[P2P-F] historical success of shorter working week

Michel Bauwens michelsub2004 at gmail.com
Sat Jul 16 07:01:08 CEST 2011 

Dear Tom,

I find this a very fruitful direction of inquiry, very in tune with the
general idea of the commons,

I created the book entry here:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Jobs,_Liberty_and_the_Bottom_Line and gave it a
place here as well, http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Labor

What about your other book?

Feel free to improve and amend all of the above; in particular, our labor
section could use quite a bit of improvement,

Orsan and Walton are young p2p labour activists, and Phoebe a labour
researcher, who could be interested in your work as well;

You are listed here, http://p2pfoundation.net/Commons-Oriented_Economists;
any suggestions for other interesting people, thanks for letting me know,

Michel

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Sandwichman <lumpoflabor at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michel,
>
> Below I have pasted an 813 word overview of the logic of my inquiry and the
> problem I am seeking to address in my book (there is only one, not two).
>
> Tom
>
> The issue I grapple with in *Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line *is not so
> much "what is the best remedy for unemployment" or even "what is the case
> for shorter working time" but why and how has one particular set of policy
> options been excluded from the mainstream discourse. Of course that possibly
> translates into "why is the *best* remedy the forbidden one?"
>
>
>
> Perhaps as much as or even more than problem solving, I am fascinated by
> the notion of taboo and its functioning as *unwritten* prohibition. How is
> the elusive ban transmitted and enforced in the absence of explicit
> instructions for such transmission and enforcement? The answer is through
> stock narratives that operate virtually as rituals, ignoring conflicting
> facts, inassimilable scientific theories and appalling outcomes.
>
>
>
> With regard to working time, academic economics has fostered the notion of
> a self-adjusting, individual choice-driven natural order in which the given
> hours of work are presumed to be optimal and any interference will lead to a
> decline in welfare. There are only three or four problems with this tale of
> a miraculous automatism. The canonical income-leisure choice model upon
> which it is based has no pedigree in economic theory and has been refuted by
> the empirical data. The idea is inconsistent with the established and
> authoritative theory of the hours of labor, presented by S.J. Chapman over a
> hundred years ago. And the strange "lump of labor" fallacy *claim* – an
> alleged belief by shorter work time policy advocates in a "fixed amount of
> work," which is routinely invoked to disparage dissenters – was decisively
> refuted as itself a fallacy nearly a century ago.
>
>
>
> One would think that with three strikes against it, the conventional wisdom
> hours of work and employment would be ripe for reconsideration. But, no, the
> impasse seems as formidable as ever, with calls for work time reduction
> relegated to the fringe of policy debate, even in the face of economic
> crisis, unacceptably high and persistent unemployment and the discrediting
> of formerly respectable economic myths about efficient markets and the
> "great moderation."
>
>
>
> My approach to the issue of work time reduction and its taboo has led me
> down two tracks. One was recovering and documenting the body of economic
> thought suppressed by the fallacy claim and/or displaced by the textbook
> dogma that has grown up around income-leisure choice. The other was tracing
> the substance and history of the fallacy claim itself. That process has led
> me to a rather unexpected revelation of what the elusive "lump" in the
> fallacy claim actually stands for: the commons.
>
>
>
> In retrospect, it seems simple. If dogmatic political economy is understood
> as striving to vindicate the rights of property, then the violence of
> primitive accumulation and enclosure of the commons can only stand as an
> embarrassment and impediment to that goal – one that must be shunned, evaded
> and denied. Investigating the taboo on "work sharing" also highlights
> something about traditional attitudes toward work as a communal activity
> that has been obscured by the now prevailing industrial-era innovation of
> wage labor.
>
>
>
> Not only is it perfectly *reasonable* – and not fallacious – to think in
> terms of sharing the work, it was formerly ingrained and virtually
> unthinkable socially to do otherwise. This is not to say that the
> institutions for carrying out such sharing were necessarily ideal or
> equitable, or that those institutions *should* have survived the
> industrialization that finished them off. The lesson we can take from these
> archaic institutions, though, is that the individualized commodity form of
> wage labor is not the only or necessarily the best way of organizing and
> compensating work.
>
>
>
> The labor commons that I propose in *Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line* is
> thus not an entirely new idea but is rooted in traditional practices and
> institutions such as the quilting bee, barn raising and medieval guilds. It
> is also foreshadowed in the contradictory nature of the modern division of
> labor and wage system itself, in that the determination of who *does* what
> and who *gets paid* how much is inevitably controversial and unstable.
> Early trade unionism, in sharp contrast to today's trade union bureaucracy,
> took much of its impetus from the much maligned commons view of work, which
> Samuel Gompers summed up in the phrase: "That so long as there is one man
> who seeks employment and cannot obtain it, the hours of labor are too long."
>
>
>
>
> My innovation is to animate the labor commons through a new accounting
> technique – a method of social accounting that takes into explicit account
> the effects of work-time variation and distribution on social productivity.
> The calculations that need to be performed for this new social accounting
> for time are conceptually easy to explain but operationally complex enough
> to be feasible only with the advent of the personal computer and
> availability of spreadsheet programs. Moreover, the technology lends itself
> to a deliberative solution, rather than to the dictate of experts.
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> perhaps what would be useful to start with, as our audience doesn't know
>> you, is the total logic of your work, i.e. why are you writing those 2 books
>> specifically, 'what problem are you trying to solve' and who are you
>> 'debating' with ...
>>
>> later on, we can give more extensive treatment of your books in our book
>> of the week program, if you're interested,
>>
>> this involves 3 presentations per book, on a given week, with a general
>> presentation followed by 2 significant experts,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 1:03 AM, Sandwichman <lumpoflabor at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks, Michel I'll work up a brief outline.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Michel Bauwens <
>>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Tom, this is also a general invitation to present your books and
>>>> concepts to the p2p foundation audience, our blog is a top 2% retweeted blog
>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>> I don't have time for the moment to explore your ideas in depth myself,
>>>>
>>>> Michel
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Sandwichman <lumpoflabor at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Michel et al.,
>>>>>
>>>>> In my view one of the most inspirational historical experiences with a
>>>>> shorter day for full pay was achieved in the Newcastle engineers' strike of
>>>>> 1871 for the nine-hour day. The success of that struggle inspired a wave of
>>>>> emulation across the U.K. and (at least) Canada. I retell the story of that
>>>>> strike, based mainly on the contemporary account of John Burnett, in the
>>>>> first chapter of my manuscript, "Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line," in
>>>>> which I also present a commons-based (Elinor Ostrom) strategy from
>>>>> restarting a dynamic shorter work time movement.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/p/jobs-liberty-and-bottom-line.html
>>>>>
>>>>> best
>>>>>
>>>>> Tom Walker
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 7:17 AM, Michel Bauwens <
>>>>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>  thanks Juliet, already very useful,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Michel
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 8:33 PM, Juliet Schor <juliet.schor at bc.edu>wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Michel
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A great historical source is Ben Hunnicutt's Work without End. His
>>>>>>> book on the Kellogg workers six hour day finds a less positive outcome.
>>>>>>> My student, Anders Hayden, has written a very nice paper on France,
>>>>>>> which I attach here. I am also cc:ing Ben Hunnicutt who may have some good
>>>>>>> references on positive cases. Ben, any ideas?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Juliet
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Jul 12, 2011, at 8:13 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dear Juliet, Orsan, and friends,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Can anyone point to the historical experience with shorter working
>>>>>>> weeks (with keeping full pay)?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As far as  I know, these experiences were very positive overall, but
>>>>>>> I'd like to see this confirmed with concrete references,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Michel
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>>>>>>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Sandwichman
>>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
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>>
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Sandwichman
>



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