Time and Tide

... wait for no man. But it is interesting how we attempt to optimize said time based on what our priorities are. Too often, these priorities are dictated by social norms. We spend so much time studying to get our degrees, then we spend so much time in the workplace making our money, etc., sometimes neglecting our physical and mental health. The physical side when we sit at a desk for eight hours and insist that we need to drive to work and to lunch every day, the mental side when we are overcome by the stress associated with what we are trying to achieve.

And this only increases with the increase of how work is run in an increasingly globalized market that is based less on capital itself and more on the time that it takes to create the capital. People are told that if they work really hard they will get promoted, but objectively all they are doing is exchanging a raise of a few dollars an hour and maybe an extra week of holidays for increased production from each individual. It is sort of like the idea that if you do something stupid for 'a chance to win X amount of money' (as in Edmonton's The Bear radio station's 'Really Tough Contest(s)'), it somehow becomes warranted. The whole issue revolves around the chance to have your situation improved, because if you don't have hope, you become lethargic, because usually there is no other internal or ontological feeling of satisfaction you get from increasing your output for the good of the company since it is, indeed, for the good of the company and not, as it were, for yourself and your fellow co-workers. I recall one instance when I was working a warehouse job and had been away for a few months in Asia. When they re-hired me after returning, I noticed they had posted a piece on the notification board entitled 'One Last Push' that talked about the parent company being on the brink of record profits and putting it out as if it would be felt as an achievement and be beneficial for everyone when, in fact, they reneged on promises to hire people full time and provide benefits saying that they had to 'tighten their belts', despite these apparent record profits:

First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another.

--Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

And it is, indeed, interesting that people become 'hooked' in such a way. They are promised that bigger is necessarily better, that achievement is defined in terms of wealth and capital rather than, for example, meritocratically.

But that still makes one wonder about this element of time that creeps in. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill argued for the regulation of labour in terms of nine hour days, something unheard of at the time when most labourers worked upwards of eleven or twelve hour days to achieve what they required. But in this day and age there is really no reason for this. Last night, my Tanzanian friend talked about if he had a bit of capital back in Arusha, he could buy a tractor or harvester and do in a few days what it takes locals many weeks to do. And not with an eye to monopolizing the output of the community, but by teaching them how to become self-sufficient in terms of optimizing their labour output. The question becomes, then, what does one do with this newfound 'free time'.

Well, for one thing, I'm sure it would be nice for a lot of these people to save their children from having to do back-breaking labour in order for the family to survive. Having extra time to spend educating themselves would be highly beneficial as well. But these both fly in the face of imperialist tactics that attempt to keep people ignorant and keep cheap and/or free labour available by monopolizing people's time so they remain trapped in an unending chain of hard labour, coerced hard labour.

And, of course, above all of these abstract ideas of self-betterment, in the highly mobilized capitalist society we presently call our own, we could probably all use a few extra hours of sleep...