[PEN-L:6750] On econometrics and worktime

[knowware@xxxxxxxx (Tom Walker)]

"We declare that the limitation of the working day is a preliminary
condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation
must prove abortive."
-- Resolution of the Congress of the International Working Men's
Association, drafted by Marx, 1866.

"The general conclusion is manifest that progress may be expected to be
accompanied by a progressive curtailment of the working day."
-- S. J. Chapman, Hours of Labour, 1909.

"Sure, I'm in favor of cutting back the work day and increasing the
employment of labor, but I'm really not very interested in the issue more
than that."
-- Marxist economist, 1999

"Despite the prophetic and material nature of Marx's argument, it has not
attracted much attention from modern scholars. Mainstream economists have
generally been uninterested in Marx's work and most radicals appear to have
misunderstood the nature of the argument. . . Marx insisted that if working
times are continually extended or intensified, with one or the other element
being held constant, then a point must inevitably be reached where the
limitation of 'man, the obstinate yet elastic barrier,' will be reached. It
is this relationship between human capacity and human will that is the core
of Marx's theory of worktime. The de-emphasis on the human-limits aspect of
the argument . . . has removed much of the materialist content from Marx's
argument. What is left is clearly inadequate and has proven relatively easy
for non-Marxists to refute. Indeed, an argument for the decrease in standard
worktimes that emphasizes only political power is essentially a version of
the marginalist preference theory. The only real difference in the two
arguments is that one stresses market forces as the primary factor that
operates to transform the workers' preferences for leisure over income into
actual worktime reductions while the other emphasises political struggle.

"Why it is that this non-materialist approach to worktime change has managed
to go largely unchallenged by modern Marxists is difficult to explain. Marx,
after all, was hardly obscure about his conception of the relationship among
human capacities, working time and work intensity. . ."

>From Chris Nyland, 1989, Reduced worktime and the management of production,
Cambridge University Press.

The following is from an offlist correspondence, so I won't identify the
author. I would ask the author to please NOT identify yourself to the pen-l
list because I am not presenting the quote as an ad hominem attack on an
individual or to try to win debating points. My point is simply to note that
Nyland highlighted the resistance of both non-Marxists and Marxists to
Marx's worktime theory. For Nyland, that resistance was manifested in a lack
of interest and/or misunderstanding.

>I can't speak for pen-l. But on a personal level, I tried to understand
>what you were talking about concerning the lump-of-labor fallacy and found
>myself very frustrated because you wouldn't simply come out and say what it
>was. When I finally got to the point where I think I understood what the
>whole point was, I found that I wasn't very interested in the whole topic.
>Sure, I'm in favor of cutting back the work day and increasing the
>employment of labor, but I'm really not very interested in the issue more
>than that. There are more interesting issues to me.

I find it intriguing -- and hardly consider it coincidental -- that when I
try to articulate Marx's argument about worktime as it relates to current
conditions, I am told (not only by the quoted individual) that what I am
saying is "hard to understand" and "not very interesting".

I've noted before the odd disappearance of S.J. Chapman's marginalist theory
of the hours of labour and Nyland's comment that "The marginalists'
acceptance of Chapman's position was a major victory for those involved in
the worktime debate who based their analysis on Marx's theory of worktime."
Sherwin Rosen has, in a personal correspondence, objected to my claim that
Chapman's theory had disappeared (Nyland's claim actually). Rosen pointed to
his use of Chapman in his Doctoral thesis and 1968 econometrica article as
well as use by Ehrenberg, Hart, Nadiri and Hunt. I'll have more to say later
on the use of Chapman by these economists. How much later depends on how
much interest and understanding there is.



regards,

Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm