The 40-Hour Work Week Turns You In An Economic Zombie

    

by Lukas Magnuson

How the forty hour week is an essential tool for capitalist control.

Economic slavery, also known as wage slavery, refers to a complete dependence on wages accrued from labor in order to survive. Naturally, this state applies to most people that live on this planet. In the developed world, wage slavery has effectively sculpted society and individual habits. The majority of people who are employed work for approximately forty hours a week. In those forty hours, they often submit to fairly dehumanizing conditions. They are told what to wear, when to leave and when to arrive, what to eat and even when they are allowed to go to the toilet. Why are the vast majority of people in the developed world so happy to meekly submit to this frankly ludicrous state of affairs?

Surprisingly enough, the forty hour work week was actually a hard-won concession on the part of trade union movements. In the dawning days of the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom, it was considered to be normal to work for between ten and sixteen hours a day. When exhausted workers began to protest they demanded a more reasonable settlement on working hours from their employers. The factory bosses conceded to a forty hour week, which has now been replicated throughout most of the developed world.

From the stance of a global capitalist, the forty hour week is essential to maintain equilibrium and control. While it does not exhaust and outrage ordinary citizens to the extent that they will rebel against the state of the world, it did leave them exhausted and occupied enough that they will not be capable of fulfilling any kind of meaningful collection in the spare time.

The forty hour week has also proved to be the nourishing force behind consumerism, particularly when it comes to over-indulgent spending. As workers have very little free time to themselves, they are suggestible to spending vast amounts of money on the entertainment and conveniences they consume in the hours spare that they have a week. The result of this is a perpetuation of debt and inflation, in addition to restricting how much time an individual can feasibly spend on more worthy and potentially revolutionary activities rather than mindless entertainment.