The issue here turned on the work content of a day’s labor power, which Taylor defines in the phrase ‘a fair day’s work.’ To this term he gave a crude physiological interpretation: all the work a worker can do without injury to his health, at a pace that can be sustained throughout a working lifetime. […] Why a ‘fair day’s work’ should be defined as a physiological maximum is never made clear. In attempting to give concrete meaning to the abstraction ‘fairness,’ it would make just as much if not more sense to express a fair day’s work as the amount of labor necessary to add to the product a value equal to the worker’s pay; under such conditions, of course, profit would be impossible. The phrase ‘a fair day’s work’ must therefore be regarded as inherently meaningless, and filled with such content as the adversaries in the purchase-sale relationship try to give it.

— Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, “Scientific Management” (via gameboat)

January 22nd, 2015 6:20pm

Posted on Tumblr over 11 years ago and archived here at /tumblr/2015/01/22/the-issue-here-turned-on-the-work-content-of-a/ in the Tumblr collection.
Proximate posts in the Tumblr collection
newer Already reblogged this, doing it again now, will do it again every time I see it. 23 January 2015
this post The issue here turned on the work content of a day’s labor power, which Taylor defines in the phrase ‘a fair day’s work.’ To this term he gave a crude physiological interpretation: all the work a worker can do without injury to his health, at a pace that can be sustained throughout a working lifetime. […] Why a ‘fair day’s work’ should be defined as a physiological maximum is never made clear. In attempting to give concrete meaning to the abstraction ‘fairness,’ it would make just as much if not more sense to express a fair day’s work as the amount of labor necessary to add to the product a value equal to the worker’s pay; under such conditions, of course, profit would be impossible. The phrase ‘a fair day’s work’ must therefore be regarded as inherently meaningless, and filled with such content as the adversaries in the purchase-sale relationship try to give it. 23 January 2015
older Post #108876938313 23 January 2015
Proximate posts in the General collection
newer Already reblogged this, doing it again now, will do it again every time I see it. 23 January 2015
this post The issue here turned on the work content of a day’s labor power, which Taylor defines in the phrase ‘a fair day’s work.’ To this term he gave a crude physiological interpretation: all the work a worker can do without injury to his health, at a pace that can be sustained throughout a working lifetime. […] Why a ‘fair day’s work’ should be defined as a physiological maximum is never made clear. In attempting to give concrete meaning to the abstraction ‘fairness,’ it would make just as much if not more sense to express a fair day’s work as the amount of labor necessary to add to the product a value equal to the worker’s pay; under such conditions, of course, profit would be impossible. The phrase ‘a fair day’s work’ must therefore be regarded as inherently meaningless, and filled with such content as the adversaries in the purchase-sale relationship try to give it. 23 January 2015
older Post #108876938313 23 January 2015