Time-saving technologies become the means of extracting more labor time
Evidence
If one follows the analysis suggested by Marx, then in the first place labor time directly constitutes a decisive, i.e., value-creating, factor of production, as time is transformed by work into value. … As Marx already noted, the capitalist economics of time therefore provides one explanation for the paradoxical link between the introduction of time-saving technologies and the consequent increasing scarcity of time resources, i.e., the heightening of the pace of life: “hence too the economic paradox that the most powerful instrument for reducing labor-time suffers a dialectical inversion and becomes the most unfailing means for turning the whole lifetime of the worker and his family into labor time at capital’s disposal for its own valorization.” — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 451
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Email speeds messages but multiplies their volume without shrinking total time spent — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 1084; Time-saving technology coexists with unprecedented felt time scarcity; Modern advocates long expected technology to deliver abundant free time (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Production-process forms increasingly colonize private leisure time
#expands(0.85) - Incorporating robots can reduce household labor demands.
#expands(0.80) — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 712 - Capitalist growth advances through labor-saving technology that destroys jobs
#corroborates(0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 245 - Society compels laborers to sublimate diversionary drives into focused work
#complicates(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1409 - Technology enabled work to consume every waking moment across time zones.
#exemplifies(0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 317 - Productivity tools created new bureaucratic make-work instead of streamlining work
#qualifies(0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 711