Heinlein Raises a Question and We Propose an Answer

Recently, Facebook friend Jonny Baggs posted this quote from Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset: "Family decay: I think it came mainly from both parents working outside the home.  It was said again and again that, from midcentury on, both parents had to have jobs just to pay the bills.  If this was true, why was it not necessary in the first half of the century?  How did laborsaving machinery and enormously increased productivity impoverish the family?"

To this we say: Easy. The surplus wealth generated by automation was not passed on to the workers, except in little dribbles. Instead, it was channeled into capital. World wars, especially the Second, lured women massively into the labor force, often making their effort available at a fraction of male workers' pay, thus increasing the flow into "free capital." The resulting competition inevitably increased productivity (read: exploitable labor hours), creating two wage slaves per household instead of just one. The personal stress destabilized families further, increasing the percentage of even more vulnerable single parent households, where the children essentially became hostages of the capitalist system.

As for the difference between pre- and postwar periods, there are several factors. For one thing, the Great Depression insured that there would not be enough jobs for even one wage earner, never mind two. For another thing, the effect of consumerism (with all its fetishism attached) kicked in seriously and fueled the Mad Men generation, increasing demand to increase growth, after "fundamental" needs had already been met by industry and corporations found themselves faced with an eventual shrinkage, which would doom the capitalist system. It is no accident that media also expanded during this period to drive the consumerist mechanism.

Heinlein might not have liked this, since he was deeply committed to secular free enterprise and the American myth of rugged individualism.  But the facts, and history, speak for themselves.