Affluenza by de Graaf John

Author:de Graaf John
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2005-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

WEALTH AS DISPOSABLE TIME

Neither would “an enforced equality of wages,” made law by a socialist government, lead to happiness, which, Marx believed, was to be found instead in our relationships with other people and in the development of our capacities for creative expression. “The wealthy man,” he wrote, “is one who needs a complex of human manifestations of life and whose own self-realization exists as an inner necessity.” He suggested that “too many useful goods create too many useless people.”11

Of course, Marx understood that human beings must have enough wholesome food, decent shelter, and protective clothing. Mass production, he believed, made it possible for everyone to achieve these ends. And to do so each person would have to perform a certain minimum amount of repetitive, noncreative labor. Marx called this time, which he and Engels estimated could be reduced (even in the mid-1800s) to as little as four hours a day, “the realm of necessity.”

The work time necessary to satisfy real material needs could be reduced further by increases in productivity, “but it always remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom,” when self-chosen activity prevails. Of this realm of freedom, Marx added, “the shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite.”

“A nation is really rich if the working day is six hours rather than twelve,” Marx wrote, quoting approvingly the anonymous author of a British article written in 1821: “Wealth is liberty—liberty to seek recreation, liberty to enjoy life, liberty to improve the mind: it is disposable time and nothing more.”12

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