ABSTRACT
Since the American anti-work uprising of the sixties and early seventies was countered with the devastating neoliberal policies designed to shut it down, there has been comparatively little discussion of the imperative to workwhat Marcuse called the “performance principle”—as the central problem confronting American life. And those who do take the alienation of work and overwork seriously as dire social problems tend to blame consumerism for its perpetuation. Ben Hunnicutt, the prominent (and probably sole) fi gure in contemporary American Leisure Studies, laments the concession of defeat by American labor in its historic, and very nearly successful, struggle to shorten the hours of labor. In both his analysis of the end of the national shorter hours movement and of the end of the six-hour day at Kellogg’s Battle Creek,1 Michigan plant, Hunnicutt blames the advent of consumerism and the “alienated” leisure that came with it as in large part responsible for ending these struggles. This, even though Hunnicutt quotes a nineteenth-century labor song at the start of Work Without End: “Whether you work by the piece or by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay.” Workers for a long time understood that less work meant more consuming ability-a win-win situation. Unfortunately, many authors like Hunnicutt who criticize our obsession with work see Americans’ desire to purchase consumer goods as a friendly amendment to, rather than the other of, the work ethic.
