> You're right, but the bourgeois pundits aren't really talking about
> output per hour - they want more people to work longer hours so that
> the aggregate amount of booty produced expands. Those Fwench are
> taking productivity's dividends in the form of leisure. That's so retro!
It goes deeper than that. The pundits sing the refrain about growth but in policy terms this translates exclusively into a 'neoliberal' set of capital accumulation-friendly trade, tax, expenditure and regulatory strategies. "Worker-friendly growth", you must understand, is inherently inflationary qua NAIRU. So, between NAIRU on the growth front and the Lump of Labour on the hours front, THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. And whether or not the neoliberal policies are actually better at promoting growth is beside the point. Very beside the point. The point is promoting capital accumulation. Period. To pundits, growth, productivity and employment are rhetorical devices to persuade people to identify with capital accumulation. Which is why shorter hours is so threatening to apologists for capital -- because it doesn't rest entirely on the same set of rhetorical identifications.
As long as the left and the workers can be kept aspiring to the same "ultimate goal" as capital, they can be persuaded into supporting the capitalists' preferred means to that end (which for capital is the end in itself).
Sandwichman