‘Time policy’, by Guy Standing: from the right to work that of not working

The time has come to make a new time policy. This would be a revolution. Standing, director of programs at the ILO of the UN and writer, makes a story of This element throughout the centurys. From agrarian time (stations and meteorology); industrial time (the influence of the clock and temporary blocks); Tertiary time (based on services rather than agriculture and industry); and our own current blurring and volatile among so many new uses.

From the European revolutions of the mid -nineteenth century, one of the fundamental claims was the reduction of the working day and the freedom to govern our own uses of time. Today most of People work more than ever, be it at home or in the workplace. There are many invasive professions and without giving back the overtime. Keynes was wrong when he said that in these years we would work only fifteen hours per week. Perhaps when robotics is fully functioning. And then, in what will humans use time?

Standing cites the Journalist Suzanne Moore Who wrote that culture should guide that readjustment, but added something true and bleak, “culture has lost its ability to do so.” And the author of this essay ratified it in this way: «That it responds to the erosion of the cultural procomún in the recent era of the Rentist capitalism and of ideological channels such as austerity ». If we arrive at the eighties, we will hardly have lived four thousand weeks. Fortunately, the great physicist Einstein differentiated the psychological time from the physicist. A comfort!

It was in a debate with the philosopher Bergson. The psychological is united when he remembered, because he is attributed an experience that is reputed prior to the present experiences. The point is that We have always been enslaved by time. Actually those who enslave us are the forces that send over us. And hence the uprisings against them. Today we must know what mechanisms are controlling (denying) our time and a political strategy is needed to overcome them.

This also deals with this book where the difference between general work, independent and work as work activity is distinguished. Recreation and leisure are also studied. Procomún, shared activities and collaborative for the common good.

Historically for the West the Sabbat was the first day of rest. And the first law that made a holiday on Sunday was decreed by Emperor Constantine in 321 d. C. The festive daysIn general, throughout the centuries they were mixed with the religious. In ancient Greece there were five types of activities: work, work, leisure, game and ergia (contemplation).

Leisure was very important because it was dedicated to participating in the life of the polis. The ergía could be equated with the boredom that, for Nietzsche it was an unpleasant calm of the soul. After the Greeks to the ‘spleen’ poetic, he had a bad press. I have this appointment that Standing would have liked, which is from Cicero in ‘The Speaker’ and says: «I do not seem to me that A man is free if sometimes he is not doing anything». It was also very appreciated the civic friendship that was known as ‘Philia’.

Women and children were the greatest slaves in the industrial era. Dickens, Hugo or Zola denounced him. Having or not having a job? That was the question throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Labor work without time made him later The Soviets in Estajanovismo. A superhuman worker invented by propaganda. Lenin harangued shouting that those who did not work had no right to eat. But where was the work? Even Hitler respected May 1 as Workers Day.

Mismatches

According to standing, social democratic unions and politicians were cautious with this work interruption. He was no less progressive for inciting more production. Paul Laforgue, son -in -law of Marx, co -founder of the French Socialist Party, wrote the pamphlet, ‘The right to laziness’ (1883). According to his father -in -law it was a criticism of capitalism. In the background, the abolition of private property was beaten. But the work continued to triumph. Taylorism put him into practice Henry Ford: “A worker only has to do what is ordered.” The ILO (1919) was founded to promote social rights. The idea comes from the declaration of the rights of man (1789). Tocqueville He warned of the danger of the State as an entrepreneur.

The author of ‘The Policy of Time’ advances through the history of work in a pleasant and interesting way, after all this matter affects us to the whole world. Without work life is unsustainable. Its absence causes psychological mismatches and helps suicide. The lack of control of our time is influencing democratic impoverishment. There is no time or interest in civic training. Pandemia and automation; distance work activity; Teleworking; Delocation and digital nomadism; robotization; They are issues to which the author gives much importance.

Our whole world is in the air. The employment guarantee is no longer a right guaranteed by the social state, it was never really. Maybe in the technological world no one will work. Who knows if very soon from the right to work, let’s move on to not work.