Kampf um Arbeitszeit

Ein Überblick

Abstract

This article examines the development of weekly working hours put in by wage labour since the introduction of the 40-hour week. It analyses the changes in different periods based on the contentious relationship between socially necessary and actually laboured working hours resulting in predominantly extensive and intensive accumulation regimes. To understand the recent surge in working hours, so one of the main arguments, one has to account for the role of competition as driver of capitalist development and as a mode of social dominance. Conversely the struggle for working time must be understood as a struggle for the limitation of competition through working-class solidarity and the manifestation of a political economy of the working class. The same solidarity also demands for a new definition and a new distribution of socially necessary working time, including paid and unpaid working hours.