What does it mean to say that “time is money”? Why do people save, spend, and manage their time? When did free time become a scarce resource? Why is leisure time unevenly distributed by class, gender, and race? For those who have it, why does leisure involve so many projects and tasks? In Decolonizing Time, Nichole Marie Shippen claims that these phenomena exemplify the colonization of time by capitalism.

This capitalist colonization process depoliticizes time by reducing it to money. Time is literally converted to money by extending working hours, increasing productivity, and expanding consumption. Figurative expressions, like those with which I began, present the commodification of time under capitalism as if it were a natural condition. For Shippen, time is always political, even and especially when liberal capitalist politics has seemingly depoliticized it. The politics of time involves a division of labor in which some exploit the time as well as the labor of others. For centuries, labor movements have fought for time in their ongoing struggles for shorter hours and higher wages. Today, the unequal distribution of time is global, and resistance to it must be as well. The author calls for a renewed politics of time in which global justice struggles include redistributing and, at its most radical, rethinking time.

As Shippen states it, the goal of her book is “to demonstrate the various ways that time is already political, how it was depoliticized, and … how to develop a politics of time by way of political theory” (p. xi). She develops her argument through discussions of Aristotle, Karl Marx, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and André Gorz, among others.

According to Shippen, Aristotle’s Ethics initially established the importance of contemplation and reflection for living a good life, and the related human need for leisure time free of necessary labor. Aristotle’s philosophy promotes a division of labor that separates citizens from other workers; leisure time functions as a criterion for democratic participation and, more broadly, a meaningful life. Shippen traces Marx’s later distinction between the realms of necessity and freedom back to these Aristotelean origins. For Marx, the labor theory of value illustrates how capitalists have created the concept of abstract time. In capitalist economies, labor time becomes a commodity possessed by individuals that can be bought and sold on the “free” market. Under capitalism, workers are systematically alienated from their labor time (as well as their products), the purpose of which becomes the production of surplus value for the capitalist.

Shippen argues that Lukács’s reification theory further exposes how capitalism transforms time into seemingly natural units that are calculable, rational, and standard. Under capitalist commodity production, there is no nonmarket time, and time is a scarce resource for most people. Even leisure time is commodified; its primary purpose is increased consumption, a process that requires reproductive labor, which is often unpaid. Shippen draws on Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s analysis of the culture industry to explore how capitalism transforms citizens into consumers, and consumers into unpaid laborers. Although mass culture also entertains its passive citizens, Shippen chooses to emphasize the culture industry, the myriad activities that extend the working day into leisure time. The “do-it-yourself” activities of consumers, such as assembling home furniture or evaluating products online, produce a number of necessary goods for “free.” The alternative is renewed “time-consciousness,” a revolutionary perspective that “shakes the foundations of capitalism by contesting the reified acceptance of commodified clock time as time itself” (p. 94).

In her final chapter, Shippen turns to Gorz, in particular his insights on domestic labor, in order to develop this conscious politics of time. Gorz’s analysis of time scarcity under capitalism extends beyond the division of work and leisure time, or necessary and free labor, to the underlying economic rationality and labor ideology that inform them. According to Shippen, Gorz questions more traditional leftists’ narrow emphasis on work relations, showing how it remains defined by the productivist ethos that typifies capitalist economies. A crucial factor here is the racial and global division of reproductive labor among women (and men), or the exploitation in the global North of women and children from the global South. Shippen argues powerfully that the underdevelopment of the U.S. welfare state reinforces this global system of time exploitation. In contrast, Gorz calls for a radical rethinking of human activities that challenges the current economic and sexual division of labor time. If the struggles for time are to be truly liberating, they must focus on alternative experiences of time that prioritize human needs, including time to rest, reflect, and think.

Decolonizing Time provides new insights on the politics of time under late capitalism. Shippen’s sophisticated interpretations of prominent theorists are written in an engaging style that is accessible to experts and nonexperts alike. Since reading this book, I am thinking differently about time and, as a result, making changes in how I use my time. I agree with the author that only collective action can solve the systemic problem of time scarcity under capitalism. But that process begins with increased time consciousness and, for this reader (and I suspect many others), she accomplishes her purpose by refocusing attention on the politics of time.

This brings me to several lingering questions that suggest topics for further research. First, Shippen focuses on the need to decolonize time and yet, as she recognizes, those with the greatest need have the least time to organize this fight. It seems reasonable to ask whether she has provided yet another explanation for the conspicuous absence of Marx’s revolutionary proletariat and trade unionists today. I think she intends to offer far more, and hence my second question. For Marx (or, at least, the Hegelian Marx), socialist revolution was meant to mark the end of history as the West had known it. If Shippen is right, this revolutionary transformation would also mean the end of linear or clock time. Might non-Western societies, especially indigenous peoples who refused to adopt capitalist time relations, help guide the process of rethinking and reorganizing time? To state it more strongly, is the lack of time to fight for time a Western, as well as a liberal capitalist, conundrum?

Third and closely related, Shippen recognizes that “mortality is the great equalizer of life time insofar as no one knows the exact length of his or her life” (p. 33). In Capital, Marx posits the money form as the universal equivalent for purposes of capitalist commodity exchange. However, and this is more than a technicality, Marx calculates the exchange value of commodities in terms of the socially necessary labor time required to produce them. At its most radical, Shippen’s rethinking of time suggests that the universal equivalent, in Marx’s sense, is not “time as money” but our all-too-brief temporal existence, or our lifetime.

So understood, a politics of time could become the basis for a coalition politics that aligns the many social movements—civil rights, environmental, feminist, labor, and peace—currently fighting for the quality of human life and life on earth.