{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":114,"pdf_page":122,"physical_index":122,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a1f8f329108abfb7b0eaabe98409b2c57f263c6142a79ab073c6c43708635334"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Now of course, if wage earners reduce their work hours for the same wages, they are clearly getting paid more per unit of work time—and so, in theory, are receiving more congealed activity time, in the form of wage goods, for each hour of work than they were when working more hours at the same wage. But the productivity of industrial capitalism is such that the amount of hypothetical free activity indexed by the goods commanded by the hourly real wage will tend to be greater than the amount of time it takes to earn that wage. Once the distinction between empty real time and the hypothetical time signified by goods becomes elided—in order for wage labor to become an objectively fair exchange of commensurable substances—the free time indexed by turning increased productivity into higher real wages will be greater than that yielded by turning it into a shorter working week at constant real wages.\n\nThird, it is easier to imagine time spent in specific activities than “empty” time. Commodities serve as useful cognitive props to focus attention on particular practices. The potential free activity contained in wage goods is, in this sense, more available to contemplation than is free activity in the abstract. That this is so might well be contingent on what Keynes (1930) saw as the withering away of traditional collective and individual practices that could be pursued relatively independently of the possession of commodities. But once the new regime of time-use and consumption took hold, recovering those kinds of practices became quite dificult.\n\nLastly, taking compensation for increasing productivity as increased purchasing power, rather than reduced work time, underlines the status of wage workers as free participants in a market exchange rather than subjects of coercion. Precisely because labor is not obviously alienable, in order for it to be exchanged—that is, in order for it to be made alienable—it needs to be “returned” in a thing-like, or alienated, form. So wage goods in efect become animated by the labor given in exchange for them, such that they come to represent durations of free activity. In acquiring those goods, the wage earner acquires the free activity subsisting in them, and in this way the wage becomes equivalent to the labor given during work. By contrast, if wage earners exchange increased productivity for less time at work, they are exchanging it for something that in theory already belongs to them—their time. That sits in some tension with the ideology of free market exchange. According to the contractual logic of “free” labor, the initial, precontractual condition is one in which the workers’ time belongs exclusively to them— they then get to dispose of it as they see fit. Free workers then supposedly bring their labor power—and thus their time—to market. The presupposed antecedent state is one in which they own themselves, which entails that they own all of their time.38 To exchange increased labor productivity for more actual free time (that is, for less time at work), however, suggests that the antecedent state is one in which the workers’ time belongs to their employer, such that workers are, in efect, buying back their time. That brings the logic of wage labor uncomfortably close to that of slavery (only lacking the legal category of the slave) or indentured labor (only without the debt). In the case of slavery, all of the time of the slave is owned by the slaveholder, but slaves can, in theory at least, buy their freedom. Similarly, indentured laborers work to end their bondage. As we shall see in the next chapter, in the earlier nineteenth century, the legitimacy of wage labor was questioned, in the United States and elsewhere in the capitalist world, precisely by comparing it to slavery, while the status of the bonded laborer was generally disparaged. Wage labor became legitimate to the degree that it was construed as a free exchange of commensurable substances—that is, to the degree that it became something categorically distinguishable from slave labor or bonded labor. The only way that wage labor can be a free exchange of commensurable substances, brought to the market by independent parties, is if time is alienated in wage goods, which are given to workers in exchange for their time.39 Indeed, as we have seen, if time is alienated in objects, it becomes possible for wage earners to gain more potential time than they have given up in work.40\n\n114\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":113,"next_page":115}