Capitalism and the history of worktime thought.

The nations of the industrialized capitalist world are characterized by a tendency to reduce the length of time employees normally spend at work. Through capitalism's long history mercantilists, classicalists, Marxists and marginalists have devoted a great deal of effort to attempting to explain why it is that standard times should tend to change. This paper overviews the major contributions to the debate. Various theories are examined and their emergence and fates placed in an historical context. Marginalism's preference argument which presently dominates the debate is challenged by showing that within Marxism there exists an alternative explanation for this phenomenon which is not based on income but on the innate limitations of human beings. Until the 1950s, it is argued, the human limits approach dominated the whole issue of worktime and the essence of this contribution has never been refuted but has been simply deleted from the discussion. Consequently the whole contemporary debate is being conducted on the basis of unjustified assumptions and this is rendering discussion increasingly sterile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]