{"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":269,"pdf_page":277,"physical_index":277,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f0736d27fa69207eb7dd92c18438277ff2253f7e1d4617dca3a9fb746685dfbb"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"The normative force behind the idea of a fair wage, in conjunction with the uncertainty about the criteria that define fair compensation for labor and the notional privacy of individual preferences in consumption can lead wage-earners into a restless quest for some set of wage goods commensurate with the labor they have sold. The objective is to find a kind of mapping between those goods and life lost to labor, such that some quantity of the former becomes equivalent to the latter. To the extent that attention focuses on that objective (which, in its most general form, involves the purchasing power of the wage) larger questions about the form of economic life realized under capitalism (including its work-time regime) will tend to fall by the wayside.\n\nThis emphasis on the normativity of economic action leads to a diferent understanding of capitalism from that given by many political economists.3 Rather than conceiving of capitalism as a particular manifestation of timeless motives and forces, we can embed it in the development of a peculiar set of norms governing action in the economic realm. These norms seem to indicate how economic action should proceed yet have the efect of impeding the normatively scripted, and socially achieved, closure of action that makes other economic systems, by comparison, quite nondynamic.4 According to the argument of this book, consumer behavior in fully developed capitalist economies is to a significant extent guided by an imperative to make the wage objectively commensurate with the labor exchanged for it, in the absence of any criteria establishing when commensuration between the two has been achieved. Against that background, the criticism that the continuous sacrifice of free time to work is fundamentally wrongheaded and self-defeating will not get much traction. Consequently, the material expansion of capitalism, entailing the production of ever more commodities and the contraction of time available for making use of each of them, will be facilitated by an open-ended form of demand.\n\nAll of this suggests an answer to the question posed at the beginning of this book: Why did Keynes’s 1930 prediction about the future of industrial capitalism fail to come true? Keynes thought that following a necessary diversion into a growth-driven economy under capitalism, the economy would eventually enter into a stationary state, in which material wants would be satiated. But Keynes was presupposing that economic action is organized by ends the satisfaction of which would, when met, be quite apparent. If, however, consumer (and wage earner) behavior under capitalism is influenced to a significant degree by very general norms that stand without clear criteria of satisfaction, then consumption would, as a result, become unbounded. Keynes’s envisioned state would never come about.5 Thus, the peculiar pattern of accumulative consumption characteristic of mass consumer society, and the corresponding inelasticity of work time to increasing productivity and hourly wages, is at least in part a consequence of the open-endedness of economic norms under capitalism\n\nConclusion\n\n269","previous_page":268,"next_page":270}