Summary Of David Landes Revolution In Time

Timekeeping was an important variable to help progress our economic system and strengthen capitalist ideals. David Landes’ Revolution in Time and E.P. Thompson’s Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism were both written with obstacles of time-work discipline in mind. In Landes’ work, he focuses on the historical motives and origins of clock creation to support his claims and explains that “The clock did not create an interest in time measurement; the interest in time measurement led to the invention of the clock.” But the reader is left wondering, “Where did this demand [for timekeeping] come from” (Landes 58), which in turn led to the creation of a time-work discipline? Both Landes and Thompson attempt to answer this problem with their own explanations, Revolution in Time spotlights aspects ranging from religious to …show more content…
In The Long Twentieth Century by Giovanni Arrighi, the author expounds the emergence of systemic cycles. These cycles are defined as “A phase of material expansion followed by a phase of financial expansion promoted and organized by the same agency or group of agencies” (Arrighi 89). Arrighi’s ideas of systemic cycles are based on Marx’s MCM’ formula in Das Kapital, where surplus money capital leads to material expansion and puts the group of capitalists in a predominant position in the world system. As demand for inputs increases, the rate of return in invested capital decreases, leading to a transfer from commodities to liquidity. Importantly, a new model or regime grows in the injustices of the old, thriving on its inefficiencies. Cycles partially overlap in time, as the final CM’ expansion of one is the beginning of the next, and historically we have seen four major systemic cycles. In the next section I am going to overview the four major time periods, then analyze the contrasts and common themes we see between