{"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":96,"pdf_page":104,"physical_index":104,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"37079ae9b45b2e05ee40562068500a7128977ea6278c30c978004bb4e7a4d3fe"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"According to the commensuration theory, because a wage is money earned in exchange for work, the identity of money in wage form is ultimately tied to the labor given in exchange for it. When kept in the simple money form, as savings, the wage is just a number—not yet equivalent to the work given for it. In order to be reasonably construed as compensation, the wage must be converted into commodities—things endowed with use value (by virtue of their use powers), which facilitate various kinds of imagined or actual activity.\n\nBecause of the imperative to establish equivalence between work and its wage, so that the two can conceivably exchange at fair rates, money earned in exchange for labor time will be more likely to be spent on commodities and less likely to be saved or otherwise invested, than money acquired by other means. Conversely, the commensuration hypothesis entails that investment income will be more likely to be saved (reinvested) than wage income. This is because the return to ownership of capital is not an exchange for the labor of the capitalist but rather a kind of rent or, alternatively, as Austrian school economists would have it, compensation for delayed consumption. Either way, money as returns to capital is at least one step removed from labor, and so the issue of commensuration does not come into the picture. Income derived from ownership of capital would, therefore, according to the theory, be less likely to be turned into consumption of goods and services and more likely to be reinvested. There is at least some empirical evidence that points in this direction. As we saw in Chapter 3, in the United States, the marginal propensity to spend increasing increments of wage income was, over the course of the twentieth century, close to unity—in other words, as people’s wages went up, almost all of the increase was used to fund consumption. And an empirical study by Lawrence Summers and Christopher Carroll (1987) indicates that the marginal propensity to save capital gains from stock market investments has, likewise, been close to unity.\n\nInterpreting this in Marxian terms, wage-labor commensuration suggests an explanation for why, at levels of wage income above subsistence, the circuit of capital for labor is C-M-C, whereas for capital it is M-C-M´ (Marx ([1867] 1981).18 Where wages are pegged to bare physical subsistence, C-M-C is not optional for labor, because there is simply no room for saving / investment. But once workers receive higher than subsistence levels of wages, some part of the wage could, in theory at least, be invested. This point holds even if definitions of subsistence are historically variable, because what is at issue is what gets done with the increases in income that follow improvements in productivity— whether they are spent or saved. Although Marx says that with the development of the forces of production, human beings come to discover new needs, there is no reason to expect the definition of material subsistence to automatically change as productivity and real income per hour changes. A newly discovered need, after all, could be a need for more free time. Indeed, the fact that material expectations do tend to get ratcheted ever upward is quite puzzling.19 After all, freeing up more time allows for at least as much in the way of the discovering new needs as does increasing material output and consumption. As noted in the previous chapter, with more time, people can experiment with new practices and activities, develop new skills (or become more expert at old ones), make new friends, deepen older friendships, and so on. Following an increase in labor productivity, turned into higher hourly wages, wage earners could stick at established levels of consumption and reduce their work hours or save more. Yet, as we have seen, during the twentieth century, across the industrial capitalist world, at least up until the 1980s, real income increased with productivity, and spending levels tended to rise in line with increasing income.\n\n96\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":95,"next_page":97}