Week 1: Time, Work-discipline, and Industrial Capitalism – E.P Thompson
Time discipline
Time discipline: social and economic rules, conventions, customs, and expectations governing the
measurement of time, the social currency and awareness of time measurements, and people’s
expectations concerning the observance of these customs by others.
- Thompson argued that observance of clock time is a consequence of the European industrial
revolution, and that neither industrial capitalism nor the creation of the modern state would have
been possible without the imposition of synchronic forms of time and work discipline.
- The new clock time imposed by government and capitalist interests replaced earlier, collective
perceptions of time that Thompson believed flowed from the collective wisdom of human
societies. While in fact it appears likely that earlier views of time were imposed instead by religious
and other social authorities prior to the industrial revolution.
Time discipline before the industrial revolution
- The natural world in societies based around agriculture, hunting, and other pursuits that involve
human interaction with the natural world → time discipline is a matter governed by astronomical
and biological factors.
- Time was measured through observation of the natural world (e.g., sunrise, seasons, moon
phases).
- Different cultures had varying perceptions of time due to different needs and circumstances,
leading to the development of artificial time divisions when necessary.
Task-Oriented Time vs. Timed Labor
- Task-oriented time was more comprehensible than timed labor.
- In communities with task-oriented time, there was no clear demarcation between work and life.
- To individuals accustomed to clock-based work, this approach appeared wasteful and lacked
urgency.
- When hands-on labor began, a shift from task-orientation to timed labor occurred.
- Employer-employee relationships highlighted the distinction between employer’s time (which
needed to be carefully managed) and the employee’s personal time.
- Time became a commodity: it was no longer "passed," but "spent" as a form of currency.
The invention of artificial units of time
- The invention of artificial units of time measurement made the introduction of time
management possible, and time management was not universally appreciated by those whose
time was managed.
- Religious communities were likely the inventors, and certainly the major consumers, of early
clocks.
- The invention of the mechanical clock in Western Europe led to a public time discipline that was
increasingly disconnected from natural phenomena.
- Public time discipline had significant social and religious consequences for those who could
afford and use clocks.
Economic Consequences of Time Discipline
- The growing awareness that time is money emphasized time as a limited commodity to be used
efficiently.
- The Protestant work ethic became closely associated with time discipline, and the production of
clocks became concentrated in Protestant areas.
Standard, public time and mass production
- The introduction of standard time and time zones disconnected the "time of day" from local
mean solar time and astronomy.
- The mass production of clocks further entrenched time discipline in Western societies.
- By the time time clocks became widespread, synchronized public time was considered a fact of
life.
,The intellectual history of time
- The intellectual history of time refers to the evolution in how humans understand and measure
time, influenced by art, science, and social infrastructure.
- Early settled societies relied on accurate predictions of seasonal cycles, leading to the
development of calendars.
- Learning astronomy became the responsibility of certain individuals to coordinate lunar and
solar calendars.
- It took centuries for technology to make time measurements precise enough to fix minutes, and
even longer for milliseconds and nanoseconds.
- A shift in the definition of time units occurred: clocks were reset at local high noon, and midnight
came to be defined as 12 o'clock.
- After the invention of the locomotive in 1830, time had to be synchronized across vast distances
to coordinate train schedules, leading to the development of time zones and global time.
- Not all societies immediately accepted these time changes, as many were still deeply connected
to the length of the daytime.
Industrial Capitalism in the US
- Industrial capitalism transformed how and where people worked and how much they earned.
- From farmers to factory workers.
- Profit and efficiency became important.
- Social classes changed a lot.
Factors that contributed to these economic changes
- Technological advancements
▪ Innovation
▪ Mass production methods → efficiency.
▪ Business tech: telephone, electricity.
▪ Shipping tech.
- New business strategies
▪ Advertising
▪ Management: create efficiency and cut costs by replacing workers by machines,
increasing working hours and decreasing wages for labors.
- Business consolidation and pro-growth government policies.
▪ Railroad subsidies.
▪ Laissez-faire policies: rejects the practice of government intervention in an economy.
▪ Vertical integration: to control every part of the supply chain for a product.
▪ Holding companies, trusts, pools → allowed merges to put many companies under the
control of one parent company.
Consequences of industrial capitalism
- Higher standard of living.
- Labor wages and working conditions → labor unions.
- International expansion
Week 2: Wage-Labor and Capital – Karl Marx
Cycles of production and accumulation under capitalism
- Worker: you sell your labor to a capitalist in order to make money, so you can buy something at the
market.
- Capitalist: the money he has (from loans or heritage) to buy raw materials, means of production
and labor power and combine these things to create a commodity to sell for profit. With the profit
they buy even more raw materials, means of production and labor power and make even more
commodities to sell for more profit, etc. etc.
Wages
- Wages are not paid out by wages made by the workers work, but are instead paid out by the capital
already on hand.
, - Wages are made up for the money the capitalist already has and gives to the workers so that that
worker will devote a portion of his time, energy, life, labor, power, alienating himself from the
task at hand in order that he could use those wages to buy things that he needs to survive.
Buying and selling
- Competition among sellers which forces down the price of the commodities offered by them.
- Competition among the buyers which causes the price of the proffered commodities to rise.
- Competition between the buyers and the sellers who wish to purchase as cheaply as possible
and to sell as dearly as possible.
➔ With all this buying and selling of commodities how is price determined?
Labor theory of value
- Marx argues the actual price of a commodity always stands above or below the cost of production,
but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other out, so that within a certain period of time
the industry are reckoned up together → labor theory of value: the cost of producing an item,
the labor that goes into it ultimately determines the price of that commodity.
- At the end of the day, the average price of a commodity tends towards the amount determined
by the cost of production.
- It's all about the necessary and average amounts of labor needed to produce the product of a given
quality and not about the time or labor I specifically spend making the product.
- Labor adds value to the product, thus determining its minimum price → the price of a commodity
is determined by the cost of production.
How are wages determined?
- Wages must be enough to maintain the existence of the workers as a class.
- Marx puts in the cost of production of simple labor power amounts to the cost of the existence and
propagation of the worker (food, clothes).
- The wages of the whole working class adjust themselves, then the limits of their fluctuations to this
minimum.
Capital
Capital consists of raw materials instruments of labor and means of subsistence of all kinds which are
employed in producing new raw materials new instruments and new means of subsistence.
- Marx: although both capitalist and worker gain proportionally, the capitalist gains at the workers
expense.
▪ Although the pleasures of the laborer have increased the social gratification, which they
afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist (example TV).
▪ The wealth of society is going overwhelmingly to the capitalist class while the workers
wealth proportionally falls drastically behind.
- This gets us to the point where the capitalist is selling their commodities and realizing their profits.
- Here's how Marx breaks down the profits once commodities are sold: he states the selling price of
the commodities produced by the worker is divided from the point of view of the capitalist into three
parts.
▪ The replacement of the price of the raw materials advanced by him, in addition to the
replacement of the wear and tear of the tools, machines, and other instruments of labor
likewise advanced by him.
▪ The replacement of the wages.
▪ The surplus leftover (the profits of the capitalist).
- The interests of capital and the interests of wage labor are diametrically opposed to each other.
- Profits can grow rapidly only when the price of Labor, the relative wages, decrease just as rapidly.
- That the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital means that the more speedily the
worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the
greater will be the number of workers that can be called into existence, the more can the mass of
slaves dependent upon capital be increased.
Time discipline
Time discipline: social and economic rules, conventions, customs, and expectations governing the
measurement of time, the social currency and awareness of time measurements, and people’s
expectations concerning the observance of these customs by others.
- Thompson argued that observance of clock time is a consequence of the European industrial
revolution, and that neither industrial capitalism nor the creation of the modern state would have
been possible without the imposition of synchronic forms of time and work discipline.
- The new clock time imposed by government and capitalist interests replaced earlier, collective
perceptions of time that Thompson believed flowed from the collective wisdom of human
societies. While in fact it appears likely that earlier views of time were imposed instead by religious
and other social authorities prior to the industrial revolution.
Time discipline before the industrial revolution
- The natural world in societies based around agriculture, hunting, and other pursuits that involve
human interaction with the natural world → time discipline is a matter governed by astronomical
and biological factors.
- Time was measured through observation of the natural world (e.g., sunrise, seasons, moon
phases).
- Different cultures had varying perceptions of time due to different needs and circumstances,
leading to the development of artificial time divisions when necessary.
Task-Oriented Time vs. Timed Labor
- Task-oriented time was more comprehensible than timed labor.
- In communities with task-oriented time, there was no clear demarcation between work and life.
- To individuals accustomed to clock-based work, this approach appeared wasteful and lacked
urgency.
- When hands-on labor began, a shift from task-orientation to timed labor occurred.
- Employer-employee relationships highlighted the distinction between employer’s time (which
needed to be carefully managed) and the employee’s personal time.
- Time became a commodity: it was no longer "passed," but "spent" as a form of currency.
The invention of artificial units of time
- The invention of artificial units of time measurement made the introduction of time
management possible, and time management was not universally appreciated by those whose
time was managed.
- Religious communities were likely the inventors, and certainly the major consumers, of early
clocks.
- The invention of the mechanical clock in Western Europe led to a public time discipline that was
increasingly disconnected from natural phenomena.
- Public time discipline had significant social and religious consequences for those who could
afford and use clocks.
Economic Consequences of Time Discipline
- The growing awareness that time is money emphasized time as a limited commodity to be used
efficiently.
- The Protestant work ethic became closely associated with time discipline, and the production of
clocks became concentrated in Protestant areas.
Standard, public time and mass production
- The introduction of standard time and time zones disconnected the "time of day" from local
mean solar time and astronomy.
- The mass production of clocks further entrenched time discipline in Western societies.
- By the time time clocks became widespread, synchronized public time was considered a fact of
life.
,The intellectual history of time
- The intellectual history of time refers to the evolution in how humans understand and measure
time, influenced by art, science, and social infrastructure.
- Early settled societies relied on accurate predictions of seasonal cycles, leading to the
development of calendars.
- Learning astronomy became the responsibility of certain individuals to coordinate lunar and
solar calendars.
- It took centuries for technology to make time measurements precise enough to fix minutes, and
even longer for milliseconds and nanoseconds.
- A shift in the definition of time units occurred: clocks were reset at local high noon, and midnight
came to be defined as 12 o'clock.
- After the invention of the locomotive in 1830, time had to be synchronized across vast distances
to coordinate train schedules, leading to the development of time zones and global time.
- Not all societies immediately accepted these time changes, as many were still deeply connected
to the length of the daytime.
Industrial Capitalism in the US
- Industrial capitalism transformed how and where people worked and how much they earned.
- From farmers to factory workers.
- Profit and efficiency became important.
- Social classes changed a lot.
Factors that contributed to these economic changes
- Technological advancements
▪ Innovation
▪ Mass production methods → efficiency.
▪ Business tech: telephone, electricity.
▪ Shipping tech.
- New business strategies
▪ Advertising
▪ Management: create efficiency and cut costs by replacing workers by machines,
increasing working hours and decreasing wages for labors.
- Business consolidation and pro-growth government policies.
▪ Railroad subsidies.
▪ Laissez-faire policies: rejects the practice of government intervention in an economy.
▪ Vertical integration: to control every part of the supply chain for a product.
▪ Holding companies, trusts, pools → allowed merges to put many companies under the
control of one parent company.
Consequences of industrial capitalism
- Higher standard of living.
- Labor wages and working conditions → labor unions.
- International expansion
Week 2: Wage-Labor and Capital – Karl Marx
Cycles of production and accumulation under capitalism
- Worker: you sell your labor to a capitalist in order to make money, so you can buy something at the
market.
- Capitalist: the money he has (from loans or heritage) to buy raw materials, means of production
and labor power and combine these things to create a commodity to sell for profit. With the profit
they buy even more raw materials, means of production and labor power and make even more
commodities to sell for more profit, etc. etc.
Wages
- Wages are not paid out by wages made by the workers work, but are instead paid out by the capital
already on hand.
, - Wages are made up for the money the capitalist already has and gives to the workers so that that
worker will devote a portion of his time, energy, life, labor, power, alienating himself from the
task at hand in order that he could use those wages to buy things that he needs to survive.
Buying and selling
- Competition among sellers which forces down the price of the commodities offered by them.
- Competition among the buyers which causes the price of the proffered commodities to rise.
- Competition between the buyers and the sellers who wish to purchase as cheaply as possible
and to sell as dearly as possible.
➔ With all this buying and selling of commodities how is price determined?
Labor theory of value
- Marx argues the actual price of a commodity always stands above or below the cost of production,
but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other out, so that within a certain period of time
the industry are reckoned up together → labor theory of value: the cost of producing an item,
the labor that goes into it ultimately determines the price of that commodity.
- At the end of the day, the average price of a commodity tends towards the amount determined
by the cost of production.
- It's all about the necessary and average amounts of labor needed to produce the product of a given
quality and not about the time or labor I specifically spend making the product.
- Labor adds value to the product, thus determining its minimum price → the price of a commodity
is determined by the cost of production.
How are wages determined?
- Wages must be enough to maintain the existence of the workers as a class.
- Marx puts in the cost of production of simple labor power amounts to the cost of the existence and
propagation of the worker (food, clothes).
- The wages of the whole working class adjust themselves, then the limits of their fluctuations to this
minimum.
Capital
Capital consists of raw materials instruments of labor and means of subsistence of all kinds which are
employed in producing new raw materials new instruments and new means of subsistence.
- Marx: although both capitalist and worker gain proportionally, the capitalist gains at the workers
expense.
▪ Although the pleasures of the laborer have increased the social gratification, which they
afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist (example TV).
▪ The wealth of society is going overwhelmingly to the capitalist class while the workers
wealth proportionally falls drastically behind.
- This gets us to the point where the capitalist is selling their commodities and realizing their profits.
- Here's how Marx breaks down the profits once commodities are sold: he states the selling price of
the commodities produced by the worker is divided from the point of view of the capitalist into three
parts.
▪ The replacement of the price of the raw materials advanced by him, in addition to the
replacement of the wear and tear of the tools, machines, and other instruments of labor
likewise advanced by him.
▪ The replacement of the wages.
▪ The surplus leftover (the profits of the capitalist).
- The interests of capital and the interests of wage labor are diametrically opposed to each other.
- Profits can grow rapidly only when the price of Labor, the relative wages, decrease just as rapidly.
- That the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital means that the more speedily the
worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the
greater will be the number of workers that can be called into existence, the more can the mass of
slaves dependent upon capital be increased.
