160 Thus the Factory Inspectors at last venture to say: --These objections (of capital to the legal limitation of the working day) must succumb before the broad
principle
of the rights of labour.
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? ? ? ? 141 It is well known with what reluctance the English --Free-traders,? gave up the protective duty on the silk manufacture. Instead of the protection against French importation, the absence of protection to English factory children now serves their turn.
142 During 1859 and 1860, the zenith years of the English cotton industry, some manufacturers tried, by the decoy bait of higher wages for over-time, to reconcile the adult male operatives to an extension of the working day. The hand-mule spinners and self-actor mincers put an end to the experiment by a petition to their employers in which they say, --Plainly speaking, our lives are to us a burthen; and, while we are confined to the mills nearly two days a week more than the other operatives of the country, we feel like helots in the land, and that we are perpetuating a system injurious to ourselves and future generations. . . . This, therefore, is to give you most respectful notice that when we commence work again after the Christmas and New Year's holidays, we shall work 60 hours per week, and no more, or from six to six, with one hour and a half out. ? (Reports, &rc. , for 30th April, 1860, p. 30. )
143 On the means that the wording of this Act afforded for its violation of the Parliamentary Return --Factories Regulation Act? (6th August, 1859), and in it Leonard Horner's --Suggestions for amending the Factory Acts to enable the Inspectors to prevent illegal working, now becoming very prevalent. ?
144 Children of the age of 8 years and upwards, have, indeed, been employed from 6 a. m. to 9 p. m. during the last half year in my district. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1857, p. 39. )
145 --The Printworks' Act is admitted to be a failure both with reference to its educational and protective provisions. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1862, p. 52. )
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146 Thus, e. g. , E. Potter in a letter to the Times of March 24th, 1863. The Times reminded him of the maoufacturers' revolt against the Ten Hours' Bill.
147 Thus, among others, Mr. W. Newmarch, collaborator and editor of Tooke's --History of Prices. ? Is it a scientific advance to make cowardly concessions to public opinion?
148 The Act passed in 1860, determined that, in regard to dye and bleachworks, the working day should be fixed on August 1st, 1861, provisionally at 12 hours, and definitely on August 1st, 1862, at 10 hours, i. e. , at 101/2 hours for ordinary days, and 71/2 for Saturday. Now, when the fatal year, 1862, came, the old farce was repeated. Besides, the manufacturers petitioned Parliament to allow the employment of young persons and women for 12 hours during one year longer. --In the existing condition of the trade (the time of the cotton famine), it was greatly to the advantage of the operatives to work 12 hours per day, and make wages when they could. ? A bill to this effect had been brought in, --and it was mainly due to the action of the operative bleachers in Scotland that the bill was abandoned. ? (Reports, &:c. , for 31st October, 1862, pp. 14-15. ) Thus defeated by the very workpeople, in whose name it pretended to speak, Capital discovered, with the help of lawyer spectacles, that the Act of 1860, drawn up, like all the Acts of Parliament for the --protection of labour,? in equivocal phrases, gave them a pretext to exclude from its working the calenderers and finishers. English jurisprudence, ever the faithful servant of capital, sanctioned in the Court of Common Pleas this piece of pettifogging. --The operatives have been greatly disappointed . . . they have complained of over-work, and it is greatly to be regretted that the clear intention of the legislature should have failed by reason of a faulty definition. ? (l. c. , p. 18. )
149 The --open-air bleachers? had evaded the law of 1860, by means of the lie that no women worked at it in the night. The lie was exposed by the Factory Inspectors, and at the same time Parliament was, by petitions from the operatives, bereft of its notions as to the cool meadow-fragrance, in which bleaching in the open-air was reported to take place. In this aerial bleaching, drying-rooms were used at temperatures of from 90? to 100? Fahrenheit, in which the work was done for the most part by girls. --Cooling? is the technical expression for their occasional escape from the drying-rooms into the fresh air. --Fifteen girls in stoves. Heat from 80? to 90? for linens, and 100? and upwards for cambrics. Twelve girls ironing and doing-up in a small room about 10 feet square, in the centre of which is a close stove. The girls stand round the stove, which throws out a terrific heat, and dries the cambrics rapidly for the ironers. The hours of work for these hands are unlimited. If busy, they work till 9 or 12 at night for successive nights. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1862, p. 56. ) A medical man states: --No special hours are allowed for cooling, but if the temperature gets too high, or the workers' hands get soiled from perspiration, they are allowed to go out for a few minutes. . . . My experience, which is considerable, in treating the diseases of stove workers, compels me to express the opinion that their sanitary condition is by no means so high as that of the operatives in a spinning factory (and Capital, in its memorials to Parliament, had painted them as floridly healthy after the manner of Rubens. ) The diseases most observable amongst them are phthisis, bronchitis, irregularity of uterine functions, hysteria in its most aggravated forms, and rheumatism. All of these, I believe, are either directly or indirectly induced by the impure, overheated air of the apartments in which the hands are employed and the want of sufficient comfortable clothing to protect them from the cold, damp atmosphere, in winter, when going to their homes. ? (l. c. , pp. 56-57. ) The Factory Inspectors remarked on the supplementary law of 1860, torn from these open-air bleachers: --The Act has not only failed to afford that protection to the workers which it appears to offer, but contains a clause . . . apparently so worded that, unless persons are detected working after 8 o'clock at night they appear to come under no protective provisions at all, and if they do so work the mode of proof is so doubtful that a conviction can scarcely follow. ? (l. c. , p. 52. ) --To all intents and purposes, therefore, as an Act for any benevolent or educational purpose, it is a failure; since it can scarcely be called benevolent to permit, which is tantamount to compelling, women and children to work 14 hours a day with or without meals, as the
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case may be, and perhaps for longer hours than these, without limit as to age, without reference to sex, and without regard to the social habits of the families of the neighbourhood, in which such works (bleaching and dyeing) are situated. ? (Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1863, p. 40. )
150 Note to the 2nd Ed. Since 1866, when I wrote the above passages, a reaction has again set in.
151 --The conduct of each of these classes (capitalists and workmen) has been the result of the relative
situation in which they have been placed. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, p. 113. )
152 --The employments, placed under restriction, were connected with the manufacture of textile fabrics by the aid of steam or water-power. There were two conditions to which an employment must be subject to cause it to be inspected, viz. , the use of steam or waterpower, and the manufacture of certain specified fibre. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1864, p. 8. )
153 On the condition of so-called domestic industries, specially valuable materials are to be found in the latest reports of the Children's Employment Commission.
154 --The Acts of last Session (1864) . . . embrace a diversity of occupations, the customs in which differ greatly, and the use of mechanical power to give motion to machinery is no longer one of the elements necessary. as formerly, to constitute, in legal phrase, a ? Factory. '? (Reports, &c. , for 31st Octaber, 1864, p. 8. )
155 Belgium, the paradise of Continental Liberalism, shows no trace of this movement. Even in the coal and metal mines labourers of both sexes, and all ages, are consumed, in perfect --freedom? at any period and through any length of time. Of every 1,000 persons employed there, 733 are men, 88 women. 135 boys, and 44 girls under 16; in the blast furnaces, &c. , of every 1,000, 668 are men, 149 women, 98 boys, and 85 girls under 16. Add to this the low wages for the enormous exploitation of mature and immature labour-power. The average daily pay for a man is 2s. 8d. . for a woman, 1s. 8d. . for a boy. 1s. 21/2d. As a result, Belgium had in 1863, as compared with 1850, nearly doubled both the amount and the value of its exports of coal, iron, &c.
156 Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation of the working day in theory, but actually introduced the 10 hours' day into his factory at New Lanark. This was laughed at as a communistic Utopia; so were his --Combination of children's education with productive labour and the Co-operative Societies of Workingmen? , first called into being by him. To-day, the first Utopia is a Factory Act, the second figures as an official phrase in all Factory Acts, the third is already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug.
157 Ure: --French translation, Philosophie des Manufactures. ? Paris, 1836, Vol. II, pp. 39, 40, 67, 77, &c.
158 In the Compte Rendu of the International Statistical Congress at Paris, 1855, it is stated: --The French law, which limits the length of daily labour in factories and workshops to 12 hours, does not confine this work to definite fixed hours. For children's labour only the work-time is prescribed as between 5 a. m. and 9 p. m. Therefore, some of the masters use the right which this fatal silence gives them to keep their works going, without intermission, day in, day out, possibly with the exception of Sunday. For this purpose they use two different sets of workers, of whom neither is in the workshop more than 12 hours at a time, but the work of the establishment lasts day and night. The law is satisfied, but is humanity? ? Besides --the destructive influence of night-labour on the human organism,? stress is also laid upon --the fatal influence of the association of the two sexes by night in the same badly-lighted workshops. ?
159 --For instance, there is within my district one occupier who, within the same curtilage, is at the same time a bleacher and dyer under the Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act, a printer under the Print Works Act, and a finisher under the Factory Act. ? (Report of Mr. Baker, in Reports, lic. , for October 31st, 1861, p. 20. ) After enumerating the different provisions of these Acts, and the complications
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arising from them, Mr. Baker says: --It will hence appear that it must be very difficult to secure the execution of these three Acts of Parliament where the occupier chooses to evade the law. ? But what is assured to the lawyers by this is law-suits.
160 Thus the Factory Inspectors at last venture to say: --These objections (of capital to the legal limitation of the working day) must succumb before the broad principle of the rights of labour. . . . There is a time when the master's right in his workman's labour ceases, and his time becomes his own, even if there were no exhaustion in the question. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31 st Oct. , 1862, p. 54. )
161 --We, the workers of Dunkirk, declare that the length of time of labour required under the present system is too great, and that, far from leaving the worker time for rest and education, it plunges him into a condition of servitude but little better than slavery. That is why we decide that 8 hours are enough for a working day, and ought to be legally recognised as enough; why we call to our help that powerful lever, the press; . . . and why we shall consider all those that refuse us this help as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer. ? (Resolution of the Working Men of Dunkirk, New York State, 1866. )
162 Reports, &c. , for Oct. , 1848, p. 112.
163 --The proceedings (the manoeuvres of capital, e. g. , from 1848-50) have afforded, moreover, incontrovertible proof of the fallacy of the assertion so often advanced, that operatives need no protection, but may be considered as free agents in the disposal of the only property which they possess -- the labour of their hands and the sweat of their brows. ? (Reports, &c. , for April 30th, 1850, p. 45. ) --Free labour (if so it may be termed) even in a free country, requires the strong arm of the law to protect it. ? (Reports, &c. , for October 31st, 1864, p. 34. ) --To permit, which is tantamount to compelling . . . to work 14 hours a day with or without meals,? &c. (Repts. , &c. , for April 30th, 1863, p. 40. )
164 Friedrich Engels, l. c. , p. 5.
165 The 10 Hours' Act has, in the branches of industry that come under it, --put an end to the premature decrepitude of the former long-hour workers. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st Oct. , 1859, p. 47. ) --Capital (in factories) can never be employed in keeping the machinery in motion beyond a limited time, without certain injury to the health and morals of the labourers employed; and they are not in a position to protect themselves. ? (l. c. , p. 8)
166 --A still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker's own time and his master's. The worker knows now when that which he sells is ended, and when his own begins; and by possessing a sure foreknowledge of this, is enabled to prearrange his own minutes for his own purposes. ? (l. c. , p. 52. ) --By making them masters of their own time (the Factory Acts) have given them a moral energy which is directing them to the eventual possession of political power? (l. c. , p. 47). With suppressed irony, and in very well weighed words, the Factory Inspectors hint that the actual law also frees the capitalist from some of the brutality natural to a man who is a mere embodiment of capital, and that it has given him time for a little --culture. ? --Formerly the master had no time for anything but money; the servant had no time for anything but labour? (l. c. , p. 48).
? ? Chapter 11: Rate and Mass of Surplus Value
In this chapter, as hitherto, the value of labour-power, and therefore the part of the working day necessary for the reproduction or maintenance of that labour-power, are supposed to be given, constant magnitudes.
This premised, with the rate, the mass is at the same time given of the surplus value that the individual labourer furnishes to the capitalist in a definite period of time. If, e. g. , the necessary labour amounts to 6 hours daily, expressed in a quantum of gold = 3 shillings, then 3s. is the daily value of one labour-power or the value of the capital advanced in the buying of one labour-power. If, further, the rate of surplus value be = 100%, this variable capital of 3s. produces a mass of surplus value of 3s. , or the labourer supplies daily a mass of surplus labour equal to 6 hours.
But the variable capital of a capitalist is the expression in money of the total value of all the labour-powers that he employs simultaneously. Its value is, therefore, equal to the average value of one labour-power, multiplied by the number of labour-powers employed. With a given value of labour-power, therefore, the magnitude of the variable capital varies directly as the number of labourers employed simultaneously. If the daily value of one labour-power = 3s. , then a capital of 300s. must be advanced in order to exploit daily 100 labour-powers, of n times 3s. , in order to exploit daily n labour-powers.
In the same way, if a variable capital of 3s. , being the daily value of one labour-power, produce a daily surplus value of 3s. , a variable capital of 300s. will produce a daily surplus value of 300s. , and one of n times 3s. a daily surplus value of n * 3s. The mass of the surplus value produced is therefore equal to the surplus value which the working day of one labourer supplies multiplied by the number of labourers employed. But as further the mass of surplus value which a single labourer produces, the value of labour-power being given, is determined by the rate of the surplus value, this law follows: the mass of the surplus value produced is equal to the amount of the variable capital advanced, multiplied by the rate of surplus value, in other words: it is determined by the compound ratio between the number of labour-powers exploited simultaneously by the same capitalist and the degree of exploitation of each individual labour-power.
Let the mass of the surplus value be S, the surplus value supplied by the individual labourer in the average day s the variable capital daily advanced in the purchase of one individual labour-power v, the sum total of the variable capital V, the value of an average labour-power P, its degree of exploitation (a'/a) (surplus labour/necessary-labour) and the number of labourers employed n; we would have:
S= {(s/v)*V
P * (a'/a) * n
It is always supposed, not only that the value of an average labour-power is constant, but that the labourers employed by a capitalist are reduced to average labourers. There are exceptional cases in which the surplus value produced does not increase in proportion to the number of labourers exploited, but then the value of the labour-power does not remain constant.
In the production of a definite mass of surplus value, therefore the decrease of one factor may be compensated by the increase of the other. If the variable capital diminishes, and at the same time
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the rate of surplus value increases in the same ratio, the mass of surplus value produced remains unaltered. If on our earlier assumption the capitalist must advance 300s. , in order to exploit 100 labourers a day, and if the rate of surplus value amounts to 50%, this variable capital of 300s. yields a surplus value of 150s. or of 100 * 3 working hours. If the rate of surplus value doubles, or the working day, instead of being extended from 6 to 9, is extended from 6 to 12 hours and at the same time variable capital is lessened by half, and reduced to 150s. , it yields also a surplus value of 150s. or 50 * 6 working hours. Diminution of the variable capital may therefore be compensated by a proportionate rise in the degree of exploitation of labour-power, or the decrease in the number of the labourers employed by a proportionate extension of the working day. Within certain limits therefore the supply of labour exploitable by capital is independent of the supply of labourers. 1 On the contrary, a fall in the rate of surplus value leaves unaltered the mass of the surplus value produced, if the amount of the variable capital, or number of the labourers employed, increases in the same proportion.
Nevertheless, the compensation of a decrease in the number of labourers employed, or of the amount of variable capital advanced by a rise in the rate of surplus value, or by the lengthening of the working day, has impassable limits. Whatever the value of labour-power may be, whether the working time necessary for the maintenance of the labourer is 2 or 10 hours, the total value that a labourer can produce, day in, day out, is always less than the value in which 24 hours of labour are embodied, less than 12s. , if 12s. is the money expression for 24 hours of realised labour. In our former assumption, according to which 6 working hours are daily necessary in order to reproduce the labour-power itself or to replace the value of the capital advanced in its purchase, a variable capital of 1,500s. , that employs 500 labourers at a rate of surplus value of 100% with a 12 hours' working day, produces daily a surplus value of 1,500s. or of 6 * 500 working hours. A capital of 300s. that employs 100 labourers a day with a rate of surplus value of 200% or with a working day of 18 hours, produces only a mass of surplus value of 600s. or 12 * 100 working hours; and its total value-product, the equivalent of the variable capital advanced plus the surplus value, can, day in, day out, never reach the sum of 1,200s. or 24 * 100 working hours. The absolute limit of the average working day - this being by nature always less than 24 hours - sets an absolute limit to the compensation of a reduction of variable capital by a higher rate of surplus value, or of the decrease of the number of labourers exploited by a higher degree of exploitation of labour-power. This palpable law is of importance for the clearing up of many phenomena, arising from a tendency (to be worked out later on) of capital to reduce as much as possible the number of labourers employed by it, or its variable constituent transformed into labour-power, in contradiction to its other tendency to produce the greatest possible mass of surplus value. On the other hand, if the mass of labour-power employed, or the amount of variable capital, increases, but not in proportion to the fall in the rate of surplus value, the mass of the surplus value produced, falls.
A third law results from the determination, of the mass of the surplus value produced, by the two factors: rate of surplus value and amount of variable capital advanced. The rate of surplus value, or the degree of exploitation of labour-power, and the value of labour-power, or the amount of necessary working time being given, it is self evident that the greater the variable capital, the greater would be the mass of the value produced and of the surplus value. If the limit of the working day is given, and also the limit of its necessary constituent, the mass of value and surplus value that an individual capitalist produces, is clearly exclusively dependent on the mass of labour that he sets in motion. But this, under the conditions supposed above, depends on the mass of labour-power, or the number of labourers whom he exploits, and this number in its turn is determined by the amount of the variable capital advanced. With a given rate of surplus value,
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and a given value of labour-power, therefore, the masses of surplus value produced vary directly as the amounts of the variable capitals advanced. Now we know that the capitalist divides his capital into two parts. One part he lays out in means of production. This is the constant part of his capital. The other part he lays out in living labour-power. This part forms his variable capital. On the basis of the same mode of social production, the division of capital into constant and variable differs in different branches of production, and within the same branch of production, too, this relation changes with changes in the technical conditions and in the social combinations of the processes of production. But in whatever proportion a given capital breaks up into a constant and a variable part, whether the latter is to the former as 1:2 or 1:10 or 1:x, the law just laid down is not affected by this. For, according to our previous analysis, the value of the constant capital reappears in the value of the product, but does not enter into the newly produced value, the newly created value product. To employ 1,000 spinners, more raw material, spindles, &c. , are, of course, required, than to employ 100. The value of these additional means of production however may rise, fall, remain unaltered, be large or small; it has no influence on the process of creation of surplus value by means of the labour-powers that put them in motion. The law demonstrated above now, therefore, takes this form: the masses of value and of surplus value produced by different capitals - the value of labour-power being given and its degree of exploitation being equal - vary directly as the amounts of the variable constituents of these capitals, i. e. , as their constituents transformed into living labour-power.
This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker, who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate terms are as yet wanted, as from the standpoint of elementary algebra many intermediate terms are wanted to understand that 0/0 may represent an actual magnitude. Classical economy, although not formulating the law, holds instinctively to it, because it is a necessary consequence of the general law of value. It tries to rescue the law from collision with contradictory phenomena by a violent abstraction. It will be seen later2 how the school of Ricardo has come to grief over this stumbling block. Vulgar economy which, indeed, --has really learnt nothing,? here as everywhere sticks to appearances in opposition to the law which regulates and explains them. In opposition to Spinoza, it believes that --ignorance is a sufficient reason. ?
The labour which is set in motion by the total capital of a society, day in, day out, may be regarded as a single collective working day. If, e. g. , the number of labourers is a million, and the average working day of a labourer is 10 hours, the social working day consists of ten million hours. With a given length of this working day, whether its limits are fixed physically or socially, the mass of surplus value can only be increased by increasing the number of labourers, i. e. , of the labouring population. The growth of population here forms the mathematical limit to the production of surplus value by the total social capital. On the contrary, with a given amount of population, this limit is formed by the possible lengthening of the workingday. 3 It will, however, be seen in the following chapter that this law only holds for the form of surplus value dealt with up to the present.
From the treatment of the production of surplus value, so far, it follows that not every sum of money, or of value, is at pleasure transformable into capital. To effect this transformation, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange-value must be presupposed in the hands of the individual possessor of money or commodities. The minimum of variable capital is the cost price of a single labour-power, employed the whole year through, day in, day out, for the production of
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surplus value. If this labourer were in possession of his own means of production, and were satisfied to live as a labourer, he need not work beyond the time necessary for the reproduction of his means of subsistence, say 8 hours a day. He would, besides, only require the means of production sufficient for 8 working hours. The capitalist, on the other hand, who makes him do, besides these 8 hours, say 4 hours' surplus labour, requires an additional sum of money for furnishing the additional means of production. On our supposition, however, he would have to employ two labourers in order to live, on the surplus value appropriated daily, as well as, and no better than a labourer, i. e. , to be able to satisfy his necessary wants. In this case the mere maintenance of life would be the end of his production, not the increase of wealth; but this latter is implied in capitalist production. That he may live only twice as well as an ordinary labourer, and besides turn half of the surplus value produced into capital, he would have to raise, with the number of labourers, the minimum of the capital advanced 8 times. Of course he can, like his labourer, take to work himself, participate directly in the process of production, but he is then only a hybrid between capitalist and labourer, a --small master. ? A certain stage of capitalist production necessitates that the capitalist be able to devote the whole of the time during which he functions as a capitalist, i. e. , as personified capital, to the appropriation and therefore control of the labour of others, and to the selling of the products of this labour. 4 The guilds of the middle ages therefore tried to prevent by force the transformation of the master of a trade into a capitalist, by limiting the number of labourers that could be employed by one master within a very small maximum. The possessor of money or commodities actually turns into a capitalist in such cases only where the minimum sum advanced for production greatly exceeds the maximum of the middle ages. Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel (in his --Logic? ), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes. 5
The minimum of the sum of value that the individual possessor of money or commodities must command, in order to metamorphose himself into a capitalist, changes with the different stages of development of capitalist production, and is at given stages different in different spheres of production, according to their special and technical conditions. Certain spheres of production demand, even at the very outset of capitalist production, a minimum of capital that is not as yet found in the hands of single individuals. This gives rise partly to state subsidies to private persons, as in France in the time of Clobber, and as in many German states up to our own epoch, partly to the formation of societies with legal monopoly for the exploitation of certain branches of industry and commerce, the forerunners of our modern joint stock companies. 6
Within the process of production, as we have seen, capital acquired the command over labour, i. e. , over functioning labour-power or the labourer himself. Personified capital, the capitalist takes care that the labourer does his work regularly and with the proper degree of intensity.
Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which compels the working class to do more work than the narrow round of its own life-wants prescribes. As a producer of the activity of others, as a pumper-out of surplus labour and exploiter of labour-power, it surpasses in energy, disregard of bounds, recklessness and efficiency, all earlier systems of production based on directly compulsory labour.
? ? ? ? 141 It is well known with what reluctance the English --Free-traders,? gave up the protective duty on the silk manufacture. Instead of the protection against French importation, the absence of protection to English factory children now serves their turn.
142 During 1859 and 1860, the zenith years of the English cotton industry, some manufacturers tried, by the decoy bait of higher wages for over-time, to reconcile the adult male operatives to an extension of the working day. The hand-mule spinners and self-actor mincers put an end to the experiment by a petition to their employers in which they say, --Plainly speaking, our lives are to us a burthen; and, while we are confined to the mills nearly two days a week more than the other operatives of the country, we feel like helots in the land, and that we are perpetuating a system injurious to ourselves and future generations. . . . This, therefore, is to give you most respectful notice that when we commence work again after the Christmas and New Year's holidays, we shall work 60 hours per week, and no more, or from six to six, with one hour and a half out. ? (Reports, &rc. , for 30th April, 1860, p. 30. )
143 On the means that the wording of this Act afforded for its violation of the Parliamentary Return --Factories Regulation Act? (6th August, 1859), and in it Leonard Horner's --Suggestions for amending the Factory Acts to enable the Inspectors to prevent illegal working, now becoming very prevalent. ?
144 Children of the age of 8 years and upwards, have, indeed, been employed from 6 a. m. to 9 p. m. during the last half year in my district. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1857, p. 39. )
145 --The Printworks' Act is admitted to be a failure both with reference to its educational and protective provisions. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1862, p. 52. )
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146 Thus, e. g. , E. Potter in a letter to the Times of March 24th, 1863. The Times reminded him of the maoufacturers' revolt against the Ten Hours' Bill.
147 Thus, among others, Mr. W. Newmarch, collaborator and editor of Tooke's --History of Prices. ? Is it a scientific advance to make cowardly concessions to public opinion?
148 The Act passed in 1860, determined that, in regard to dye and bleachworks, the working day should be fixed on August 1st, 1861, provisionally at 12 hours, and definitely on August 1st, 1862, at 10 hours, i. e. , at 101/2 hours for ordinary days, and 71/2 for Saturday. Now, when the fatal year, 1862, came, the old farce was repeated. Besides, the manufacturers petitioned Parliament to allow the employment of young persons and women for 12 hours during one year longer. --In the existing condition of the trade (the time of the cotton famine), it was greatly to the advantage of the operatives to work 12 hours per day, and make wages when they could. ? A bill to this effect had been brought in, --and it was mainly due to the action of the operative bleachers in Scotland that the bill was abandoned. ? (Reports, &:c. , for 31st October, 1862, pp. 14-15. ) Thus defeated by the very workpeople, in whose name it pretended to speak, Capital discovered, with the help of lawyer spectacles, that the Act of 1860, drawn up, like all the Acts of Parliament for the --protection of labour,? in equivocal phrases, gave them a pretext to exclude from its working the calenderers and finishers. English jurisprudence, ever the faithful servant of capital, sanctioned in the Court of Common Pleas this piece of pettifogging. --The operatives have been greatly disappointed . . . they have complained of over-work, and it is greatly to be regretted that the clear intention of the legislature should have failed by reason of a faulty definition. ? (l. c. , p. 18. )
149 The --open-air bleachers? had evaded the law of 1860, by means of the lie that no women worked at it in the night. The lie was exposed by the Factory Inspectors, and at the same time Parliament was, by petitions from the operatives, bereft of its notions as to the cool meadow-fragrance, in which bleaching in the open-air was reported to take place. In this aerial bleaching, drying-rooms were used at temperatures of from 90? to 100? Fahrenheit, in which the work was done for the most part by girls. --Cooling? is the technical expression for their occasional escape from the drying-rooms into the fresh air. --Fifteen girls in stoves. Heat from 80? to 90? for linens, and 100? and upwards for cambrics. Twelve girls ironing and doing-up in a small room about 10 feet square, in the centre of which is a close stove. The girls stand round the stove, which throws out a terrific heat, and dries the cambrics rapidly for the ironers. The hours of work for these hands are unlimited. If busy, they work till 9 or 12 at night for successive nights. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1862, p. 56. ) A medical man states: --No special hours are allowed for cooling, but if the temperature gets too high, or the workers' hands get soiled from perspiration, they are allowed to go out for a few minutes. . . . My experience, which is considerable, in treating the diseases of stove workers, compels me to express the opinion that their sanitary condition is by no means so high as that of the operatives in a spinning factory (and Capital, in its memorials to Parliament, had painted them as floridly healthy after the manner of Rubens. ) The diseases most observable amongst them are phthisis, bronchitis, irregularity of uterine functions, hysteria in its most aggravated forms, and rheumatism. All of these, I believe, are either directly or indirectly induced by the impure, overheated air of the apartments in which the hands are employed and the want of sufficient comfortable clothing to protect them from the cold, damp atmosphere, in winter, when going to their homes. ? (l. c. , pp. 56-57. ) The Factory Inspectors remarked on the supplementary law of 1860, torn from these open-air bleachers: --The Act has not only failed to afford that protection to the workers which it appears to offer, but contains a clause . . . apparently so worded that, unless persons are detected working after 8 o'clock at night they appear to come under no protective provisions at all, and if they do so work the mode of proof is so doubtful that a conviction can scarcely follow. ? (l. c. , p. 52. ) --To all intents and purposes, therefore, as an Act for any benevolent or educational purpose, it is a failure; since it can scarcely be called benevolent to permit, which is tantamount to compelling, women and children to work 14 hours a day with or without meals, as the
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case may be, and perhaps for longer hours than these, without limit as to age, without reference to sex, and without regard to the social habits of the families of the neighbourhood, in which such works (bleaching and dyeing) are situated. ? (Reports, &c. , for 30th April, 1863, p. 40. )
150 Note to the 2nd Ed. Since 1866, when I wrote the above passages, a reaction has again set in.
151 --The conduct of each of these classes (capitalists and workmen) has been the result of the relative
situation in which they have been placed. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1848, p. 113. )
152 --The employments, placed under restriction, were connected with the manufacture of textile fabrics by the aid of steam or water-power. There were two conditions to which an employment must be subject to cause it to be inspected, viz. , the use of steam or waterpower, and the manufacture of certain specified fibre. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st October, 1864, p. 8. )
153 On the condition of so-called domestic industries, specially valuable materials are to be found in the latest reports of the Children's Employment Commission.
154 --The Acts of last Session (1864) . . . embrace a diversity of occupations, the customs in which differ greatly, and the use of mechanical power to give motion to machinery is no longer one of the elements necessary. as formerly, to constitute, in legal phrase, a ? Factory. '? (Reports, &c. , for 31st Octaber, 1864, p. 8. )
155 Belgium, the paradise of Continental Liberalism, shows no trace of this movement. Even in the coal and metal mines labourers of both sexes, and all ages, are consumed, in perfect --freedom? at any period and through any length of time. Of every 1,000 persons employed there, 733 are men, 88 women. 135 boys, and 44 girls under 16; in the blast furnaces, &c. , of every 1,000, 668 are men, 149 women, 98 boys, and 85 girls under 16. Add to this the low wages for the enormous exploitation of mature and immature labour-power. The average daily pay for a man is 2s. 8d. . for a woman, 1s. 8d. . for a boy. 1s. 21/2d. As a result, Belgium had in 1863, as compared with 1850, nearly doubled both the amount and the value of its exports of coal, iron, &c.
156 Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation of the working day in theory, but actually introduced the 10 hours' day into his factory at New Lanark. This was laughed at as a communistic Utopia; so were his --Combination of children's education with productive labour and the Co-operative Societies of Workingmen? , first called into being by him. To-day, the first Utopia is a Factory Act, the second figures as an official phrase in all Factory Acts, the third is already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug.
157 Ure: --French translation, Philosophie des Manufactures. ? Paris, 1836, Vol. II, pp. 39, 40, 67, 77, &c.
158 In the Compte Rendu of the International Statistical Congress at Paris, 1855, it is stated: --The French law, which limits the length of daily labour in factories and workshops to 12 hours, does not confine this work to definite fixed hours. For children's labour only the work-time is prescribed as between 5 a. m. and 9 p. m. Therefore, some of the masters use the right which this fatal silence gives them to keep their works going, without intermission, day in, day out, possibly with the exception of Sunday. For this purpose they use two different sets of workers, of whom neither is in the workshop more than 12 hours at a time, but the work of the establishment lasts day and night. The law is satisfied, but is humanity? ? Besides --the destructive influence of night-labour on the human organism,? stress is also laid upon --the fatal influence of the association of the two sexes by night in the same badly-lighted workshops. ?
159 --For instance, there is within my district one occupier who, within the same curtilage, is at the same time a bleacher and dyer under the Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act, a printer under the Print Works Act, and a finisher under the Factory Act. ? (Report of Mr. Baker, in Reports, lic. , for October 31st, 1861, p. 20. ) After enumerating the different provisions of these Acts, and the complications
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arising from them, Mr. Baker says: --It will hence appear that it must be very difficult to secure the execution of these three Acts of Parliament where the occupier chooses to evade the law. ? But what is assured to the lawyers by this is law-suits.
160 Thus the Factory Inspectors at last venture to say: --These objections (of capital to the legal limitation of the working day) must succumb before the broad principle of the rights of labour. . . . There is a time when the master's right in his workman's labour ceases, and his time becomes his own, even if there were no exhaustion in the question. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31 st Oct. , 1862, p. 54. )
161 --We, the workers of Dunkirk, declare that the length of time of labour required under the present system is too great, and that, far from leaving the worker time for rest and education, it plunges him into a condition of servitude but little better than slavery. That is why we decide that 8 hours are enough for a working day, and ought to be legally recognised as enough; why we call to our help that powerful lever, the press; . . . and why we shall consider all those that refuse us this help as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer. ? (Resolution of the Working Men of Dunkirk, New York State, 1866. )
162 Reports, &c. , for Oct. , 1848, p. 112.
163 --The proceedings (the manoeuvres of capital, e. g. , from 1848-50) have afforded, moreover, incontrovertible proof of the fallacy of the assertion so often advanced, that operatives need no protection, but may be considered as free agents in the disposal of the only property which they possess -- the labour of their hands and the sweat of their brows. ? (Reports, &c. , for April 30th, 1850, p. 45. ) --Free labour (if so it may be termed) even in a free country, requires the strong arm of the law to protect it. ? (Reports, &c. , for October 31st, 1864, p. 34. ) --To permit, which is tantamount to compelling . . . to work 14 hours a day with or without meals,? &c. (Repts. , &c. , for April 30th, 1863, p. 40. )
164 Friedrich Engels, l. c. , p. 5.
165 The 10 Hours' Act has, in the branches of industry that come under it, --put an end to the premature decrepitude of the former long-hour workers. ? (Reports, &c. , for 31st Oct. , 1859, p. 47. ) --Capital (in factories) can never be employed in keeping the machinery in motion beyond a limited time, without certain injury to the health and morals of the labourers employed; and they are not in a position to protect themselves. ? (l. c. , p. 8)
166 --A still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker's own time and his master's. The worker knows now when that which he sells is ended, and when his own begins; and by possessing a sure foreknowledge of this, is enabled to prearrange his own minutes for his own purposes. ? (l. c. , p. 52. ) --By making them masters of their own time (the Factory Acts) have given them a moral energy which is directing them to the eventual possession of political power? (l. c. , p. 47). With suppressed irony, and in very well weighed words, the Factory Inspectors hint that the actual law also frees the capitalist from some of the brutality natural to a man who is a mere embodiment of capital, and that it has given him time for a little --culture. ? --Formerly the master had no time for anything but money; the servant had no time for anything but labour? (l. c. , p. 48).
? ? Chapter 11: Rate and Mass of Surplus Value
In this chapter, as hitherto, the value of labour-power, and therefore the part of the working day necessary for the reproduction or maintenance of that labour-power, are supposed to be given, constant magnitudes.
This premised, with the rate, the mass is at the same time given of the surplus value that the individual labourer furnishes to the capitalist in a definite period of time. If, e. g. , the necessary labour amounts to 6 hours daily, expressed in a quantum of gold = 3 shillings, then 3s. is the daily value of one labour-power or the value of the capital advanced in the buying of one labour-power. If, further, the rate of surplus value be = 100%, this variable capital of 3s. produces a mass of surplus value of 3s. , or the labourer supplies daily a mass of surplus labour equal to 6 hours.
But the variable capital of a capitalist is the expression in money of the total value of all the labour-powers that he employs simultaneously. Its value is, therefore, equal to the average value of one labour-power, multiplied by the number of labour-powers employed. With a given value of labour-power, therefore, the magnitude of the variable capital varies directly as the number of labourers employed simultaneously. If the daily value of one labour-power = 3s. , then a capital of 300s. must be advanced in order to exploit daily 100 labour-powers, of n times 3s. , in order to exploit daily n labour-powers.
In the same way, if a variable capital of 3s. , being the daily value of one labour-power, produce a daily surplus value of 3s. , a variable capital of 300s. will produce a daily surplus value of 300s. , and one of n times 3s. a daily surplus value of n * 3s. The mass of the surplus value produced is therefore equal to the surplus value which the working day of one labourer supplies multiplied by the number of labourers employed. But as further the mass of surplus value which a single labourer produces, the value of labour-power being given, is determined by the rate of the surplus value, this law follows: the mass of the surplus value produced is equal to the amount of the variable capital advanced, multiplied by the rate of surplus value, in other words: it is determined by the compound ratio between the number of labour-powers exploited simultaneously by the same capitalist and the degree of exploitation of each individual labour-power.
Let the mass of the surplus value be S, the surplus value supplied by the individual labourer in the average day s the variable capital daily advanced in the purchase of one individual labour-power v, the sum total of the variable capital V, the value of an average labour-power P, its degree of exploitation (a'/a) (surplus labour/necessary-labour) and the number of labourers employed n; we would have:
S= {(s/v)*V
P * (a'/a) * n
It is always supposed, not only that the value of an average labour-power is constant, but that the labourers employed by a capitalist are reduced to average labourers. There are exceptional cases in which the surplus value produced does not increase in proportion to the number of labourers exploited, but then the value of the labour-power does not remain constant.
In the production of a definite mass of surplus value, therefore the decrease of one factor may be compensated by the increase of the other. If the variable capital diminishes, and at the same time
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the rate of surplus value increases in the same ratio, the mass of surplus value produced remains unaltered. If on our earlier assumption the capitalist must advance 300s. , in order to exploit 100 labourers a day, and if the rate of surplus value amounts to 50%, this variable capital of 300s. yields a surplus value of 150s. or of 100 * 3 working hours. If the rate of surplus value doubles, or the working day, instead of being extended from 6 to 9, is extended from 6 to 12 hours and at the same time variable capital is lessened by half, and reduced to 150s. , it yields also a surplus value of 150s. or 50 * 6 working hours. Diminution of the variable capital may therefore be compensated by a proportionate rise in the degree of exploitation of labour-power, or the decrease in the number of the labourers employed by a proportionate extension of the working day. Within certain limits therefore the supply of labour exploitable by capital is independent of the supply of labourers. 1 On the contrary, a fall in the rate of surplus value leaves unaltered the mass of the surplus value produced, if the amount of the variable capital, or number of the labourers employed, increases in the same proportion.
Nevertheless, the compensation of a decrease in the number of labourers employed, or of the amount of variable capital advanced by a rise in the rate of surplus value, or by the lengthening of the working day, has impassable limits. Whatever the value of labour-power may be, whether the working time necessary for the maintenance of the labourer is 2 or 10 hours, the total value that a labourer can produce, day in, day out, is always less than the value in which 24 hours of labour are embodied, less than 12s. , if 12s. is the money expression for 24 hours of realised labour. In our former assumption, according to which 6 working hours are daily necessary in order to reproduce the labour-power itself or to replace the value of the capital advanced in its purchase, a variable capital of 1,500s. , that employs 500 labourers at a rate of surplus value of 100% with a 12 hours' working day, produces daily a surplus value of 1,500s. or of 6 * 500 working hours. A capital of 300s. that employs 100 labourers a day with a rate of surplus value of 200% or with a working day of 18 hours, produces only a mass of surplus value of 600s. or 12 * 100 working hours; and its total value-product, the equivalent of the variable capital advanced plus the surplus value, can, day in, day out, never reach the sum of 1,200s. or 24 * 100 working hours. The absolute limit of the average working day - this being by nature always less than 24 hours - sets an absolute limit to the compensation of a reduction of variable capital by a higher rate of surplus value, or of the decrease of the number of labourers exploited by a higher degree of exploitation of labour-power. This palpable law is of importance for the clearing up of many phenomena, arising from a tendency (to be worked out later on) of capital to reduce as much as possible the number of labourers employed by it, or its variable constituent transformed into labour-power, in contradiction to its other tendency to produce the greatest possible mass of surplus value. On the other hand, if the mass of labour-power employed, or the amount of variable capital, increases, but not in proportion to the fall in the rate of surplus value, the mass of the surplus value produced, falls.
A third law results from the determination, of the mass of the surplus value produced, by the two factors: rate of surplus value and amount of variable capital advanced. The rate of surplus value, or the degree of exploitation of labour-power, and the value of labour-power, or the amount of necessary working time being given, it is self evident that the greater the variable capital, the greater would be the mass of the value produced and of the surplus value. If the limit of the working day is given, and also the limit of its necessary constituent, the mass of value and surplus value that an individual capitalist produces, is clearly exclusively dependent on the mass of labour that he sets in motion. But this, under the conditions supposed above, depends on the mass of labour-power, or the number of labourers whom he exploits, and this number in its turn is determined by the amount of the variable capital advanced. With a given rate of surplus value,
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and a given value of labour-power, therefore, the masses of surplus value produced vary directly as the amounts of the variable capitals advanced. Now we know that the capitalist divides his capital into two parts. One part he lays out in means of production. This is the constant part of his capital. The other part he lays out in living labour-power. This part forms his variable capital. On the basis of the same mode of social production, the division of capital into constant and variable differs in different branches of production, and within the same branch of production, too, this relation changes with changes in the technical conditions and in the social combinations of the processes of production. But in whatever proportion a given capital breaks up into a constant and a variable part, whether the latter is to the former as 1:2 or 1:10 or 1:x, the law just laid down is not affected by this. For, according to our previous analysis, the value of the constant capital reappears in the value of the product, but does not enter into the newly produced value, the newly created value product. To employ 1,000 spinners, more raw material, spindles, &c. , are, of course, required, than to employ 100. The value of these additional means of production however may rise, fall, remain unaltered, be large or small; it has no influence on the process of creation of surplus value by means of the labour-powers that put them in motion. The law demonstrated above now, therefore, takes this form: the masses of value and of surplus value produced by different capitals - the value of labour-power being given and its degree of exploitation being equal - vary directly as the amounts of the variable constituents of these capitals, i. e. , as their constituents transformed into living labour-power.
This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker, who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate terms are as yet wanted, as from the standpoint of elementary algebra many intermediate terms are wanted to understand that 0/0 may represent an actual magnitude. Classical economy, although not formulating the law, holds instinctively to it, because it is a necessary consequence of the general law of value. It tries to rescue the law from collision with contradictory phenomena by a violent abstraction. It will be seen later2 how the school of Ricardo has come to grief over this stumbling block. Vulgar economy which, indeed, --has really learnt nothing,? here as everywhere sticks to appearances in opposition to the law which regulates and explains them. In opposition to Spinoza, it believes that --ignorance is a sufficient reason. ?
The labour which is set in motion by the total capital of a society, day in, day out, may be regarded as a single collective working day. If, e. g. , the number of labourers is a million, and the average working day of a labourer is 10 hours, the social working day consists of ten million hours. With a given length of this working day, whether its limits are fixed physically or socially, the mass of surplus value can only be increased by increasing the number of labourers, i. e. , of the labouring population. The growth of population here forms the mathematical limit to the production of surplus value by the total social capital. On the contrary, with a given amount of population, this limit is formed by the possible lengthening of the workingday. 3 It will, however, be seen in the following chapter that this law only holds for the form of surplus value dealt with up to the present.
From the treatment of the production of surplus value, so far, it follows that not every sum of money, or of value, is at pleasure transformable into capital. To effect this transformation, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange-value must be presupposed in the hands of the individual possessor of money or commodities. The minimum of variable capital is the cost price of a single labour-power, employed the whole year through, day in, day out, for the production of
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surplus value. If this labourer were in possession of his own means of production, and were satisfied to live as a labourer, he need not work beyond the time necessary for the reproduction of his means of subsistence, say 8 hours a day. He would, besides, only require the means of production sufficient for 8 working hours. The capitalist, on the other hand, who makes him do, besides these 8 hours, say 4 hours' surplus labour, requires an additional sum of money for furnishing the additional means of production. On our supposition, however, he would have to employ two labourers in order to live, on the surplus value appropriated daily, as well as, and no better than a labourer, i. e. , to be able to satisfy his necessary wants. In this case the mere maintenance of life would be the end of his production, not the increase of wealth; but this latter is implied in capitalist production. That he may live only twice as well as an ordinary labourer, and besides turn half of the surplus value produced into capital, he would have to raise, with the number of labourers, the minimum of the capital advanced 8 times. Of course he can, like his labourer, take to work himself, participate directly in the process of production, but he is then only a hybrid between capitalist and labourer, a --small master. ? A certain stage of capitalist production necessitates that the capitalist be able to devote the whole of the time during which he functions as a capitalist, i. e. , as personified capital, to the appropriation and therefore control of the labour of others, and to the selling of the products of this labour. 4 The guilds of the middle ages therefore tried to prevent by force the transformation of the master of a trade into a capitalist, by limiting the number of labourers that could be employed by one master within a very small maximum. The possessor of money or commodities actually turns into a capitalist in such cases only where the minimum sum advanced for production greatly exceeds the maximum of the middle ages. Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel (in his --Logic? ), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes. 5
The minimum of the sum of value that the individual possessor of money or commodities must command, in order to metamorphose himself into a capitalist, changes with the different stages of development of capitalist production, and is at given stages different in different spheres of production, according to their special and technical conditions. Certain spheres of production demand, even at the very outset of capitalist production, a minimum of capital that is not as yet found in the hands of single individuals. This gives rise partly to state subsidies to private persons, as in France in the time of Clobber, and as in many German states up to our own epoch, partly to the formation of societies with legal monopoly for the exploitation of certain branches of industry and commerce, the forerunners of our modern joint stock companies. 6
Within the process of production, as we have seen, capital acquired the command over labour, i. e. , over functioning labour-power or the labourer himself. Personified capital, the capitalist takes care that the labourer does his work regularly and with the proper degree of intensity.
Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which compels the working class to do more work than the narrow round of its own life-wants prescribes. As a producer of the activity of others, as a pumper-out of surplus labour and exploiter of labour-power, it surpasses in energy, disregard of bounds, recklessness and efficiency, all earlier systems of production based on directly compulsory labour.
