The case for working
less: insights from
Marx and Keynes
David Spencer, Economics Division,
University of Leeds, email:
das@lubs.leeds.ac.uk
Introduction
• The case for working less is present in the
writings of both Marx and Keynes
• Both saw the shortening of work time as an
important ingredient of a better society to
come
Presentation
1. Economics and working time
2. The case for working less in the writings of
Marx and Keynes – similarities and
differences
3. Working less: prospects and possibilities
Economics and working time
• Key theme of standard economics is that
workers are “free to choose” the hours they
want to work
• Workers are assumed to make rational choices
over the allocation of their time between
work and leisure which maximise their utility
or happiness
• Workers are able to work shorter hours if that
is their preference
Economics and working time
• Non-interventionist approach adopted – work
time is best left to individual choice and free
bargaining between workers and employers
• Classical economics invoked the idea of “free
agency” to oppose the C19th Factory Acts
• Neoclassical economics invokes assumption
that workers are free to determine their work
hours in support of a flexible labour market
Economics and working time
• Standard economics takes the view that
people have an interest in working less (work
is a “disutility”)
• Proceeds of higher growth can be used by
people to “buy” more leisure time if that is
their preference
• Only the unlimited nature of human wants
and the relative scarcity of resources keeps
people at work
Marx and Keynes
• Marx and Keynes challenged the standard
account of work time determination in economics
• More broadly, they offered a different vision of
how society might and should be organised under
conditions that enabled people to work less
(similar vision also offered by J.S. Mill)
• Look at contribution of each writer in turn,
starting with Marx
Marx: work time and capitalism
• Focus on the way in which capitalism imposes
long hours of work on workers
• Key feature of capitalism is the lack of free
choice and the alienating conditions of work
• Human suffering, physical and psychological,
caused by long work hours and the
degradation of work
Marx: limits to shorter work time
under capitalism
• Work time reduction only possible through
class struggle. Work time legislation linked to
working class resistance to long work hours
• Technology developed under capitalism has
the potential to shorten work time but this
potential is left unrealised – instead,
technology under capitalism becomes a
means of exploitation
Marx: the workless future to come
• Less work could and would be done in a future
society
• The inevitable abolition of capitalism would
bring about a reduction of work time
• Development of capitalism as a necessary
stage in realising a workless future
Marx: workless future to come
• Marx foresaw that in a future communist society
technology would be used to curtail work activity
in the “realm of necessity” and to expand free
creative activity in the “true realm of freedom”
• Work could be turned into a rewarding activity,
by curtailing drudgery and by organising it on a
collective and communal basis
• Work would be rendered as “life’s prime want”
under communism
• Communism will bring about not only more free
time but also fulfilling work
Marx: workless future to come
• “It is self-evident that if labour time is reduced to
a normal length and, furthermore, labour is no
longer performed for someone else, but for
myself, and, at the same time, the social
contradictions between master and men, etc.,
being abolished, it acquires a quite different, a
free character, it becomes real social labour, and
finally the basis of disposable time - the time of
labour of a man who has also disposable time,
must be of a much higher quality than that
of the beast of burden.” (Marx, TSV, vol.2)
Keynes: on work time
• Keynes questioned the idea that workers
could make rational, utility maximising choices
in the labour market
• Due to constraints on aggregate demand,
workers could find themselves excluded from
paid work through no fault of their own
• Notion of “involuntary unemployment” and
the denial of preferences
Keynes: vision of workless future
• Keynes’s 1930 Essay: Economic Possibilities for
Our Grandchildren
• Looked forward a hundred years and foresaw
a workless future
• The “economic problem” would be solved by
2030
• Technological progress and capital
accumulation would enable us to meet our
needs by working only 15 hours per week
Keynes’s vision
• Capitalism will create the necessary conditions
for a future leisure society
• The “money-making and money-loving
instincts” of capitalism will propel the
economic system towards a workless future,
in which we will live better and fuller lives
• These instincts will fade in the future and will
be replaced by a striving for higher level goals
Lilies of the field
• “I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the
most sure and certain principles of religion and
traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the
exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the
love of money is detestable … We shall once
more value ends above means and prefer the
good to the useful. We shall honour those who
can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day
virtuously and well, the delightful people who are
capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the
lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they
spin.”
Working less and full employment
• In a 1945 letter to the poet T.S. Eliot, Keynes
wrote of the “three ingredients of a cure” for
unemployment — (i) more investment; (ii) more
consumption; (iii) less work:
• “The full employment policy by means of
investment is only one particular application of
an intellectual theorem. You can produce the
result just as well by consuming more or working
less. Personally I regard the investment policy as
first aid. In US it almost certainly will not do the
trick. Less work is the ultimate solution.”
Differences from Marx
• Gradual, harmonious movement to workless future:
productivity gains would lead to reductions in work
time – Keynes overlooked resistance of capitalist
employers to reduction in work time as well as the
insatiability of human wants
• Work would remain a “bad thing” in the future –
reduction of work time was about escaping the
disutility of work, not negating it. Keynes saw human
fulfilment as arising from activities (not sloth) pursued
in the non-work sphere. Unlike Marx, no hope for
turning work into a fulfilling activity
Working time: recent trends
• Keynes’s prophecy unlikely to be realised – despite huge gains
in productivity, reduction in work time has either slowed or
been reversed in recent decades
• Rise in work time in the US
– Average worker worked 1,868 hours in 2007, an increase of 181 hours
from the 1979 work year of 1,687 hours. This represents a 10.7
percent increase —the equivalent of every worker working 4.5
additional weeks per year (Michel, 2013). Longer hours for those at
the bottom of the income distribution and for women
• Persistence of long hours in the UK
– 19.6 percent (5.9m) of UK workers work more than 45 hours a week
(27.7 percent of male workers)
Working time: recent trends
• Wide variation in work time between nations,
suggesting that alternative work time
arrangements are feasible
• Official data may under-record total work time
as work is performed during the commute to
work and/or at home
Barriers to shorter work time
• Pressure to consume (competitive consumption)
– effects of advertising
– rising inequality
• Pressure from employers linked to decline in
unionisation and collective bargaining
• Stagnant or falling real wages coupled with higher
debt levels  effects of crisis
• Impact of technology – more effective monitoring +
increase in remote working
Costs of working more
• Economic costs: inefficiencies from working longer
hours (impaired effort and reduced cognitive function
due to tiredness and stress); maldistribution of work
(overwork coexisting with unemployment)
• Health costs: burnout, heart disease, mental illness,
and even premature death
• Social costs: less time for family and community
activities
• Environmental costs: more work implies more
production and consumption and greater damage to
the natural environment
Fears of working less
• Prospect of working less has become something
to fear
• Fear of loss of jobs and of increase in inequality
due to advance of technology – freedom from
work means greater economic destitution for
many more people
– polarisation of labour market and decline in absolute
number of jobs (“second machine age”)
• Promoting the case for working less involves
challenging and overcoming this fear
Conclusion
• Visions of a workless future contained in the
writings of Marx and Keynes continue to
inspire us to think differently about how we
might live and work
• Challenge us to think of growth as a means to
a better life, not as an end in itself, and to see
technology as a potentially liberating force
• Given the benefits on offer, as a society, can
we afford not to work less?