This is pretty widely agreed on, though. Precise timekeeping is necessary to regulate the labor of factory workers. We've actually moved past that for many industries; office workers can complete their tasks in widely varying amounts of time, don't need to labor continuously throughout the day, and have productivity and output that are difficult to quantify. Yet capital still requires precise time keeping and attendence, and attempts to impose quantified productivity metrics as though their office workers were on an assembly line.
I chose a thing that sounds silly, but is still true because I wanted to subvert the narrative a little. Sometimes, facilely stupid sounding arguments hide a useful piece of analysis. It's even true of the other arguments. Training bed-times into children absolutely is training them to have their time regimented by capital, regardless of how silly the idea of not making sure kids are asleep at a reasonable time may be. The necessity of showers is imposed, in large part, because of the proximity in which we live and labor, and much of the ritual of showering is little more than an excuse to sell unnecessary cleaning products (which you can take from my cold dead hands, particularly given how rare being physically able to shower is for me sometimes).
These discussions are still worth having despite supposedly being meaningless, because when approached correctly, they always result in more insight in the cultural forces that influence all of us.
Formal timekeeping. The clock exists as a shared measure, a necessary precondition of extortion and command.
This is pretty widely agreed on, though. Precise timekeeping is necessary to regulate the labor of factory workers. We've actually moved past that for many industries; office workers can complete their tasks in widely varying amounts of time, don't need to labor continuously throughout the day, and have productivity and output that are difficult to quantify. Yet capital still requires precise time keeping and attendence, and attempts to impose quantified productivity metrics as though their office workers were on an assembly line.
I chose a thing that sounds silly, but is still true because I wanted to subvert the narrative a little. Sometimes, facilely stupid sounding arguments hide a useful piece of analysis. It's even true of the other arguments. Training bed-times into children absolutely is training them to have their time regimented by capital, regardless of how silly the idea of not making sure kids are asleep at a reasonable time may be. The necessity of showers is imposed, in large part, because of the proximity in which we live and labor, and much of the ritual of showering is little more than an excuse to sell unnecessary cleaning products (which you can take from my cold dead hands, particularly given how rare being physically able to shower is for me sometimes).
These discussions are still worth having despite supposedly being meaningless, because when approached correctly, they always result in more insight in the cultural forces that influence all of us.