There’s a small error on a point of economic history, found in the most recent episode of the podcast Voluminous. This is re: Lovecraft’s 1930 forecast that…

The workman’s place in this ultimate order [i.e. he seems to imply the emerging form of advanced technological capitalism] will not be at all bad, and may conceivably be so good — with so much leisure — that it will help to solve the problem of the impecunious man of cultivation.”

In the podcast this is said to be wrong. Based on the assumption, presumably, that nothing much has changed for a “workman” since Marx first peered through the grimy windows of an early Lancastrian cotton-mill.

Yet, as usual, Lovecraft was right. In the year he was born, the average U.S. adult worked a week of 61 hours. For a factory worker or farm-hand it could often be 100 hours. By 2021 the average U.S. full-time working week was down to 38.7 hours. The well-documented post-war boom in leisure-time happened, just as Lovecraft predicted. For adults the reduced hours were largely the result of employers competing for skilled labour, allied with their capital investment in machines and better productivity.

Lovecraft’s “problem of the impecunious man of cultivation” has also been somewhat solved, at least for cheese-paring bachelors, by another relatively new phenomenon. The rise of part-time but regular jobs — giving earnings on which it is possible to live something of a writer’s life. Many labour-saving devices (fast-boil kettles, etc) services (food delivery, fast-food etc) and tools (word-processors, Internet research etc) make such a life more viable by freeing up a few more hours. Not only do we have more leisure hours to spare, but we can do more with them (so long as we choose not to waste 24 hours a week being zombified by TV). We also have far more choice.

Such 20th century change looks even better if you work out the ‘disposable percentage of a lifetime’ spent at work, given that our lifespans have greatly increased since the time of Lovecraft’s parents. We now spend only around 10-20 percent of our entire waking lives at work, depending on how you calculate such things (amount of time spent in education, % of each day spent in the workplace, actual life-span, age of retirement etc). One can also add that for most people the age 67-82 (15 years) period of retirement is now a far more healthy and active part of one’s life than it was in Lovecraft’s time. 75% of those aged 65-74 in the U.S. have no disabilities at all.

“Industry, highly mechanised, demanded but little time from each citizen; and the abundant leisure was filled with intellectual and aesthetic activities of various sorts” (The Shadow out of Time)

Lovecraft may yet be proved right twice over. Once we get through the current bumpiness then the world will be at least 350-450% richer by 2099, according to the best U.N. forecasts. With a consequent rise in leisure time and opportunities. That may even entail the rise of a sort of ‘aristocracy of the cultured’ that Lovecraft envisaged for a future leisure society.