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Article: Preferences, power, and the determination of working hours.
- Article from:
- Journal of Economic Issues
- Article date:
- March 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Association for Evolutionary Economics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To develop a meaningful understanding of living standards and the distribution of income in capitalist economies, it is important to consider the length of the working day. Since Karl Marx's discussion, in part 4 of Capital's first volume, of relative surplus value, there have been debates over the intensive utilization of labor. More recently, these debates have extended to considering the application of neoclassical rational-choice methodology in explanations of labor extraction. (1) However, there have been historical periods during which the extensive utilization of labor has predominated, manifest in the form of increases in the length of the working day and/or ...