‘Time and tide wait for no man’. This quote is a universally accepted truth aimed at helping people to understand the importance of using their time well since time wasted can never be recovered. People around the world are in a race to beat time and ensure that achieve their goals within the set timelines in a capitalist world. Clocks, which are a reminder of the inevitability of time passage, are common and a prominent feature found almost everywhere. City clocks, hand-watches, and clock sin stalled in electronic gadgets such as phones and desktops are a clear indication of the importance of time. Capitalism, an economic concept is thought to be a creation of clock and time thereof as it helped create a strict work ethic and discipline. With all this insistence on work ethic and discipline that are core aspects of modern capitalism, what should one conclude? Did the clock help create and sustain modern capitalism?
Capitalism, communication, and time are highly interested concepts considering that the latter aspects are the engines that capitalism runs on. Dave Allen, a comedian said, “We spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work—and then we retire” https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/802 . This quote is an indication of a capitalist world, which runs on the concept of everyone for himself in the race to accumulate personal wealth before time runs out. Capitalism is considered as a way of communicating time in an era of financial regimes global media capitalism as well as political economies through real-time or clock time. This emphasis on time has, in turn, helped to shape modern workplaces and everyday life as everything follows schedules, deadlines, and timelines.
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The Industrial Revolution, which is considered a precursor to capitalism, helped to create communication technological infrastructures. These infrastructures in the form of internet platforms, television news, and cyber-culture, in turn, became a channel for advancing capitalism as it created global labor, which relies on time zones. In this regard, the people around the world are expected to demonstrate round-the-clock readiness to become disciplined workers to enhance productivity and cost. The discipline at which employees adhere to time dutifully is at times seen as a “pathological madness of the relentless “megamachine” https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/802 . Human resource teams in most organizations tend to come up with various HRM tools most notably key performance indicators as a way to normalize the addiction with time. In spite of these efforts, one can still consider these tools as somehow fetish as they reduce employees to deadlines and timelines in pursuit of capitalist gains.
The speed at which organizations are trying to make the most out of the time they have is likely to gain momentum in future especially with the onset of internet communication. Capitalism, as we know it today, is set to be transformed into super capitalism as organizations harness the concept of real-time as opposed to clock time. A time is coming when simultaneity and instantaneity will replace duration and sequence. This replacement will be enabled by internet communication, which is capable of ensuring the ascendancy of real-time as compared to clock time. It is possible that in the near future organizational productivity will no longer be measured in annual terms but rather would be instantaneous in the pursuit of a high number of outputs. Looking at the scenario one cannot help but conclude that the increased focus continues to push for capitalist agendas in capitalist economies. All activities are time-bound and there is no going back in the efforts to harness time to achieve these capitalist agendas in organizations.
The invention of the clock in the medieval period is considered a momentous and powerful discovery as it is considered a symbol of modernization. The potential in the clock was tapped in the fourteenth century following its universalization as well as a capitalist social relations consolidation allowing for social hegemony. The invention of the clock “had monumental effects on social developments” as they changed society’s relationships with time https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=4zi2CAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=in+Time,+Capitalism+and+Alienation+Author:+Jonathan+Martineau&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSrbPrstXlAhXS8eAKHQRzBv4Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=in%20Time%2C%20Capitalism%20and%20Alienation%20Author%3A%20Jonathan%20Martineau&f=false . In this regard, time became a crucial and even a central aspect as it began being seen as a resource needed for societies to transition from agricultural-based to industrial-based. Agricultural based societies thrived on task orientation where the workers worked as a necessity and a part of life. Task-oriented labor through traditional had “division of labor, and allocation of roles and the discipline of an employer-employed relationship” https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=Ib4tDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Class:+The+Anthology&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjisc7artXlAhVPA2MBHdN5CCAQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Class%3A%20The%20Anthology&f=false . On the other hand, industrial societies have shifted their focus to be engaged in timed labor which focuses on urgency and economies of scale. Looking at these two distinctions one can only assume that timed labor which is a concept of capitalism and which is aimed at maximizing output by ensuring that deadlines and timelines are met.
Opposing Viewpoint
Capitalism, which has continued to thrive for the longest time changing the concept of time, is on its deathbed as people try to avoid the capitalist mentality. The demise of capitalism and its concept of time is attributed to the modern digital society that has been made possible by technological advancing. Digital society is seen as “emancipatory and freeing individuals from the constrictions of time and place” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017-0020-5 . In this case, the success that an individual gets is no longer measured by the time the person works nor sleeps or the place where he or she works. Of importance here is the fact that the digital society has created much freedom, which allows people to work and still, have ample time for leisure activities.
The freedom that is associated with the digital society could be viewed as a foreign feature especially if one focuses on the strictness and rigidity of time usage in capitalist societies. In this regard, one can choose the time in which or she will work having set the amount of work to be done and the inputs thereof. This proposition is true for individuals who are engaged in digital labor as opposed to those who work in physical offices. Digital labor workers are not confined in offices that are associated with bureaucracies, schedules, deadlines, division of labor and economies of scale. For digital laborers, they only need to know what needs to be worked on and from there, they can design their own schedules without interference from the bureaucratic organizations that are time and task-oriented.
The pursuit of wealth is a constant feature in a capitalist economy, which views time as limited calling for people to make use of it when it lasts. This notion is drawn from the fact that one’s earning abilities are at optimum when they are younger and tend to decline as they approach retirement. This connotation of time is misleading considering that a study that was conducted recently indicated that individuals who are workaholics have backward values. The problem with these individuals is the fact that they value money more than leisure and would rather spend their time looking for more money. From this perspective, one can fault the capitalist ideology for creating moneymaking individuals who have no time for themselves. Those who choose to spend their time having fun risk running low on money, which would translate to dependency an aspect that contradicts capitalism.
Rebuttal
While digital society allows workers to disregard the concept of time as espoused in the capitalist society and workplace, it is not completely anti-capitalist. It could be true that digital society has created freedom so that workers could work and still have leisure. However, it has, in turn, led to the “collapse of work and non-work time and space into digital surveillance of work, identity, and social interaction” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017-0020-5 . What this means is that while there is a rise in blogging, self-publishing, and open-access thus creating freely available information, there are hidden costs. In particular, it is not possible to get this information without the requisite technologies and technological features. Capitalism lurks at the far end of the digital society as it advocated for the financialization of digital technology, as one has to pay for these services. At this point, one can conclude that digital is not free in as much as it offers freedom from the capitalist ideologies based on periods. Digital society is faulted for “an increase in the number of the poor, structural unemployment, the rise of monopolies, a panopticon of surveillance and the lack of transparency of big data” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0075- y. Moreover, digital society allows for a misogynist on-line culture and a 'selfie-centered culture of voyeurism and narcissism” which in turn enrich a few individuals. If this is not capitalism hiding behind the pretense of living beyond time constraints then one would wonder what constitutes capitalism. For this reason, individuals must realize that capitalism is here to stay and must then use their time to amass wealth for them or risk living low-quality lives. This proposition is supported by research indicates that two-thirds of humans would rather choose money as opposed to time in a much as those who choose time are happier. From this finding, it is clear that the pursuit of wealth is the basis of a capitalist economy that is here to stay.
Conclusion
The invention of clock and time-scales thereof set precedence for capitalist ideologies that have thrived in different forms. Prior to the invention of the clock societies engaged in agricultural activities and traditional based economies that were not economic-based. In this case, the individual was concerned only with subsistence as the traditional economies were task-oriented. The invention of the clock and the onset of the industrial revolution brought about timed labor to enhance maximization of output. The success of individuals and organizations is based on how well, one uses limited time to accumulate wealth before time lapses. The technological revolution has brought about a new way of harnessing time to ensure instantaneous results within shorter time frames. Although digital technologies have created freedom from schedules, deadlines and time constraints, they still promote capitalist agenda. At the end of it, most people are in pursuit of wealth before time catches up with them and renders them incapable of making money. No matter how hard one argues, capitalism continues to dictate how people spend their time, as time is the single most useful resource people have.
References
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Grimshaw, M. (2017). Digital society and capitalism . Palgrave Communications , 3(1), 1-3.
Klikauer, T. (2016). Critical reflections on time and capitalism. Triple C, 14(2), 451–456.
Martineu, J. (2015). Time, Capitalism and Alienation: A Socio-Historical Inquiry into the Making of Modern Time . Boston: Koninklijke Brill.
Thompson, D. (2016, December 21). A brief economic history of time. The Atlantic. Retrieved on November 6, 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/a-brief-economic-history-of-time/510566/
Thompson, E. (2018). Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism. In Aronowitz, S & Roberts, M. J. (Eds.), Class: The Anthology (pp. 27-41) . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.
