there arises a new claim precisely to this time: the claim to proper time. Is this claim also just an illusion?
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Politics of Time