In response to the below, yes. true.  I am of course trying to see some
way in which late capitalism can function.  Shorter week with same pay
 keeps the overproduction where it is (that is to say no change in
profits).  If the week can be secured, and if machines are introduced,
further reductions in the week would be necessary.  But to reverse the present ruinous split of owner/ labor inequality, still further reductions would be
necessary.

In this connection it has just been reported that per capita income (average)
in US is over 25K $.  Thus the AVERAGE income of a family of 4 is 100K $.
Come on.  In NYC 1-5% earn over 100K (and that of course is a region  of
relatively high wages).  What"s happening here is that the average tells nothing.

>
> William Meecham wrote:
>
> >The French are showing the way to make late capitalism livable.
> >Reduce the work week at the SAME pay.  The overproduction must
> >be confronted.  Depression/recession anyone?
> >wcm
>
> Here's another perspective on the shorter working week I thought you might
> be interested in.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> 27 Emma St
> Bracknell Tasmania
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Towards May Day, 1904
>
> DANIEL DE LEON
> New York, April 11, 1904
>
> (Specially contributed to the May Day issue of THE SOCIALIST,
> organ of the SLP of Great Britain, by Daniel De Leon.)
> Reprinted in THE PEOPLE, May 1997.
>
> It was at the International Socialist Congress held at Zurich
> in 1893. The delegates, that is, most of them, were swaying
> under the breath of an entrancing debate. It was the debate on
> "May Day."* Austria spoke; Germany spoke; Sweden spoke; of
> course, England spoke, very much so, many other nations spoke,
> Italy among them. America and Australia, seated close together,
> spoke not; the two looked and listened, and exchanged whispers.
>
> The Zurich Ton-Halle rang with florid oratory concerning May--
> the month of flowers, and therefore, the fit month for the
> universal feast of labor. Such was the harping on the floridity
> of May, that, had the Congress been held in America, and an
> American, not a Continental, audience filled the lobbies, 10 to
> one it would have fallen to humming the tune, and presently
> have struck up the song in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado,"
> "The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la"! The debate
> ended; the motion was carried; all nations were to celebrate
> the feast of labor on one day--May Day--the month of flowers.
>
> When the applause that greeted the announcement of the vote
> subsided, the delegate from Australia rose and, in accents that
> were "childlike and bland," informed the Congress that in
> Australia, where he came from, snowballs and not flowers
> blossomed in May. The unsung refrain from Gilbert and
> Sullivan's operetta was completed: The flowers that bloom in
> the spring "had nothing to do with the case." The Australian's
> remarks were the weightiest of all the remarks made in the
> Congress.
>
> The idea of May Day arose, not from the fragrancy of the
> fields, but from the sooty, dusty and suffocating atmosphere of
> the shop, the mine, the yard. As its source was cramped, so was
> its aim; this aim, reached through the pervading soot, dust and
> steam, could not choose but partake of the limitations of its
> source. The aim was the EIGHT-HOUR DAY--then, and even now in
> come quarters, looked upon as a panacea, the real millennium.
> Even among those who aimed further, the idea was prevalent that
> the eight-hour day would be "a long step forward," and while
> they realized the limitations of the step, they encouraged or
> at least did not oppose the millennial expectations, and boomed
> May Day--a serious tactical blunder.
>
> Taking America for my field of observation--and a pace-setting
> field it is--the experience there with the eight-hour day
> movement has been in line with the experience encountered
> before with all moves that, while theoretically and temporarily
> affording relief, in the end leave matters where they were,
> aye, worse than they were before--unless--UNLESS, at the same
> time that the temporary relief is called for, the fact that it
> is only temporary, and the reason why it can be only temporary,
> are emphasized and held up clear as a pike; in other words,
> unless one bids adieu for all time to that compound of
> sentimentalism and visionariness--fatedly disastrous to such a
> mass movement as the labor or Socialist Movement inherently is-
> -that compound that consists of the false policy of jollying
> the masses and the belief that they can be emancipated from
> wage slavery without their knowledge. The uniform experience
> has been that the jolliers are themselves jollied, are
> themselves swallowed up, lose their bearings, and finally
> adjust themselves to their failure and became fakers, seeking
> to make out that failure is success.
>
> The tangible result of the eight-hour day wave in America has
> been the following sequence: First, improved machinery, with
> which the employer could turn out more work with fewer hands
> than before, thereby knocking out the calculation that the
> eight-hour day would absorb the previously unemployed; second,
> more fitful employment and, consequently, reduced earnings,
> though not always reduced wages; third, more intense toil,
> consuming more life tissue, marrow and brain matter; fourth,
> increased mortality, admitted to be appalling in some trades,
> that of the linotype compositors among others; and fifth, as
> the grand climax of it all, the setting in of conditions that
> have given birth to the ghastly proverb: "If a workingman
> reaches 42 years of  age, take him out and shoot him. He is too
> played out to be of use to an employer, and too poor to keep
> himself."
>
> Not more than three years ago, reporting to his government upon
> the machinists' trade, the British consul at Chicago stated
> that if a machinist was 42 years old and out of work, it was
> hard for him to find employment because, if he worked as hard
> as he was expected to, he was a wreck at 42, and if he was not
> that, then it was a proof he did not work as hard as he should,
> and no employer would have him. To all this must be added the
> state of ignorance the men are now left in--thanks to delusion,
> or the jolliers or "borers from within" and their subsequent
> dishonesty.
>
> The original May Day expectations failed to materialize, but
> the May Day celebrations remained. Shall the pursuit of one
> species of "flowers that bloom in the spring," which hard
> reality proved to be "snowballs that riot in winter," be
> succeeded by the pursuit of another set of "flowers" also
> destined to turn out but chilly "snowballs"? If the policy of
> the jolliers prevails, that is what will happen. It is a
> feature of their policy to need big crowds; small crowds chill
> them; they know themselves so well that it needs a big crowd to
> steady their knees. Since larger crowds can be attracted by
> nonsense than by sense, they talk "flowers that bloom in the
> spring." In short, the jollier is no builder. He is like
> barnyard cattle, following the sunshine around the haystack
> while they feed.
>
> The socialist or labor movement of this day has inherited the
> May Day celebrations. But in the language of our own American
> bard, Walt Whitman, "All the past we leave behind us, pioneers!
> Oh, pioneers!" To the internationality of May Day we couple,
> not the wildly revolutionary nor vapidly sentimental phrases
> that pass with the breath that utters them, but the
> deliberately drilling principles and sentiments that organize
> while they agitate and educate.
>
> These principles teach us of the Socialist Labor Party of
> America that capitalism has solved the ambitious dreams of the
> men of old who sought after universal power. The universal
> empire now exists, its emperor the capitalist class, its
> vassals the working class of the world. Drawn together by a
> common bond as common vassals, we commemorate on May Day the
> oneness of our status with our fellow wage slaves everywhere;
> enlightened by socialist thought, we recognize in our common
> vassalage the steppingstone to the practice of the higher
> morality of the brotherhood of man; tutored by experience and
> unterrified, we patiently, deliberately, drive in the sunken
> granite piers over which the bridge is to be laid for the
> triumphant march of the wage slave to his emancipation;
> finally, with our feet on earth and not in the clouds, seeking
> to dupe none and allowing none to dupe us, we build on facts
> and not on fancy, on truth and not on trash.
>
> The Socialist Labor Party of America believes that the
> universal emperor, the capitalist class, has reared its citadel
> in America. In the trenches where we are encamped, and at the
> work of cannonading the usurper's stronghold, we stop just long
> enough on May Day to join in the universal shout that goes up
> from the world's classconscious proletariat. We bid them good
> cheer, we pledge them our steadfastness, we assure them of our
> confidence in their intrepidity against their own section of
> the usurper's world-surrounding ramparts--and I, for one, avail
> myself of this opportunity, afforded to me by the organ of the
> Socialist Labor Party of Great Britain, to extend to it sincere
> congratulations upon its birth, its progress and the yeoman's
> work, long neglected, that it is performing for the working
> class of its country.
>
>
> *The Founding Congress of the Socialist International (Second
> International), meeting at Paris, France, selected May 1, 1890,
> as the day on which workers of all countries would demonstrate
> for an eight-hour day. A delegation representing the
> SocialistIC Labor Party, immediate predecessor of the present
> SLP (which was reorganized as a Marxist party in 1890),
> attended the Congress. The question of May Day continued to
> come up at subsequent congresses. The Zurich Congress (1893)
> was the first that De Leon attended.
>