One of capitalism’s most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit – but rarely articulated – assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.
These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind.
During the medieval period, work was intermittent – called to a halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner. Depending on time and place, there were also midmorning and midafternoon refreshment breaks. These rest periods were the traditional rights of laborers, which they enjoyed even during peak harvest times. During slack periods, which accounted for a large part of the year, adherence to regular working hours was not usual. According to Oxford Professor James E. Thorold Rogers[1], the medieval workday was not more than eight hours. The worker participating in the eight-hour movements of the late nineteenth century was “simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago.”
The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official – that is, church – holidays included not only long “vacations” at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints’ andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up probably about one-third of the year. And the English were apparently working harder than their neighbors. The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.
A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year – 175 days – for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year.
The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor
“So you want a return to medieval servitude?” NO. We’re simply pointing out that Capitalism bring unique forms of exploitation, one of them being a life where you have barely enough ‘free time’ to get ready for your next working day, and not at all enough to do any actual living that isn’t focussed on getting ready for work again. Our whole lives are stolen from us.
Wow jeeze I sure do wonder what would happen if money didn’t matter and every body else didn’t have to wait for some rich fucker to strut down from their mountain of money to gift us a pebble from it.
Can I just say, from the bottom of my heart, in regards to Dewayne Johnson winning his lawsuit against Monsanto and being awarded $289 million in damages and also lost 11 BILLION in stock value following the jury’s decision and also opened up legal precedent against Monsanto for other people to go after them for damages thanks to exposure to their shit;
FUCKING GOOD, and also my deepest sympathy to Mr. Johnson, who has terminal cancer thanks to their products, but FUCKING GOOD, FUCK YOU MONSANTO, SUCK A THOUSAND HORSE DICKS IN HELL
Consider this my open request to society: destroy them. If you have the money and the misfortune of being able to take these fuckers to court, then destroy them.
They’ve got other similar lawsuits still ongoing against them right now that total $5.5 BILLION in damages sought.
This lawsuit can now be cited by all the others, and I promise it will be.
And gods, but I hope that it ruins them.
For those of you who don’t recognize the name “Monsanto” they produce Roundup, which is a herbicide (weed killer) known for killing weeds but not crops.
Roundup, incidentally, is specifically the chemical that Mr. Johnson was exposed to that contributed to his terminal cancer.
There are about 5,000 more current lawsuits being filed against Monsanto for the same thing. Monsanto claims Roundup is safe, and points to lots of studies done on it…the majority of which, coincidentally, have been conducted by/funded by Monsanto.
One of the main points in the trial was recently unearthed evidence that shows that Monsanto has been actively suppressing studies that show that Roundup is dangerous for decades now.
The men who hid this evidence are, in no small way, complicit in the deaths of these innocent people and should be removed root and branch.
There’s an irony to that. And one we should pursue until they feel the burden of these deaths on their souls and on their daily lives.
Some more info; there’s also evidence that points to Monsanto paying off EPA agents to suppress studies and evidence that show that Roundup is a potent health risk.
Monsanto is, as it has for decades, claiming that glysophate…the active ingredient in Roundup…is safe. Which, as disclosed at this trial, is a lie, and they’ve been suppressing the evidence for years.
BUT, in addition, testing has shown that Roundup contains VERY DANGEROUS levels of heavy metals such as arsenic, chromium, cobalt, and lead, in addition to highly toxic petroleum residues, which Monsanto does not disclose on the labels. They were hidden under ‘other additives’ on the label.
Some of the things arsenic, other heavy metals, and petroleum distillate exposure can cause?
Cancer. Such as that which is killing Mr. Johnson and others.
The studies conducted by Monsanto to claim Roundup was safe were only conducted on glysophate. They actively suppressed studies that found that glysophate could be a health risk, and did not disclose any information about the other dangerous additives…which have been known to be dangerous for decades.
You can hear parts of the autoimmune disease community shrieking in rageful vindication.
Between this and the study coming out of Finland linking exposure to certain pesticides and herbicides as being linked to early onset MS (among other things) I’m about to flip the God damn table.
I think I need to call my dad (a farmer) and my mum ( plagued with endocrine and autoimmune issues)…
concept: they year is 2028. elon musk, jeff bezos and every other billionaire overlord out there have finally fulfilled their lifelong ambition to escape The Event, and have gone to establish the first super-advanced human colony on mars. we’re treated to a 10-episode live broadcast of them murdering eachother in the space of a month. there’s a highly acclaimed sequel where the sole survivor slowly goes bonkers as he realizes he’s all alone, his vast fortune is worth nothing out there, and even if there was a way to return to earth, he lost all of his humanity long ago so what does it matter.
the rest of us, older and wiser, begin the difficult but satisfying task of rebuilding society and healing the earth, and are much better off in the long-run.
Steel Phoenix Studios 