I don’t think there’s some cabal of Oligarchs that directly control the world order, that’s conspiratorial thinking. It’s more that power manufactures culture, and the power in this case is one that requires exploitation to continue to exist.
I agree that there are cultural differences that result in different approaches to work and productivity, but there are historical and material reasons why those cultural differences exist that largely have to do with the degree of inequality in that society. In a wealthy social democracy with less inequality like the Netherlands, people are not oppressed by long working hours, they are instead bribed with a higher quality of living and endless commodities.
The Netherlands is very Capitalist in my experience and yet they do not have a long hours work culture, whilst for example my own country (Portugal) after the Revolution that overthrew Fascism when the country was pretty Leftwing, had a long hours culture.
Also you see the different takes on working long hours in situations where people are their own bosses and aren’t exactly the victims of oppression by their employer.
I think we need to separate people’s tendency for disorganised work (which includes a management culture which is bad at organising) which then leads to people working extra hours and the exploitation of people around working extra hours (such as them having no choice but doing it and even them not getting paid overtime).
The former is, IMHO, inherently cultural, but the latter is fully Capitalism in action (and very much reflects the inbalance of power between the Owner Class and the Worker Class when Organised Work is weak and governments do not represent the interests of the majority).
Whilst the two sides are correlated (i.e. if overwork costs money to employees it naturaly tends to be done less than when it doesn’t cost extra), it’s my impression that in Industries were overwork is paid, and similarly, in two different countries, there is more overwork in countries which don’t have a culture of being organised than in those which do have such a culture, even though in both there is a similar pressure not to do overwork because it costs extra money over just having people do the work in their normal work time. I think this is because in the most disorganised countries resourcing, planning and predictability are worse so situations were overwork is the only viable option arise more often even when there are actual higher costs in using it than in doing things during the normal work period.
In summary, I think you are right in that Capitalism is part of the reason, I just think it’s not the only reason and the way it interacts with the other causes of the problem is complex, so in some situations Capitalism is very straightforwardly by far the main reason of long hours of work, whilst in other situations it’s not at all the reason.
I don’t think there’s some cabal of Oligarchs that directly control the world order, that’s conspiratorial thinking. It’s more that power manufactures culture, and the power in this case is one that requires exploitation to continue to exist.
I agree that there are cultural differences that result in different approaches to work and productivity, but there are historical and material reasons why those cultural differences exist that largely have to do with the degree of inequality in that society. In a wealthy social democracy with less inequality like the Netherlands, people are not oppressed by long working hours, they are instead bribed with a higher quality of living and endless commodities.
The Netherlands is very Capitalist in my experience and yet they do not have a long hours work culture, whilst for example my own country (Portugal) after the Revolution that overthrew Fascism when the country was pretty Leftwing, had a long hours culture.
Also you see the different takes on working long hours in situations where people are their own bosses and aren’t exactly the victims of oppression by their employer.
I think we need to separate people’s tendency for disorganised work (which includes a management culture which is bad at organising) which then leads to people working extra hours and the exploitation of people around working extra hours (such as them having no choice but doing it and even them not getting paid overtime).
The former is, IMHO, inherently cultural, but the latter is fully Capitalism in action (and very much reflects the inbalance of power between the Owner Class and the Worker Class when Organised Work is weak and governments do not represent the interests of the majority).
Whilst the two sides are correlated (i.e. if overwork costs money to employees it naturaly tends to be done less than when it doesn’t cost extra), it’s my impression that in Industries were overwork is paid, and similarly, in two different countries, there is more overwork in countries which don’t have a culture of being organised than in those which do have such a culture, even though in both there is a similar pressure not to do overwork because it costs extra money over just having people do the work in their normal work time. I think this is because in the most disorganised countries resourcing, planning and predictability are worse so situations were overwork is the only viable option arise more often even when there are actual higher costs in using it than in doing things during the normal work period.
In summary, I think you are right in that Capitalism is part of the reason, I just think it’s not the only reason and the way it interacts with the other causes of the problem is complex, so in some situations Capitalism is very straightforwardly by far the main reason of long hours of work, whilst in other situations it’s not at all the reason.