Routledge Capitalism and the Political Economy of Work Time

Explore the evolving relationship between productivity and labor in this scholarly work from the Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy series. The text examines historical economic predictions, ranging from John Maynard Keynes's expectation of a 15-hour work week by 2030 to Jean Fourastie's mid-1960s forecast of a 30-hour week by the year 2000. This book analyzes how productivity growth has fluctuated over the decades, noting the slowdown in the 1970s and 1980s and the rebound seen in the 1990s following the rise of information and communication technologies. While many scholars predicted a jobless future or a world without work due to the rise of the knowledge economy, the reality of full-time employment hours has proven more complex. This volume provides a deep look into the economic structures that define how much we work and why those historical predictions did or did not come to pass.