hours of labor | The Real Movement

April 28, 2016

Empirical evidence that fewer hours of labor increases wages

As can be seen in the chart below, longer hours of labor does not increase the wages of the working class, nor do shorter hours of labor depress wages.

Empirical evidence for an inverse correlation between hours of labor and wages among euro-zone countries (Source: OECD)

In the euro-zone, as hours of labor fall (x axis), wages rise (y axis). The euro-zone is a good case study for the empirical relation between hours worked and wages, because the common currency means there is no need to adjust for currency exchange rates.

The data, provided by the OECD, shows that Greece, with the longest hours of labor, has among the lowest wages of the euro-zone countries, while Germany, with the shortest hours of labor, has among the highest wages in the euro-zone.

There is a definite inverse correlation between hours and wages.

Marxists who argue a reduction of hours of labor leads to a fall in wages have no empirical or theoretical evidence for their argument. They are just regurgitating the usual simpleton bourgeois nonsense that wage slavery is good for the working class.

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April 26, 2016

Labor Theory for (Marxist) Dummies: Part 4

Is a fully developed communist society possible right now?

I want to illustrate my point from the last post that to bring the labor reserve into production and so reduce hours to a minimum for everyone in society requires a much larger reduction than may be generally assumed in the literature on the subject. To do this, I will be using actual data drawn on the United States. As I will show, under present conditions in the United States the reduction of hours of labor now required to absorb the labor reserve into production may be so large as to effectively bring us to the threshold of a fully developed communist society.

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April 24, 2016

Labor Theory for (Marxist) Dummies: Part 3

Labor reduction and the horrific conditions of the labor reserve

I have made several important points about hours of labor reduction in the first two parts of my series “Labor Theory for (Marxist) Dummies”

The first point is that, according to labor theory, a reduction of hours of labor can drive the rate of profit to zero without any impact on productive employment and wages. This is an extremely important point, because much of the objection by Marxists and other workers to reducing hours of labor rests on their assumption that reducing hours will reduce wages. In fact, of all economic theories, labor theory alone suggest this cannot happen. Labor hours reduction has no impact on employment of productive workers and their wages.

Second, I have shown in part two of this series that when there is significant waste in employment of labor power in the economy, a reduction of hours of labor should actually increase both the number of productively employed workers and wages generally. When a significant portion of the existing employment of labor is wasted, reducing hours raises the wages of the working class.

If labor hours reduction does not negatively affect labor that produces value and surplus value, and if labor hours reduction forces capital to reduce the unproductive employment of labor power, can labor hours reduction actually eliminate unemployment altogether? To be more specific, to what extent is unemployment, underemployment and an entire body of workers who are today “unemployable” solely the product of the present 40 hours work week?

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April 17, 2016

Labor Theory for (Marxist) Dummies: Part 2

Steps the capitalists can take to counter a reduction in hours of labor and their effect when hours of labor are reduced

In the first part of this series, I showed that a reduction of hours of labor has no impact on wages and productive employment so long as this reduction does not actually encroach on the socially necessary labor required to produce the value of the wages of the working class. In this part, I will show why, under certain circumstances, a reduction of hours of labor will actually increase both wages and productive employment.

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April 16, 2016

Labor Theory for (Marxist) Dummies: Part 1

How exactly does hours of labor reduction work?

I have to say that I honestly have no idea how the minds of Marxists work — all of them, almost without exception. I have, by turns, alternately been accused of being reformist and ultra-Left for advocating hours of labor reduction. So, I thought I would show people how labor theory actually works in practice and why the struggle to reduce hours of labor is neither reformist nor ultra-Left, but a means to progressively abolish wage labor completely. It is the only real means of realizing a so-called ‘post-capitalist’ society.

What I find puzzling is that Marxists don’t seem to be able to do this very simple thought experiment on their own using Marx’s labor theory of value. The only real objection to reducing hours of labor is that Marxists don’t really want to kill capitalism in the first place.

One of the biggest problems I encounter when discussing hours of labor reduction with Marxists is not the dismissal of the idea as reformist or ultra-leftist. Rather, the problem is far more mundane and substantial. Marxists fear hours of labor reduction will plunge the working class into poverty as wages collapse with hours of labor.

This is an extremely important objection to reducing hours of labor, because it reflects what I think is a valid and extremely powerful fear among the working class. Since we live by selling our labor power, we must be suspicious of any proposal the seems to threaten that sale. However, there is no theoretical basis for this fear in labor theory as I will now show.

If you are a follower of value-form Marxism, don’t try this at home. It will only hurt your brain.

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March 21, 2016

Endnotes 4: Trying to dazzle us with bullshit

I have been reading Endnotes 4, when I came across an argument by the collective in Part 3 on why the industrial working class never became the majority of society and how this led to the failure of the working class movement. The argument the collective makes has my mind twisting:

“Revolutionaries’ belief that trends would continue to move in their favour was enshrined in the policy of abstentionism. Social Democratic parties became the largest factions in parliaments, even if they remained in the minority; but those parties abstained from participating in government. They refused to rule alongside their enemies, choosing instead to wait patiently for their majority to arrive: ‘This policy of abstention implied enormous confidence in the future, a steadfast belief in the inevitable working-class majority and the ever-expanding power of socialism’s working-class support.’ But that inevitability never came to pass.”

So, the workers’ parties expected that a working class majority would soon arrive and produce a majority in favor of socialism. Is this the argument the Endnotes collective is trying to make? If true, where did this belief in inevitability go wrong?

What happened, according to the Endnotes collective, is that the working class met its external limit of growth long before it became a majority of society:

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February 2, 2016

Can SYRIZA be fixed? Can Greece?

If this Jacobin article, Becoming Syriza Again, is any indication, even the remaining radicals within SYRIZA have no idea why it is failing.

The writer acknowledges that the debate over Greece leaving the euro, which raged within SYRIZA for a period of time before the split, was an oversimplification. However, even now he proposes no alternative economic program that would allow SYRIZA to achieve its stated aim of bringing austerity to an end while avoiding Grexit.

He proposes a 5 step solution in which SYRIZA must:

Hold onto power;
Stop fighting with KKE and other Leftists;
Eliminate opportunism in its ranks;
Reconsider staying in the eurozone; and,
Put forward a new vision that inspire the country.

Here is my problem with this essay.

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April 18, 2015

Mass hysteria in Greece: Compliments of the European Central Bank

At what point will SYRIZA tell the Eurogroup and ECB to go fuck themselves?

This was the thought that occurred to me after reading Yves Smith’s latest post, “Greece: Default or Grexit?. Smith explains there is an impasse between Greece and its creditors where the options facing SYRIZA are default or Grexit.

Impasse? What sort of impasse?

Everybody knows Greece is broke. Everybody knows Greece cannot squeeze more out of its population to pay the debt. If this were not true, SYRIZA would not be in power. The impasse on display is that Greece is broke and has already defaulted, but no one wants to admit to it. There is no real impasse here; only people who don’t want to recognize losses that are already on the books.

Smith argues, “the best of Greece’s bad options is a default while staying within the Eurozone”. She states this option depends on what the European Central Bank (ECB) decides to do; only, it turns out, the ECB can pretty much do whatever it wants. This is not unlike the case in Michigan, where Washington arbitrarily decided to bail out GM and let Detroit go bankrupt.

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February 18, 2015

Yes. Yanis Varoufakis is a poor student of Marx, but so is Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts doesn’t think Yanis Varoufakis is a very good Marxist.

What makes the finance minister so unacceptable to Roberts is his proposal for resolving the European crisis with a program Varoufakis admits “does not have a whiff of Marxism in it.” Which means, as Marxists go, Varoufakis is indistinguishable from the typical heterodox economist in all but his insistence on calling himself a Marxist.

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February 12, 2015

If SYRIZA-EU negotiations break down: two views on what Grexit means for Greece

Things don’t look very promising for those who hoped Germany would give in to pressure and accept a write down or delay of Greece debt obligations. With that in mind I decided to look at the most likely outcome of a collapse of negotiation: Greece’s voluntary or forced exit from the euro and European Union.

Of course this post is highly speculative and not to be taken as a prediction.

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