This is a super small point, but just to signal that I'm reading -- I always think that people read "time is the number of motion" in a misleading way, with clocks already in mind. Really, he's saying that we're counting two moments: "first it was here, then it was there." It's not about establishing some abstract magnitude, but about framing a meaningful action. None of this means your brief quote needs to change, though, especially since your point is about how these ideas get taken up (presumably misleadingly) in the common narrative you're critiquing.
“It is no longer the clock that drives social, economic, and technological shifts; instead, it is a new mode of economic organization that drives demand for the clock.”
I could use a mention of new technologies here (or somewhere like here) as well. You have to have clocks for trains especially – not just so you catch the right one, but so that you don’t get people killed. I’m sure he’s not the only one (just the only one I’ve taken courses with) but John Zilcosky talks about “Vienna time” or “railway time” (Bahnzeit) in this way in his work on trauma.
I mostly know the stakes of “the relationship between time and money is an accounting problem, first and foremost” from inference and from knowing you. I could use a little more about why it matters that it is primarily an accounting problem, as opposed to a labour problem. (Labour as a commodity, as in a unit bought and sold and then used up? Something else?) Another way of asking this is: what can Marxists not understand about accounting? You move on to explain it after this passage, but a bit more here would help ground me in your terminology.
I know this is a huge question that we’ll all spend the rest of our lives arguing about, but if time isn’t money, what is it? Some foreshadowing here could help. If not “what is it?”, what could it be?
Yeah, the time=accounting≠money suggestion is one I'm hoping to come back to in a later section/entry and flesh out much more thoroughly; hopefully I can stick it as a landing, but even if I do, you may be right that it requires more setup.
Hi, I'm reading this as I'm also researching in South Africa. And, I think understanding the social construction of time historically is really interesting because it is one of the concepts that people argue is more objective or primary than others, at least in Modern Europe. While I've been here I've been thinking about commodification of human interactions and power and privilege. And it seems from what you've written that the "invention" of time is actually a key component of commodification of labor along with religious ideas of duty. which makes me think the following thoughts.. one can "island time" be seen as activism? and two it seems that many scientific inventions although well meaning our out of curiosity can be used to oppress, the clock included. In knowledge communities generally speaking on the continent of Africa much of the information remains secret until you become initiated to use the information in alignment with certain values. I'm not 100% sure on my point here but I think there is something to note. Also some comments: I think people like Descartes talk about time with regard to extension and perception of objects, and Kant talks about space and time as things that allow us to experience.. I'm wondering now if Kant's conception of time is about clock kept time or the idea of time more generally because I think clocks became common right when he was writing. And I'm also wondering if that matters given as contemporary readers we might assume it means clock kept time anyway which in turn philosophizes clock kept time as essentials a priori and innate.
i haven't found examples of task-orientation within commodified structures that constitute an escape from the global dictatorship of abstract time. whatever practice cannot be ground up into abstract time-pieces becomes just a big stupid, inefficient (from the perspective of value maximization) cog.
the totality of the abstract time system is what necessitates historical excavation/explication. do the durations of the genesis timeline matter? the dominion of the clock is an eternal now regardless.
abstract time existed long before capitalist accumulation did, but it is only the jumpstarting of accumulation cycles that enabled the expansion of abstract time hegemony across space, and eventually across the globe. this is the key shift that these historians are registering ~6c ago: accumulation beginning to deconstruct the social metabolism according to abstract accumulation logics.
i suppose abstract time itself came with the symbolic order. but that does not explain why our tributary modes were not totalized by abstract time, and the capitalist world-system is defined precisely by this abstract totalization of social relations.
Hegel’s "abstraction ... not contained within the individual mind" merely provides evidence of confused (or wishful) thinking, as abstractions, by definition, exist in the mind; quotation marks don't remove the self-contradiction from his “actually-existing abstraction”.
Measuring devices do not create the quantities we try to measure using them. TIME exists without clocks to measure it or even a name to describe it, as does LENGTH, in the absence of tape measures and odometers. But even though ambiguity of words does allow me to ask: How “long” is an “instant”? we must be careful when we apply a LENGTH concept to the TIME concept like that.
We create lots of mental concepts and give them names (like hours, minutes and second) and project our definitions onto the world full of changes (in particular, the change we call “motion”) to help us communicate with precision. But no causal or ontological “yoke” ties time and money together. Coincidental correlation in either space or time can mislead regarding such a supposed link. Equating them looks more like a category error, akin to equating colour with quantity, e.g., 205 = Purple, possibly another “real abstraction”?
This is a super small point, but just to signal that I'm reading -- I always think that people read "time is the number of motion" in a misleading way, with clocks already in mind. Really, he's saying that we're counting two moments: "first it was here, then it was there." It's not about establishing some abstract magnitude, but about framing a meaningful action. None of this means your brief quote needs to change, though, especially since your point is about how these ideas get taken up (presumably misleadingly) in the common narrative you're critiquing.
“It is no longer the clock that drives social, economic, and technological shifts; instead, it is a new mode of economic organization that drives demand for the clock.”
I could use a mention of new technologies here (or somewhere like here) as well. You have to have clocks for trains especially – not just so you catch the right one, but so that you don’t get people killed. I’m sure he’s not the only one (just the only one I’ve taken courses with) but John Zilcosky talks about “Vienna time” or “railway time” (Bahnzeit) in this way in his work on trauma.
I mostly know the stakes of “the relationship between time and money is an accounting problem, first and foremost” from inference and from knowing you. I could use a little more about why it matters that it is primarily an accounting problem, as opposed to a labour problem. (Labour as a commodity, as in a unit bought and sold and then used up? Something else?) Another way of asking this is: what can Marxists not understand about accounting? You move on to explain it after this passage, but a bit more here would help ground me in your terminology.
I know this is a huge question that we’ll all spend the rest of our lives arguing about, but if time isn’t money, what is it? Some foreshadowing here could help. If not “what is it?”, what could it be?
Yeah, the time=accounting≠money suggestion is one I'm hoping to come back to in a later section/entry and flesh out much more thoroughly; hopefully I can stick it as a landing, but even if I do, you may be right that it requires more setup.
Hi, I'm reading this as I'm also researching in South Africa. And, I think understanding the social construction of time historically is really interesting because it is one of the concepts that people argue is more objective or primary than others, at least in Modern Europe. While I've been here I've been thinking about commodification of human interactions and power and privilege. And it seems from what you've written that the "invention" of time is actually a key component of commodification of labor along with religious ideas of duty. which makes me think the following thoughts.. one can "island time" be seen as activism? and two it seems that many scientific inventions although well meaning our out of curiosity can be used to oppress, the clock included. In knowledge communities generally speaking on the continent of Africa much of the information remains secret until you become initiated to use the information in alignment with certain values. I'm not 100% sure on my point here but I think there is something to note. Also some comments: I think people like Descartes talk about time with regard to extension and perception of objects, and Kant talks about space and time as things that allow us to experience.. I'm wondering now if Kant's conception of time is about clock kept time or the idea of time more generally because I think clocks became common right when he was writing. And I'm also wondering if that matters given as contemporary readers we might assume it means clock kept time anyway which in turn philosophizes clock kept time as essentials a priori and innate.
I'm going to have a lot to say about some of these things in future entries, so I'm happy you put them on the table here!
i haven't found examples of task-orientation within commodified structures that constitute an escape from the global dictatorship of abstract time. whatever practice cannot be ground up into abstract time-pieces becomes just a big stupid, inefficient (from the perspective of value maximization) cog.
the totality of the abstract time system is what necessitates historical excavation/explication. do the durations of the genesis timeline matter? the dominion of the clock is an eternal now regardless.
abstract time existed long before capitalist accumulation did, but it is only the jumpstarting of accumulation cycles that enabled the expansion of abstract time hegemony across space, and eventually across the globe. this is the key shift that these historians are registering ~6c ago: accumulation beginning to deconstruct the social metabolism according to abstract accumulation logics.
i suppose abstract time itself came with the symbolic order. but that does not explain why our tributary modes were not totalized by abstract time, and the capitalist world-system is defined precisely by this abstract totalization of social relations.
Hegel’s "abstraction ... not contained within the individual mind" merely provides evidence of confused (or wishful) thinking, as abstractions, by definition, exist in the mind; quotation marks don't remove the self-contradiction from his “actually-existing abstraction”.
Measuring devices do not create the quantities we try to measure using them. TIME exists without clocks to measure it or even a name to describe it, as does LENGTH, in the absence of tape measures and odometers. But even though ambiguity of words does allow me to ask: How “long” is an “instant”? we must be careful when we apply a LENGTH concept to the TIME concept like that.
We create lots of mental concepts and give them names (like hours, minutes and second) and project our definitions onto the world full of changes (in particular, the change we call “motion”) to help us communicate with precision. But no causal or ontological “yoke” ties time and money together. Coincidental correlation in either space or time can mislead regarding such a supposed link. Equating them looks more like a category error, akin to equating colour with quantity, e.g., 205 = Purple, possibly another “real abstraction”?