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In the past people worked around 10 or even 12 hours a day (or more, but it is hard to believe that a human could work more than 12 hours for some time), so many coutries, especially the socialist ones, determined that a worker could work at the most 8 hours a day. However it was already a long time ago when the technology was much inferior and there was very few or no automation in the producition, at that time there is no computers and advanced technologies (robots, artificial intelligence etc.) of the, so known, “4th industrial revolution”.
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Nowadays we could automatize almost all. On the other hand, in capitalism it finds contradictions, because if the capitalist automatize the whole production, it will be benificial to him and most workers will lose their jobs. Structurally, if the most capitalists automatize their production, great part of population will have no job, no lose their buying power and then the capitalists wouldn’t sell their products much it could conduce to a crisis due to “overproduction”.
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Only in socialism could be benificial to automatize everything what would be possible and nowadays with this kind of technologies the socialism could easier be applied and hold high productions without using much human working.
Consider it in a capitalist context. What do you guys think about the 8-hours working a day?
I think the working day of 8 hours is overhidden. It should be at most 6 hour a day and 35 a week, especially in physical labour.
I’m sorry, Asian workers are working 12 hours a day to produce products for western countries. Decreased working hours in Western countries mean that working hours in Asian countries will increase. Otherwise the material level of western countries will drop, obviously westerners don’t want their material level to drop
This is very true. Its exciting to see the working hours per week steadily declining in China, but unless other global south countries adopt communism and bring communist parties into power, they will continue to be stuck in the low wage trap and long working hours forced on them by the west.
Least parasitic westerners.
I believe the idea is to shorten work weeks to force the capitalists to hire more laborers in the US. If the capitalist could move their production to Asia, they would have done it already.
Most USian workers don’t work in factories producing tangible commodities. They work in restaurants, accounting firms, and other types of service work that can’t be easily exported. Again, if the capitalists could export this labor easily, they would do it with or without a shortened week.
There are still many industries in the United States, and mainly high-end industries, so China must buy from the United States and cannot produce it by itself. Assuming nothing else matters, I’m assuming that Americans only work four hours a day, and a factory that produces as much product as the original eight-hour work will have to pay twice as much salary. If the product of a total of eight hours of labor is still exchanged for the original quantity of Chinese products, it is clear that the purchasing power of Americans will be greatly reduced. But Americans absolutely want to reduce their working hours without reducing their quality of life. In order to ensure this, the United States must exchange the same amount of American products for 2 times of Chinese products, and it is far easier for the United States to succeed in doing so than for China to successfully refuse. And for most Americans to sit in an office for two hours in exchange for a product that a Chinese, Vietnamese, or other country’s worker labors for eight hours in a sweltering factory, that’s absolutely exploitative. To eliminate this exploitation, the standard of living of Americans and people in other Western countries would absolutely drop significantly. I don’t think the economic makeup of the US means that US productivity is high, otherwise if every country in the world had such “high” productivity, the world would have a shortage of daily necessities
I never understood how people can manage working forty hour weeks for forty or fifty years of their lives. Even when I was working 50 or 60 hour weeks to make ends meet I knew that something had to give.
I now have the privilege and option so I recently cut my own working hours to 32 per week and it’s a big improvement. I’d go even further but I can’t accept the additional loss of wages, especially since there isn’t a proportional reduction in work responsibilities.
I’m absolutely convinced that twenty hour work weeks are more than sufficient to keep society moving forward and people taken care of. Another interesting idea is to have everyone take year long paid sabbaticals every five years or so to give everyone a chance to enjoy the best years of their lives and learn for themselves who they are and want to be.
Even in a capitalist context less working hours gives benefits in productivity and worker satisfaction. People with more time and resources to spend on what they appreciate in life makes them better workers too. Maybe it’s a little too conspiratorial from my side, but it looks as though forty hour work weeks and as little possible paid time off are kept as standard because it’s easier to control a populace which is kept busy and exhausted. If we all had extra time and brainpower we’d revolt against wage labour and private ownership of our production pretty quick.
During the start of COVID my work shutdown for 2 months and I got unemployment checks, so essentially a 2 month vacation. It was so great. I didn’t even do anything that crazy during that time but just being able to actually get to zone into myself and my life did wonders both for all my passions, my personal development, and my sanity.
Also, if that is not the intentional, planned out mission of the capitalists, that is certainly the real world result (regarding controlling a populace).
I’ve experienced periods of unemployment in much the same way. I used to make art of various forms, but I just don’t have the energy or inspiration for it while I’m working. Even when I was unemployed by “choice” and living off savings and odd jobs I remember feeling more fulfilled and complete in a way, even while there were pressing worries about making ends meet and what my future would hold.
In terms of keeping us controlled, it’s a mix of unnecessarily long workdays as well as what some call “bullshit jobs.” There’s this artificial socio-political-economic pressure that everyone in the working classes and even lower bourgeoisie must work all the time (except a small reserve of labour to keep wages down). The work most of us do is useless at best and actively destructive at worst.
Yes, forgot about bullshit jobs there for a second. Forget automation, as things already stand we could be working the mythical 15 hour workweeks we heard about 100 years ago if we trimmed all the useless fat and people were paid the same as long as the job got done.
There are research, made in capitalist countries, from a capitalist perspective, for capitalists, showing people are most productive working around 4-5 hours a day and that reducing the work time to that time will not even significantly lessen the productivity.
Read Marx about profit rate, how it’s generated and about machines.
About longer workhours: people working (including commute etc.) 12 hours a day don’t have time to be people basically at all. People woking even more are just physically exterminated. For example, russian cottage workers around 1900 worked even 17 hours per day and they lived up to 30. Marx and Engels also wrote about this, in England at some point just sheer number of people worked to death endangered the labour force reproduction, even with the crazy birth ratio they had back then (minus child mortality).
I can’t fathom how anyone could consistently work 12-hour days, but just because 8 hours is significantly better doesn’t mean that it’s good.
There may be some people that need to work for longer (e.g. surgeons) as long as there’s a lack of workers with the required skills, but consider how many jobs are utterly useless (advertising, etc.) and how much time we could collectively save by eliminating them. Of course, that won’t happen under capitalism – I don’t think a 6-hour work day is completely out of the question for some of the least shit capitalist countries, but the majority of the world’s workers will still have horrible working conditions until imperialism (and capitalism in general) dies
Speaking as someone from the US, we work more hours in a year than feudal serfs did. And so much of that “work” doesn’t actually produce anything for society. So much of this “work” is entirely administrative to help capitalists profit more.
We absolutely should be working less. But like said here in this comment thread, for us to be working less in our country would require a readjustment that would harm the working class elsewhere in the world. Such a frustrating relationship we find ourselves in under capitalism.
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