| During the Great Depression most people were smart enough to know that reducing hours, without reducing pay, was a good strategy for lowering unemployment. Of course, capitalists tend to dislike the idea of lowering hours this way. For them, it amounts to a reduction in profit. If hours are lowered, capitalists will presumably then invest to improve productivity so that the same output can be produced in fewer hours. When they succeed, their rate of profit improves. Increased productivity without vast new markets opening up means that, in turn, unemployment will again rise. So there is a virtuous cycle: Cut the work week without cutting wages. Wait for productivity to catch up. Cut the work week again. If we had an aggressive policy of cutting hours whenever unemployment is too high, and we do this across the board for all sectors, perhaps before long farms will be more fully worked by robots, and so on. The author of the article wrote: "John Maynard Keynes predicted in the 1930s that by about now, we would all be working a mere 15 hours a week." Keynes did but it was Marx and Engels who predicted in the 19th century that we'd have to fight for hours reduction every step of the way. |