Thanks to Ian Murray for forwarding the John Lichfield story to pen-l. It
never ceases to amuse me that the theme of shorter working hours
consistently sparks little or no response from progressive economists. For
the record, anyway, here is a note I sent to Charlotte Thorne of the
Industrial Society who was quoted in the John Lichfield story as saying,
"The French seem to be throwing away the textbook of labour market policies."
Dear Charlotte Thorne,
I saw mention of your name in a report by John Lichfield on the "French
miracle" of the 35-hour work week and was interested in your quoted view
that "The French seem to be throwing away the textbook of labour market
policies." I subsequently found the website of the Industrial Society and
had a look at your report, "Another Country: France versus the Anglo-Saxon
Economists". That report includes a section titled "Can you create jobs by
recycling hours?", which on page 4 discusses the "lump of labour" fallacy.
Having recently completed a historical study of the origins of the so-called
lump of labour fallacy, I would say there is a strong case for throwing away
the textbook of labour market policies. Essentially, "the textbook" with its
pet lump of labour fallacy claim has eschewed genuine orthodox (Anglo-Saxon)
economic theory and substituted for it a reactionary polemic publicized by
early 20th century employer groups such as the U.S. National Association of
Manufacturers.
Genuine orthodox economic theory (as opposed to the mainstream but ersatz
Anglo-American textbook creed) corroborates the counter-analysis that you
present on page 5 of your report. That theory was articulated in 1909 by Sir
Sidney Chapman in his presidential address to the Section on Economic
Science and Statistics of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science.
My findings have been published as a chapter, "The 'lump of labor' case
against work sharing: populist fallacy or marginalist throwback" in _Working
Time: International trends, theory and policy perspectives_, edited by
Lonnie Golden and Deborah M. Figart (Routledge, London and New York, 2000).
I would urge you to have a look at a brief summary of the chapter that I
have posted on the web.
French Miracle: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=78940
Another Country: http://www.indsoc.co.uk/futures/FastFutures.htm
Lump-of-labor summary http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/execsum.htm
Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213
