Today, things seem a bit different than the old times.
(By old times, I mean the time of Marx.)
From Marx’s readings we know that the capitalist owns means of the production and makes their profit through the exploitation of the worker. To Marx, the actual job is done by the labor but surplus value directly goes to the capitalist. In this picture, the capitalist and the people of higher status appears to be lazy.
Marx would be surprised to find out that in today’s world Ceo’s, executives and rich people like to show that how busy and productive they are. Working for long hours signal social status in today’s world.
Even movies show the well-off as ambitious proud workaholic.
Maybe, in today’s world does the discrepancy between the rich and the poor not only comes from the exploitation of the labor suggested by Marx, but also rising working hours for the well-off.
The research found that “the share of college-educated American men regularly working more than 50 hours a week rose from 24% in 1979 to 28% in 2006, but fell for high-school dropouts. Highly educated people take less leisure time than they did fifty years ago.”
The Economist’s article see here focuses on this idea and offers an explanation with a link to the research.
I disagree on that Marx would be surprised to see CEOs working for long hours. Because they are still a part of the class system, still the poor become poorer as the rich grow richer, and there are still workers of those CEOs, working for long hours, alienating from their products, their self, others and species being. The only thing that changed might be the duration of the CEOs' working hours; working harder and more 'workaholic'ly to expand their capitals, to sell more products while exploiting more workers. In short, the fact that the rich people are working harder today may not mean the system has changed - but only the system has expanded.
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