Time for Labour and its Origins: E.P. Thompson on the Temporality of Industrial Capitalism

Abstract

Edward P. Thompson wrote one of the most important works touching on the origins of the temporal consciousness of industrial capitalism. Thompson showed how difficult was the process of acquiring a new attitude towards time and the formation of temporal subjectivity necessary for the reproduction of capitalist relations. At the same time, contemporary transformations of economic organization and social life call into question the established ways of dealing with time. Returning to Thompson's work and its reception will allow us to better understand these transformations and to inquire whether we are now witnessing a historical break in the temporal regime. This article is a critical overview focusing on Thompson's conceptual resources and subsequent discussions concerning his work. In particular, 1) explication of Thompson's critique of economism by means of displacement of economic ontology by the sociological relationship between value and time; 2) the conceptualization of the transition from "task orientation" to "clock orientation"; 3) critical review of various causal elements that contribute to the formation of temporal subjectivity; 4) comparison of Thompson's theses with modern arguments focusing on the transformation of labor organization and the formation of the corresponding attitude to time.