-- The author resorts here to the
economic
language in current use.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
of yarn produced, it follows that the various component parts of this value, can be represented as being contained respectively in corresponding parts of the product.
If the value of 30s. is contained in 20 lbs. of yarn, then 8/10ths of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is contained in 8/10ths of the product or in 16 lbs. of yarn. Of the latter 13 1/3 lbs. represent the value of the raw material, the 20s. worth of cotton spun, and 2 2/3 lbs. represent the 4s. worth of spindle, &c. , worn away in the process.
Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20 lbs. of yarn, is represented by 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. This latter weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13 1/3 lbs. of cotton, worth 13 1/3 shillings; but the 6 2/3 shillings additional value contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton consumed in spinning the remaining 6 2/3 lbs. of yarn. The effect is the same as if these 6 2/3 lbs. of yarn contained no cotton at all, and the whole 20 lbs. of cotton were concentrated in the 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. The latter weight, on the other hand, does not contain an atom either of the value of the auxiliary materials and implements, or of the value newly created in the process.
In the same way, the 2 2/3 lbs. of yarn, in which the 4s. , the remainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents nothing but the value of the auxiliary materials and instruments of labour consumed in producing the 20 lbs. of yarn.
We have, therefore, arrived at this result: although eight-tenths of the product, or 16 lbs. of yarn, is, in its character of an article of utility, just as much the fabric of the spinner's labour, as the remainder of the same product, yet when viewed in this connexion, it does not contain, and has not absorbed any labour expended during the process of spinning. It is just as if the cotton had converted itself into yarn, without help; as if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit: for so soon as our capitalist sells it for 24s. , and with the money replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that this 16 lbs. of yarn is nothing more than so much cotton and spindle-waste in disguise.
On the other hand, the remaining 2/10 ths of the product, or 4 lbs of yarn, represent nothing but the new value of 6s. , created during the 12 hours' spinning process. All the value transferred to those 4 lbs, from the raw material and instruments of labour consumed, was, so to say, intercepted in order to be incorporated in the 16 lbs. first spun. In this case, it is as if the spinner had spun 4 lbs. of yarn out of air, or, as if he had spun them with the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the spontaneous gift of Nature, transferred no value to the product.
Of this 4 lbs. of yarn, in which the whole of the value newly created during the process, is condensed, one half represents the equivalent for the value of the labour consumed, or the 3s. variable capital, the other half represents the 3s. surplus value.
Since 12 working-hours of the spinner are embodied in 6s. , it follows that in yarn of the value of 30s. , there must be embodied 60 working-hours. And this quantity of labour-time does in fact exist in the 20 lbs of yarn; for in 8/10ths or 16 lbs there are materialised the 48 hours of labour expended, before the commencement of the spinning process, on the means of production; and in the remaining 2/10ths or 4 lbs there are materialised the 12 hours' work done during the process itself.
On a former page we saw that the value of the yarn is equal to the sum of the new value created during the production of that yarn plus the value previously existing in the means of production.
It has now been shown how the various component parts of the value of the product, parts that differ functionally from each other, may be represented by corresponding proportional parts of the product itself.
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To split up in this manner the product into different parts, of which one represents only the labour previously spent on the means of production, or the constant capital, another, only the necessary labour spent during the process of production, or the variable capital, and another and last part, only the surplus labour expended during the same process, or the surplus value; to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application to complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less important than it is simple.
In the preceding investigation we have treated the total product as the final result, ready for use, of a working day of 12 hours. We can however follow this total product through all the stages of its production; and in this way we shall arrive at the same result as before, if we represent the partial products, given off at the different stages, as functionally different parts of the final or total product.
The spinner produces in 12 hours 20 lbs. of yarn, or in 1 hour 12/3 lbs; consequently he produces in 8 hours 132/3 lbs. , or a partial product equal in value to all the cotton that is spun in a whole day. In like manner the partial product of the next period of 1 hour and 36 minutes, is 22/3 lbs. of yarn: this represents the value of the instruments of labour that are consumed in 12 hours. In the following hour and 12 minutes, the spinner produces 2 lbs. of yarn worth 3 shillings, a value equal to the whole value he creates in his 6 hours' necessary labour. Finally, in the last hour and 12 minutes he produces another 2 lbs. of yarn, whose value is equal to the surplus value, created by his surplus labour during half a day. This method of calculation serves the English manufacturer for every-day use; it shows, he will say, that in the first 8 hours, or 2/3 of the working day, he gets back the value of his cotton; and so on for the remaining hours. It is also a perfectly correct method: being in fact the first method given above with this difference, that instead of being applied to space, in which the different parts of the completed product lie side by side, it deals with time, in which those parts are successively produced. But it can also be accompanied by very barbarian notions, more especially in the heads of those who are as much interested, practically, in the process of making value beget value, as they are in misunderstanding that process theoretically. Such people may get the notion into their heads, that our spinner, for example, produces or replaces in the first 8 hours of his working day the value of the cotton; in the following hour and 36 minutes the value of the instruments of labour worn away; in the next hour and 12 minutes the value of the wages; and that he devotes to the production of surplus value for the manufacturer, only that well known --last hour. ? In this way the poor spinner is made to perform the two-fold miracle not only of producing cotton, spindles, steam-engine, coal, oil, &c. , at the same time that he spins with them, but also of turning one working day into five; for, in the example we are considering, the production of the raw material and instruments of labour demands four working days of twelve hours each, and their conversion into yarn requires another such day. That the love of lucre induces an easy belief in such miracles, and that sycophant doctrinaires are never wanting to prove them, is vouched for by the following incident of historical celebrity.
Section 3: Senior's "Last Hour"
One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well known, alike for his economic --science,? and for his beautiful style, was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the latter place, the Political Economy that he taught in the former. The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the still more menacing Ten-hours' agitation. With their usual practical acuteness, they had found out- that the learned Professor --wanted a good deal of finishing;? it was this discovery that caused them to write for him. On his side the Professor has
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embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manufacturers, in a pamphlet, entitled: --Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture. ? London, 1837. Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage:
--Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 18 years of age are employed, . . . can be worked more than 111/2 hours a day, that is, 12 hours for 5 days in the week, and nine on Saturday.
--Now the following analysis (! ) will show that in a mill so worked, the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose a manufacturer to invest ? 100,000: - ? 80,000 in his mill and machinery, and ? 20,000 in raw material and wages. The annual return of that mill, supposing the capital to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent. , ought to be goods worth ? 15,000. . . . Of this ? 115,000, each of the twenty-three half-hours of work produces 5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of these 23-23rds (constituting the whole ? 115,000) twenty, that is to say ? 100,000 out of the ? 115,000, simply replace the capital; - one twenty- third (or ? 5,000 out of the ? 115,000) makes up for the deterioration of the mill and machinery. The remaining 2-23rds, that is, the last two of the twenty-three half-hours of every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent. If, therefore (prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at work thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, with an addition of about ? 2,600 to the circulating capital, the net profit would be more than doubled. On the other hand, if the hours of working were reduced by one hour per day (prices remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed - if they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit would be destroyed. ? 10
And the Professor calls this an --analysis! ? If, giving credence to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend the best part of the day in the production, i. e. , the reproduction or replacement of the value of the buildings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c. , then his analysis was superfluous. His answer would simply have been: - Gentlemen! if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 111/2, then, other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery, &c. , will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as you lose. Your work-people will in future spend one hour and a half less time in reproducing or replacing the capital that has been advanced. - If, on the other hand, he did not believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought, in a question that is concerned exclusively with the relations of net profit to the length of the working day, before all things to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to lump together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery, raw material, &c. , on one side of the account, and the capital advanced in wages on the other side. If the Professor then found, that in accordance with the calculation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or replaced his wages in 2 half- hours, in that case, he should have continued his analysis thus:
According to your figures, the workman in the last hour but one produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus value or net profit. Now, since in equal periods he produces equal values, the produce of the last hour but one, must have the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the amount of his labour is measured by his labour-time. This you say, amounts to 111/2 hours a day. He employs one portion of these 111/2 hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and the remaining portion in producing your net profit. Beyond this he does absolutely nothing. But since, on your assumption, his wages, and the surplus value he yields, are of equal value, it is clear that he produces his wages in
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53/4 hours, and your net profit in the other 53/4 hours. Again, since the value of the yarn produced in 2 hours, is equal to the sum of the values of his wages and of your net profit, the measure of the value of this yarn must be 111/2 working-hours, of which 53/4 hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour but one, and 53/4, the value of the yarn produced in the last hour. We now come to a ticklish point; therefore, attention! The last working-hour but one is, like the first, an ordinary working-hour, neither more nor less. How then can the spinner produce in one hour, in the shape of yarn, a value that embodies 53/4 hours' labour? The truth is that he performs no such miracle. The use-value produced by him in one hour, is a definite quantity of yarn. The value of this yarn is measured by 53/4 working-hours, of which 43/4 were, without any assistance from him, previously embodied in the means of production, in the cotton, the machinery, and so on; the remaining one hour alone is added by him. Therefore since his wages are produced in 53/4 hours, and the yarn produced in one hour also contains 53/4 hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the result, that the value created by his 53/4 hours' spinning, is equal to the value of the product spun in one hour. You are altogether on the wrong track, if you think that he loses a single moment of his working day, in reproducing or replacing the values of the cotton, the machinery, and so on. On the contrary, it is because his labour converts the cotton and spindles into yarn, because he spins, that the values of the cotton and spindles go over to the yarn of their own accord. This result is owing to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is true, he will in one hour transfer to the yarn more value, in the shape of cotton, than he will in half an hour; but that is only because in one hour he spins up more cotton than in half an hour. You see then, your assertion, that the workman produces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages, and in the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this, that in the yarn produced by him in 2 working-hours, whether they are the 2 first or the 2 last hours of the working day, in that yarn, there are incorporated 111/2 working-hours, or just a whole day's work, i. e. , two hours of his own work and 91/2 hours of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 53/4 hours, he produces his wages, and in the last 53/4 hours your net profit, amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former, but not for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of payment of labour- power, I only talk your own slang. Now, gentlemen, if you compare the working-time you pay for, with that which you do not pay for, you will find that they are to one another, as half a day is to half a day; this gives a rate of 100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is not the least doubt, that if you make you --hands? toil for 13 hours, instead of 111/2, and, as may be expected from you, treat the work done in that extra one hour and a half, as pure surplus labour, then the latter will be increased from 53/4 hours' labour to 71/4 hours' labour, and the rate of surplus value from 100% to 126 2/23%. So that you are altogether too sanguine, in expecting that by such an addition of 11/2 hours to the working day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in other words that it will be --more than doubled. ? On the other hand-man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when carried in the purse - you take too pessimist a view, when you fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from 111/2 to 10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus labour will fall from 53/4 hours to 43/4 hours, a period that still gives a very profitable rate of surplus value, namely 82 14/23%. But this dreadful --last hour,? about which you have invented more stories than have the millenarians about the day of judgment, is --all bosh. ? If it goes, it will cost neither you, your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their --purity of mind. ? 11 Whenever your --last hour? strikes in earnest, think of the Oxford Professor. And now, gentlemen, --farewell, and may we meet again in yonder better world, but not before. ?
Senior invented the battle cry of the --last hour? in 1836. 12 In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry was again raised by James Wilson, an economic mandarin of high standing: this time in opposition to the 10 hours' bill.
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Chapter 9
Section 4: Surplus-Produce
The portion of the product that represents the surplus value, (one tenth of the 20 lbs. , or 2 lbs. of yarn, in the example given in Sec. 2) we call --surplus-produce. ? Just as the rate of surplus value is determined by its relation, not to the sum total of the capital, but to its variable part; in like manner, the relative quantity of surplus-produce is determined by the ratio that this produce bears, not to the remaining part of the total product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated the necessary labour. Since the production of surplus value is the chief end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the greatness of a man's or a nation's wealth should be measured, not by the absolute quantity produced, but by the relative magnitude of the surplus-produce. 13
The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus labour, i. e. , of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the value of his labour-power, and produces the surplus value, this sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i. e. , the working day.
1 --If we reckon the value of the fixed capital employed as a part of the advances, we must reckon the remaining value of such capital at the end of the year as a part of the annual returns. ? (Malthus, --Princ. of Pol. Econ. ? 2nd. ed. , Lond. , 1836, p. 269. )
2 What Lucretius says is self-evident; --nil posse creari de nihilo,? out of nothing, nothing can be created. Creation of value is transformation of labour-power into labour. Labour-power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of nourishing matter.
3 In the same way that the English use the terms --rate of profit,? --rate of interest. ? We shall see, in Book III, that the rate of profit is no mystery, so soon as we know the laws of surplus value. If we reverse the process, we cannot comprehend either the one or the other.
4 Note added in the 3rd German edition.
-- The author resorts here to the economic language in current use. It will be remembered that on p. 182 (present edition, p. 174) it was shown that in reality the labourer --advances? to the capitalist and not the capitalist to the labourer. -- F. E.
5 In this work, we have, up to now, employed the term --necessary labour-time,? to designate the time necessary under given social conditions for the production of any commodity. Henceforward we use it to designate also the time necessary for the production of the particular commodity labour-power. The use of one and the same technical term in different senses is inconvenient, but in no science can it be altogether avoided. Compare, for instance, the higher with the lower branches of mathematics.
6 Herr Wilhelm Thucydides Roscher has found a mare's nest. He has made the important discovery that if, on the one hand, the formation of surplus value, or surplus-produce, and the consequent accumulation of capital, is now-a-days due to the thrift of the capitalist, on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilisation it is the strong who compel the weak to economise. (l. c. , p. 78. ) To economise what? Labour? Or superfluous wealth that does not exist? What is it that makes such men as Roscher account for the origin of surplus value, by a mere rechauffe? of the more of less plausible excuses by the capitalist, for his appropriation of surplus value? It is, besides their real ignorance, their apologetic dread of a scientific analysis of value and surplus value, and of obtaining a result, possibly not altogether palatable to the powers that be.
7 Although the rate of surplus value is an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour- power, it is, in no sense, an expression for the absolute amount of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labour 5 hours and the surplus labour = 5 hours, the degree of exploitation is 100%. The amount of exploitation is here measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour = 6 hours and the surplus labour = 6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains, as before, 100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased 20%, namely from five hours to six.
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8 The above data, which may be relied upon, were given me by a Manchester spinner. In England the horse-power of an engine was formerly calculated from the diameter of its cylinder, now the actual horse-power shown by the indicator is taken.
9 The calculations given in the text are intended merely as illustrations. We have in fact. assumed that prices = values. We shall, however, see, in Book Ill. , that even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple manner.
10 Senior, l. c. , pp. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no importance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as part of their profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner has shown in --A Letter to Mr. Senior,? &c. , London, 1837, that they are worth no more than so-called --Analysis. ? Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in 1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered undying service to the English working-class. He carried on a life-long contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters in the Lower House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number of hours worked by the --hands? in the mills.
Apart from efforts in principle, Senior's statement is confused. What he really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for 111/2 hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year, may be conceived to consist of 111/2 hours or 23 half-hours, but each multiplied by the number of working days in the year. On this supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of ? 115,000; one half-hour yields 1/23 * ? 115,000; 20 half-hours yield 20/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 100,000, i. e. , they replace no more than the capital advanced. There remain 3 half- hours, which yield 1/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 5,000 or the gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields 1/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 5,000; i. e. , it makes up for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half- hours, i. e. , the last hour, yield 2/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senior converts the last 2/23 of the product into portions of the working day itself.
11 If, on the one hand, Senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer, the existence of he English cotton industry, and England's command of the markets of the world, depend on --the last working-hour,? on the other hand, Dr. Andrew Ure showed, that if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of being kept the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory, are turned out an hour sooner into the heartless and frivolous outer world, they will be deprived, by idleness and vice, of all hope of salvation for their souls. Since 1848, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this --last,? this --fatal hour. ? Thus Mr. Hovell in his report of the 21st May, 1855: --Had the following ingenious calculation (he quotes Senior) been correct, every cotton factory in the United Kingdom would have been working at a loss since the year 1850. ? (Reports of the Insp. of Fact. , for the half-year, ending 30th April, 1855, pp. 19, 20. ) In the year 1848, after the passing of the 10 hours' bill, the masters of some flax spinning mills, scattered, few and far between, over the country on the borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill on to the shoulders of a few of their work-people. One of the clauses of this petition is as follows: --Your petitioners, as parents, conceive that an additional hour of leisure will tend more to demoralise the children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the parent of vice. ? On this the factory report of 31st Oct. , 1848, says: The atmosphere of the flax mills, in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents work, is so loaded with dust and fibre from the raw material, that it is exceptionally unpleasant to stand even 10 minutes in the spinning rooms: for you are unable to do so without the most painful sensation, owing to the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, and mouth, being immediately filled by the clouds of flax dust from which there is no escape. The labour itself, owing to the feverish haste of the machinery, demands unceasing application of skill and movement, under the control of a watchfulness that never tires, and it seems somewhat hard, to let parents apply the term
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--idling? to their own children, who, after allowing for meal-times, are fettered for 10 whole hours to such an occupation, in such an atmosphere. . . . These children work longer than the labourers in the neighbouring villages. . . . Such cruel talk about --idleness and vice? ought to be branded as the purest cant, and the most shameless hypocrisy. . . . That portion of the public, who, about 12 years ago, were struck by the assurance with which, under the sanction of high authority, it was publicly and most earnestly proclaimed, that the whole net profit of the manufacturer flows from the labour of the last hour, and that, therefore, the reduction of the working day by one hour, would destroy his net profit, that portion of the public, we say, will hardly believe its own eyes, when it now finds, that the original discovery of the virtues of --the last hour? has since been so far improved, as to include morals as well as profit; so that, if the duration of the labour of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together with the net profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last, this fatal hour. (See Repts. , Insp. of Fact. , for 31st Oct. , 1848, p. 101. ) The same report then gives some examples of the morality and virtue of these same pure-minded manufacturers, of the tricks, the artifices, the cajoling, the threats, and the falsifications, they made use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign petitions of such a kind, and then to impose them upon Parliament as the petitions of a whole branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic of the present status of so-called economic science, that neither Senior himself, who, at a later period, to his honour be it said, energetically supported the factory legislation, nor his opponents, from first to last, have ever been able to explain the false conclusions of the --original discovery. ? They appeal to actual experience, but the why and wherefore remains a mystery.
12 Nevertheless, the learned professor was not without some benefit from his journey to Manchester. In the --Letters on the Factory Act,? he makes the whole net gains including --profit? and --interests? and even --something more,? depend upon a single unpaid hour's work of the labourer. One year previously, in his --Outlines of Political Economy,? written for the instruction of Oxford students and cultivated Philistines, he had also --discovered, in opposition to Ricardo's determination of value by labour, that profit is derived from the labour of the capitalist, and interest from his asceticism, in other words, from his abstinence. ? The dodge was an old one, but the word --abstinence? was new. Herr Roscher translates it rightly by --Enthaltung. ? Some of his countrymen, the Browns, Jones, and Robinsons, of Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have, monk-like, rendered it by --Entsagung? (renunciation).
13 --To an individual with a capital of ? 20,000, whose profits were ? 2,000 per annum, it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a 100 or 1,000 men, whether the commodity produced sold for ? 10,000 or ? 20,000, provided, in all cases, his profit were not diminished below ? 2,000. Is not the real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rent and profits, be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of 10 or of 12 millions of inhabitants. ? (Ric. l. c. ,. p. 416. ) Long before Ricardo, Arthur Young, a fanatical upholder of surplus-produce, for the rest, a rambling, uncritical writer, whose reputation is in the inverse ratio of his merit, says, --Of what use, in a modem kingdom, would be a whole province thus divided [in the old Roman manner, by small independent peasants], however well cultivated, except for the mere purpose of breeding men, which taken singly is a most useless purpose? ? (Arthur Young: --Political Arithmetic, &c. ? London, 1774, p. 47. )
Very curious is --the strong inclination. . . to represent net wealth as beneficial to the labouring class. . . though it is evidently not on account of being net. ? (Th . Hopkins, --On Rent of Land, &c. ? London, 1828, p. 126. )
? ? Chapter 10: The Working day
Section 1: The Limits of the Working day
We started with the supposition that labour-power is bought and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commodities, is determined by the working-time necessary to its production. If the production of the average daily means of subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours, he must work, on the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour-power, or to reproduce the value received as the result of its sale. The necessary part of his working day amounts to 6 hours, and is, therefore, caeteris paribus [other things being equal], a given quantity. But with this, the extent of the working day itself is not yet given.
Let us assume that the line A---B represents the length of the necessary working-time, say 6 hours. If the labour be prolonged 1, 3, or 6 hours beyond A--B, we have 3 other lines:
Working day I. Working day II. Working day III. A---B-C. A---B--C. A---B---C.
representing 3 different working days of 7, 9, and 12 hours. The extension B--C of the line A--B represents the length of the surplus labour. As the working day is A--B + B--C or A--C, it varies with the variable quantity B--C. Since A--B is constant, the ratio of B--C to A--B can always be calculated. In working day I, it is 1/6, in working day II, 3/6, in working day III 6/6 of A--B. Since further the ratio (surplus working-time)/(necessary working-time), determines the rate of the surplus value, the latter is given by the ratio of B--C to A--B. It amounts in the 3 different working days respectively to 16 2/3, 50 and 100 per cent. On the other hand, the rate of surplus value alone would not give us the extent of the working day. If this rate, e. g. , were 100 per cent. , the working day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours. It would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the working day, necessary-labour and surplus labour time, were equal in extent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts was.
The working day is thus not a constant, but a variable quantity. One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the working-time required for the reproduction of the labour-power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies with the duration of the surplus labour. The working day is, therefore, determinable, but is, per se, indeterminate.
If the value of 30s. is contained in 20 lbs. of yarn, then 8/10ths of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is contained in 8/10ths of the product or in 16 lbs. of yarn. Of the latter 13 1/3 lbs. represent the value of the raw material, the 20s. worth of cotton spun, and 2 2/3 lbs. represent the 4s. worth of spindle, &c. , worn away in the process.
Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20 lbs. of yarn, is represented by 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. This latter weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13 1/3 lbs. of cotton, worth 13 1/3 shillings; but the 6 2/3 shillings additional value contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton consumed in spinning the remaining 6 2/3 lbs. of yarn. The effect is the same as if these 6 2/3 lbs. of yarn contained no cotton at all, and the whole 20 lbs. of cotton were concentrated in the 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. The latter weight, on the other hand, does not contain an atom either of the value of the auxiliary materials and implements, or of the value newly created in the process.
In the same way, the 2 2/3 lbs. of yarn, in which the 4s. , the remainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents nothing but the value of the auxiliary materials and instruments of labour consumed in producing the 20 lbs. of yarn.
We have, therefore, arrived at this result: although eight-tenths of the product, or 16 lbs. of yarn, is, in its character of an article of utility, just as much the fabric of the spinner's labour, as the remainder of the same product, yet when viewed in this connexion, it does not contain, and has not absorbed any labour expended during the process of spinning. It is just as if the cotton had converted itself into yarn, without help; as if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit: for so soon as our capitalist sells it for 24s. , and with the money replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that this 16 lbs. of yarn is nothing more than so much cotton and spindle-waste in disguise.
On the other hand, the remaining 2/10 ths of the product, or 4 lbs of yarn, represent nothing but the new value of 6s. , created during the 12 hours' spinning process. All the value transferred to those 4 lbs, from the raw material and instruments of labour consumed, was, so to say, intercepted in order to be incorporated in the 16 lbs. first spun. In this case, it is as if the spinner had spun 4 lbs. of yarn out of air, or, as if he had spun them with the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the spontaneous gift of Nature, transferred no value to the product.
Of this 4 lbs. of yarn, in which the whole of the value newly created during the process, is condensed, one half represents the equivalent for the value of the labour consumed, or the 3s. variable capital, the other half represents the 3s. surplus value.
Since 12 working-hours of the spinner are embodied in 6s. , it follows that in yarn of the value of 30s. , there must be embodied 60 working-hours. And this quantity of labour-time does in fact exist in the 20 lbs of yarn; for in 8/10ths or 16 lbs there are materialised the 48 hours of labour expended, before the commencement of the spinning process, on the means of production; and in the remaining 2/10ths or 4 lbs there are materialised the 12 hours' work done during the process itself.
On a former page we saw that the value of the yarn is equal to the sum of the new value created during the production of that yarn plus the value previously existing in the means of production.
It has now been shown how the various component parts of the value of the product, parts that differ functionally from each other, may be represented by corresponding proportional parts of the product itself.
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To split up in this manner the product into different parts, of which one represents only the labour previously spent on the means of production, or the constant capital, another, only the necessary labour spent during the process of production, or the variable capital, and another and last part, only the surplus labour expended during the same process, or the surplus value; to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application to complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less important than it is simple.
In the preceding investigation we have treated the total product as the final result, ready for use, of a working day of 12 hours. We can however follow this total product through all the stages of its production; and in this way we shall arrive at the same result as before, if we represent the partial products, given off at the different stages, as functionally different parts of the final or total product.
The spinner produces in 12 hours 20 lbs. of yarn, or in 1 hour 12/3 lbs; consequently he produces in 8 hours 132/3 lbs. , or a partial product equal in value to all the cotton that is spun in a whole day. In like manner the partial product of the next period of 1 hour and 36 minutes, is 22/3 lbs. of yarn: this represents the value of the instruments of labour that are consumed in 12 hours. In the following hour and 12 minutes, the spinner produces 2 lbs. of yarn worth 3 shillings, a value equal to the whole value he creates in his 6 hours' necessary labour. Finally, in the last hour and 12 minutes he produces another 2 lbs. of yarn, whose value is equal to the surplus value, created by his surplus labour during half a day. This method of calculation serves the English manufacturer for every-day use; it shows, he will say, that in the first 8 hours, or 2/3 of the working day, he gets back the value of his cotton; and so on for the remaining hours. It is also a perfectly correct method: being in fact the first method given above with this difference, that instead of being applied to space, in which the different parts of the completed product lie side by side, it deals with time, in which those parts are successively produced. But it can also be accompanied by very barbarian notions, more especially in the heads of those who are as much interested, practically, in the process of making value beget value, as they are in misunderstanding that process theoretically. Such people may get the notion into their heads, that our spinner, for example, produces or replaces in the first 8 hours of his working day the value of the cotton; in the following hour and 36 minutes the value of the instruments of labour worn away; in the next hour and 12 minutes the value of the wages; and that he devotes to the production of surplus value for the manufacturer, only that well known --last hour. ? In this way the poor spinner is made to perform the two-fold miracle not only of producing cotton, spindles, steam-engine, coal, oil, &c. , at the same time that he spins with them, but also of turning one working day into five; for, in the example we are considering, the production of the raw material and instruments of labour demands four working days of twelve hours each, and their conversion into yarn requires another such day. That the love of lucre induces an easy belief in such miracles, and that sycophant doctrinaires are never wanting to prove them, is vouched for by the following incident of historical celebrity.
Section 3: Senior's "Last Hour"
One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well known, alike for his economic --science,? and for his beautiful style, was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the latter place, the Political Economy that he taught in the former. The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the still more menacing Ten-hours' agitation. With their usual practical acuteness, they had found out- that the learned Professor --wanted a good deal of finishing;? it was this discovery that caused them to write for him. On his side the Professor has
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embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manufacturers, in a pamphlet, entitled: --Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture. ? London, 1837. Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage:
--Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 18 years of age are employed, . . . can be worked more than 111/2 hours a day, that is, 12 hours for 5 days in the week, and nine on Saturday.
--Now the following analysis (! ) will show that in a mill so worked, the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose a manufacturer to invest ? 100,000: - ? 80,000 in his mill and machinery, and ? 20,000 in raw material and wages. The annual return of that mill, supposing the capital to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent. , ought to be goods worth ? 15,000. . . . Of this ? 115,000, each of the twenty-three half-hours of work produces 5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of these 23-23rds (constituting the whole ? 115,000) twenty, that is to say ? 100,000 out of the ? 115,000, simply replace the capital; - one twenty- third (or ? 5,000 out of the ? 115,000) makes up for the deterioration of the mill and machinery. The remaining 2-23rds, that is, the last two of the twenty-three half-hours of every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent. If, therefore (prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at work thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, with an addition of about ? 2,600 to the circulating capital, the net profit would be more than doubled. On the other hand, if the hours of working were reduced by one hour per day (prices remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed - if they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit would be destroyed. ? 10
And the Professor calls this an --analysis! ? If, giving credence to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend the best part of the day in the production, i. e. , the reproduction or replacement of the value of the buildings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c. , then his analysis was superfluous. His answer would simply have been: - Gentlemen! if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 111/2, then, other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery, &c. , will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as you lose. Your work-people will in future spend one hour and a half less time in reproducing or replacing the capital that has been advanced. - If, on the other hand, he did not believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought, in a question that is concerned exclusively with the relations of net profit to the length of the working day, before all things to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to lump together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery, raw material, &c. , on one side of the account, and the capital advanced in wages on the other side. If the Professor then found, that in accordance with the calculation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or replaced his wages in 2 half- hours, in that case, he should have continued his analysis thus:
According to your figures, the workman in the last hour but one produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus value or net profit. Now, since in equal periods he produces equal values, the produce of the last hour but one, must have the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the amount of his labour is measured by his labour-time. This you say, amounts to 111/2 hours a day. He employs one portion of these 111/2 hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and the remaining portion in producing your net profit. Beyond this he does absolutely nothing. But since, on your assumption, his wages, and the surplus value he yields, are of equal value, it is clear that he produces his wages in
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53/4 hours, and your net profit in the other 53/4 hours. Again, since the value of the yarn produced in 2 hours, is equal to the sum of the values of his wages and of your net profit, the measure of the value of this yarn must be 111/2 working-hours, of which 53/4 hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour but one, and 53/4, the value of the yarn produced in the last hour. We now come to a ticklish point; therefore, attention! The last working-hour but one is, like the first, an ordinary working-hour, neither more nor less. How then can the spinner produce in one hour, in the shape of yarn, a value that embodies 53/4 hours' labour? The truth is that he performs no such miracle. The use-value produced by him in one hour, is a definite quantity of yarn. The value of this yarn is measured by 53/4 working-hours, of which 43/4 were, without any assistance from him, previously embodied in the means of production, in the cotton, the machinery, and so on; the remaining one hour alone is added by him. Therefore since his wages are produced in 53/4 hours, and the yarn produced in one hour also contains 53/4 hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the result, that the value created by his 53/4 hours' spinning, is equal to the value of the product spun in one hour. You are altogether on the wrong track, if you think that he loses a single moment of his working day, in reproducing or replacing the values of the cotton, the machinery, and so on. On the contrary, it is because his labour converts the cotton and spindles into yarn, because he spins, that the values of the cotton and spindles go over to the yarn of their own accord. This result is owing to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is true, he will in one hour transfer to the yarn more value, in the shape of cotton, than he will in half an hour; but that is only because in one hour he spins up more cotton than in half an hour. You see then, your assertion, that the workman produces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages, and in the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this, that in the yarn produced by him in 2 working-hours, whether they are the 2 first or the 2 last hours of the working day, in that yarn, there are incorporated 111/2 working-hours, or just a whole day's work, i. e. , two hours of his own work and 91/2 hours of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 53/4 hours, he produces his wages, and in the last 53/4 hours your net profit, amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former, but not for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of payment of labour- power, I only talk your own slang. Now, gentlemen, if you compare the working-time you pay for, with that which you do not pay for, you will find that they are to one another, as half a day is to half a day; this gives a rate of 100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is not the least doubt, that if you make you --hands? toil for 13 hours, instead of 111/2, and, as may be expected from you, treat the work done in that extra one hour and a half, as pure surplus labour, then the latter will be increased from 53/4 hours' labour to 71/4 hours' labour, and the rate of surplus value from 100% to 126 2/23%. So that you are altogether too sanguine, in expecting that by such an addition of 11/2 hours to the working day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in other words that it will be --more than doubled. ? On the other hand-man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when carried in the purse - you take too pessimist a view, when you fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from 111/2 to 10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus labour will fall from 53/4 hours to 43/4 hours, a period that still gives a very profitable rate of surplus value, namely 82 14/23%. But this dreadful --last hour,? about which you have invented more stories than have the millenarians about the day of judgment, is --all bosh. ? If it goes, it will cost neither you, your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their --purity of mind. ? 11 Whenever your --last hour? strikes in earnest, think of the Oxford Professor. And now, gentlemen, --farewell, and may we meet again in yonder better world, but not before. ?
Senior invented the battle cry of the --last hour? in 1836. 12 In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry was again raised by James Wilson, an economic mandarin of high standing: this time in opposition to the 10 hours' bill.
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Chapter 9
Section 4: Surplus-Produce
The portion of the product that represents the surplus value, (one tenth of the 20 lbs. , or 2 lbs. of yarn, in the example given in Sec. 2) we call --surplus-produce. ? Just as the rate of surplus value is determined by its relation, not to the sum total of the capital, but to its variable part; in like manner, the relative quantity of surplus-produce is determined by the ratio that this produce bears, not to the remaining part of the total product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated the necessary labour. Since the production of surplus value is the chief end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the greatness of a man's or a nation's wealth should be measured, not by the absolute quantity produced, but by the relative magnitude of the surplus-produce. 13
The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus labour, i. e. , of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the value of his labour-power, and produces the surplus value, this sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i. e. , the working day.
1 --If we reckon the value of the fixed capital employed as a part of the advances, we must reckon the remaining value of such capital at the end of the year as a part of the annual returns. ? (Malthus, --Princ. of Pol. Econ. ? 2nd. ed. , Lond. , 1836, p. 269. )
2 What Lucretius says is self-evident; --nil posse creari de nihilo,? out of nothing, nothing can be created. Creation of value is transformation of labour-power into labour. Labour-power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of nourishing matter.
3 In the same way that the English use the terms --rate of profit,? --rate of interest. ? We shall see, in Book III, that the rate of profit is no mystery, so soon as we know the laws of surplus value. If we reverse the process, we cannot comprehend either the one or the other.
4 Note added in the 3rd German edition.
-- The author resorts here to the economic language in current use. It will be remembered that on p. 182 (present edition, p. 174) it was shown that in reality the labourer --advances? to the capitalist and not the capitalist to the labourer. -- F. E.
5 In this work, we have, up to now, employed the term --necessary labour-time,? to designate the time necessary under given social conditions for the production of any commodity. Henceforward we use it to designate also the time necessary for the production of the particular commodity labour-power. The use of one and the same technical term in different senses is inconvenient, but in no science can it be altogether avoided. Compare, for instance, the higher with the lower branches of mathematics.
6 Herr Wilhelm Thucydides Roscher has found a mare's nest. He has made the important discovery that if, on the one hand, the formation of surplus value, or surplus-produce, and the consequent accumulation of capital, is now-a-days due to the thrift of the capitalist, on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilisation it is the strong who compel the weak to economise. (l. c. , p. 78. ) To economise what? Labour? Or superfluous wealth that does not exist? What is it that makes such men as Roscher account for the origin of surplus value, by a mere rechauffe? of the more of less plausible excuses by the capitalist, for his appropriation of surplus value? It is, besides their real ignorance, their apologetic dread of a scientific analysis of value and surplus value, and of obtaining a result, possibly not altogether palatable to the powers that be.
7 Although the rate of surplus value is an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour- power, it is, in no sense, an expression for the absolute amount of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labour 5 hours and the surplus labour = 5 hours, the degree of exploitation is 100%. The amount of exploitation is here measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour = 6 hours and the surplus labour = 6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains, as before, 100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased 20%, namely from five hours to six.
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8 The above data, which may be relied upon, were given me by a Manchester spinner. In England the horse-power of an engine was formerly calculated from the diameter of its cylinder, now the actual horse-power shown by the indicator is taken.
9 The calculations given in the text are intended merely as illustrations. We have in fact. assumed that prices = values. We shall, however, see, in Book Ill. , that even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple manner.
10 Senior, l. c. , pp. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no importance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as part of their profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner has shown in --A Letter to Mr. Senior,? &c. , London, 1837, that they are worth no more than so-called --Analysis. ? Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners in 1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered undying service to the English working-class. He carried on a life-long contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the Cabinet, to whom the number of votes given by the masters in the Lower House, was a matter of far greater importance than the number of hours worked by the --hands? in the mills.
Apart from efforts in principle, Senior's statement is confused. What he really intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for 111/2 hours or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year, may be conceived to consist of 111/2 hours or 23 half-hours, but each multiplied by the number of working days in the year. On this supposition, the 23 half-hours yield an annual product of ? 115,000; one half-hour yields 1/23 * ? 115,000; 20 half-hours yield 20/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 100,000, i. e. , they replace no more than the capital advanced. There remain 3 half- hours, which yield 1/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 5,000 or the gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields 1/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 5,000; i. e. , it makes up for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half- hours, i. e. , the last hour, yield 2/23 * ? 115,000 = ? 10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senior converts the last 2/23 of the product into portions of the working day itself.
11 If, on the one hand, Senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer, the existence of he English cotton industry, and England's command of the markets of the world, depend on --the last working-hour,? on the other hand, Dr. Andrew Ure showed, that if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of being kept the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory, are turned out an hour sooner into the heartless and frivolous outer world, they will be deprived, by idleness and vice, of all hope of salvation for their souls. Since 1848, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this --last,? this --fatal hour. ? Thus Mr. Hovell in his report of the 21st May, 1855: --Had the following ingenious calculation (he quotes Senior) been correct, every cotton factory in the United Kingdom would have been working at a loss since the year 1850. ? (Reports of the Insp. of Fact. , for the half-year, ending 30th April, 1855, pp. 19, 20. ) In the year 1848, after the passing of the 10 hours' bill, the masters of some flax spinning mills, scattered, few and far between, over the country on the borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill on to the shoulders of a few of their work-people. One of the clauses of this petition is as follows: --Your petitioners, as parents, conceive that an additional hour of leisure will tend more to demoralise the children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the parent of vice. ? On this the factory report of 31st Oct. , 1848, says: The atmosphere of the flax mills, in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents work, is so loaded with dust and fibre from the raw material, that it is exceptionally unpleasant to stand even 10 minutes in the spinning rooms: for you are unable to do so without the most painful sensation, owing to the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, and mouth, being immediately filled by the clouds of flax dust from which there is no escape. The labour itself, owing to the feverish haste of the machinery, demands unceasing application of skill and movement, under the control of a watchfulness that never tires, and it seems somewhat hard, to let parents apply the term
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--idling? to their own children, who, after allowing for meal-times, are fettered for 10 whole hours to such an occupation, in such an atmosphere. . . . These children work longer than the labourers in the neighbouring villages. . . . Such cruel talk about --idleness and vice? ought to be branded as the purest cant, and the most shameless hypocrisy. . . . That portion of the public, who, about 12 years ago, were struck by the assurance with which, under the sanction of high authority, it was publicly and most earnestly proclaimed, that the whole net profit of the manufacturer flows from the labour of the last hour, and that, therefore, the reduction of the working day by one hour, would destroy his net profit, that portion of the public, we say, will hardly believe its own eyes, when it now finds, that the original discovery of the virtues of --the last hour? has since been so far improved, as to include morals as well as profit; so that, if the duration of the labour of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together with the net profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last, this fatal hour. (See Repts. , Insp. of Fact. , for 31st Oct. , 1848, p. 101. ) The same report then gives some examples of the morality and virtue of these same pure-minded manufacturers, of the tricks, the artifices, the cajoling, the threats, and the falsifications, they made use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign petitions of such a kind, and then to impose them upon Parliament as the petitions of a whole branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic of the present status of so-called economic science, that neither Senior himself, who, at a later period, to his honour be it said, energetically supported the factory legislation, nor his opponents, from first to last, have ever been able to explain the false conclusions of the --original discovery. ? They appeal to actual experience, but the why and wherefore remains a mystery.
12 Nevertheless, the learned professor was not without some benefit from his journey to Manchester. In the --Letters on the Factory Act,? he makes the whole net gains including --profit? and --interests? and even --something more,? depend upon a single unpaid hour's work of the labourer. One year previously, in his --Outlines of Political Economy,? written for the instruction of Oxford students and cultivated Philistines, he had also --discovered, in opposition to Ricardo's determination of value by labour, that profit is derived from the labour of the capitalist, and interest from his asceticism, in other words, from his abstinence. ? The dodge was an old one, but the word --abstinence? was new. Herr Roscher translates it rightly by --Enthaltung. ? Some of his countrymen, the Browns, Jones, and Robinsons, of Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have, monk-like, rendered it by --Entsagung? (renunciation).
13 --To an individual with a capital of ? 20,000, whose profits were ? 2,000 per annum, it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a 100 or 1,000 men, whether the commodity produced sold for ? 10,000 or ? 20,000, provided, in all cases, his profit were not diminished below ? 2,000. Is not the real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rent and profits, be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of 10 or of 12 millions of inhabitants. ? (Ric. l. c. ,. p. 416. ) Long before Ricardo, Arthur Young, a fanatical upholder of surplus-produce, for the rest, a rambling, uncritical writer, whose reputation is in the inverse ratio of his merit, says, --Of what use, in a modem kingdom, would be a whole province thus divided [in the old Roman manner, by small independent peasants], however well cultivated, except for the mere purpose of breeding men, which taken singly is a most useless purpose? ? (Arthur Young: --Political Arithmetic, &c. ? London, 1774, p. 47. )
Very curious is --the strong inclination. . . to represent net wealth as beneficial to the labouring class. . . though it is evidently not on account of being net. ? (Th . Hopkins, --On Rent of Land, &c. ? London, 1828, p. 126. )
? ? Chapter 10: The Working day
Section 1: The Limits of the Working day
We started with the supposition that labour-power is bought and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commodities, is determined by the working-time necessary to its production. If the production of the average daily means of subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours, he must work, on the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour-power, or to reproduce the value received as the result of its sale. The necessary part of his working day amounts to 6 hours, and is, therefore, caeteris paribus [other things being equal], a given quantity. But with this, the extent of the working day itself is not yet given.
Let us assume that the line A---B represents the length of the necessary working-time, say 6 hours. If the labour be prolonged 1, 3, or 6 hours beyond A--B, we have 3 other lines:
Working day I. Working day II. Working day III. A---B-C. A---B--C. A---B---C.
representing 3 different working days of 7, 9, and 12 hours. The extension B--C of the line A--B represents the length of the surplus labour. As the working day is A--B + B--C or A--C, it varies with the variable quantity B--C. Since A--B is constant, the ratio of B--C to A--B can always be calculated. In working day I, it is 1/6, in working day II, 3/6, in working day III 6/6 of A--B. Since further the ratio (surplus working-time)/(necessary working-time), determines the rate of the surplus value, the latter is given by the ratio of B--C to A--B. It amounts in the 3 different working days respectively to 16 2/3, 50 and 100 per cent. On the other hand, the rate of surplus value alone would not give us the extent of the working day. If this rate, e. g. , were 100 per cent. , the working day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours. It would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the working day, necessary-labour and surplus labour time, were equal in extent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts was.
The working day is thus not a constant, but a variable quantity. One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the working-time required for the reproduction of the labour-power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies with the duration of the surplus labour. The working day is, therefore, determinable, but is, per se, indeterminate.
