Mark Baugher wrote, The demand for a shorter workday, of course, has a long history in > socialism, Marx and Engels saw reductions in the workday to be strategic to > the working class in its struggle.
Yes, indeed. The other side of that was that employer opposition to shorter hours was fierce, unrelenting, and channeled through the press and vulgar political economy. A ten-hour day would mean bankruptcy for business and starvation for the workers, etc. In the event, predictions of doom turned out to not only not be the case but the opposite. This didn't placate the opposition to the 9-hour day, the 8-hour day and the shorter work week. I've documented the long history of antagonism toward shorter working hours and its insinuation into "economics." Nassau Senior was by no means the last of the economists to be "summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the latter place the political economy that he taught in the former." In a kind of under-the-radar McCarthyism, arguments that originated in National Association of Manufacturers propaganda became truisms of "Econ 101" with a little help from the "education department" of the National Association of Manufacturers. Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30648): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30648 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106436332/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
