It was now a question of
production
of surplus labour itself: So was it also with the corve?
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
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. 1
Although the working day is not a fixed, but a fluent quantity, it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain limits. The minimum limit is, however, not determinable; of course, if we make the extension line B--C or the surplus labour = 0, we have a minimum limit, i. e. , the part of the day which the labourer must necessarily work for his own maintenance. On the basis of capitalist production, however, this necessary labour can form a part only of the working day; the working day itself can never be reduced to this minimum. On the other hand, the working day has a maximum limit. It cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maximum limit is conditioned by two things. First, by the physical bounds of labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force. A horse, in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8 hours. During part of the day this force must rest, sleep; during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs, to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physical limitations, the extension of the working day encounters moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the
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working day fluctuates, therefore, within physical and social bounds. But both these limiting conditions are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest latitude. So we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i. e. , of the most different lengths.
The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate. To him its use-value belongs during one working day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is a working day? 2
At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule [the outermost limit], the necessary limit of the working day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour. 3
Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. 4
If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. 5
The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:
The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c. , I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of --saving? and --abstinence. ? Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour- power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour- power, which you pay me from day to day is 1/(365*30) or 1/10950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily 1/10950 instead of 1/3650 of its total value, i. e. , only 1/3 of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of 2/3 of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity. 6
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We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working day, no limit to surplus labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i. e. , the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i. e. , the working-class.
Section 2: The Greed for Surplus-Labor, Manufacturer and Boyard
Capital has not invented surplus labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production7, whether this proprietor be the Athenian ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [well- to-do man], Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus [Roman citizen], Norman baron, American slave- owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist. 8 It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange-value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over-work becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death is here the recognised form of over-work. Only read Diodorus Siculus. 9 Still these are exceptions in antiquity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave-labour, corve? e-labour, &c. , are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilised horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the negro labour in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consumption. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to these states, the over-working of the negro and sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years of labour became a factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products.
It was now a question of production of surplus labour itself: So was it also with the corve? e, e. g. , in the Danubian Principalities (now Roumania).
The comparison of the greed for surplus labour in the Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English factories has a special interest, because surplus labour in the corve? e has an independent and palpable form.
Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour, and 6 hours of surplus labour. Then the free labourer gives the capitalist every week 6 x 6 or 36 hours of surplus labour. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. But this is not evident on the surface. Surplus labour and necessary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express the same relationship by saying, e. g. , that the labourer in
? 162 Chapter 10
every minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist, etc. It is otherwise with the corve? e. The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant does for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus labour on behalf of the Boyard. The one he does on his own field, the other on the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time exist, therefore, independently, side by side one with the other. In the corve? e the surplus labour is accurately marked off from the necessary labour. This, however, can make no difference with regard to the quantitative relation of surplus labour to necessary labour. Three days' surplus labour in the week remain three days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself, whether it be called corve? e or wage-labour. But in the capitalist the greed for surplus labour appears in the straining after an unlimited extension of the working day, in the Boyard more simply in a direct hunting after days of corve? e. 10
In the Danubian Principalities the corve? e was mixed up with rents in kind and other appurtenances of bondage, but it formed the most important tribute paid to the ruling class. Where this was the case, the corve? e rarely arose from serfdom; serfdom much more frequently on the other hand took origin from the corve? e. 11 This is what took place in the Roumanian provinces. Their original mode of production was based on community of the soil, but not in the Slavonic or Indian form. Part of the land was cultivated in severalty as freehold by the members of the community, another part - ager publicus - was cultivated by them in common. The products of this common labour served partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and other accidents, partly as a public store for providing the costs of war, religion, and other common expenses. In course of time military and clerical dignitaries usurped, along with the common land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the free peasants on their common land was transformed into corve? e for the thieves of the common land. This corve? e soon developed into a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not in point of law, until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal under presence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corve? e, which the Russian General Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was of course dictated by the Boyards themselves. Thus Russia conquered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian provinces, and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe.
According to the --Re`glement organique,? as this code of the corve? e is called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called landlord, besides a mass of detailed payments in kind: (1), 12 days of general labour; (2), one day of field labour; (3), one day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With deep insight into Political Economy, however, the working day is not taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working day necessary to the production of an average daily product; and that average daily product is determined in so crafty a way that no Cyclops would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words, the Re? glement itself declares with true Russian irony that by 12 working days one must understand the product of the manual labour of 36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day of wood carrying in like manner three times as much. In all, 42 corve? e days. To this had to be added the so-called jobagie, service due to the lord for extraordinary occasions. In proportion to the size of its population, every village has to furnish annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This additional corve? e is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant. Thus the prescribed corve? e amounts to 56 working days yearly. But the agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence of the severe climate only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays and holidays, 30 on an average for bad weather, together 70 days, do not count. 140 working days remain. The ratio of the corve? e to the necessary labour 56/84 or 66 2/3 % gives a much smaller rate of surplus value than that which regulates the labour of the English agricultural or factory labourer. This is, however, only the legally prescribed corve? e. And in a spirit yet more --liberal? than the English Factory Acts, the --Re`glement organique? has known
? 163 Chapter 10
how to facilitate its own evasion. After it has made 56 days out of 12, the nominal day's work of each of the 56 corve? e days is again so arranged that a portion of it must fall on the ensuing day. In one day, e. g. , must be weeded an extent of land, which, for this work, especially in maize plantations, needs twice as much time. The legal day's work for some kinds of agricultural labour is interpretable in such a way that the day begins in May and ends in October. In Moldavia conditions are still harder.
--The 12 corve? e days of the ? Re`glement organique' cried a Boyard drunk with victory, amount to 365 days in the year. ? 12
If the Re`glement organique of the Danubian provinces was a positive expression of the greed for surplus labour which every paragraph legalised, the English Factory Acts are the negative expression of the same greed. These acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power, by forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made by a state that is ruled by capitalist-and landlord. Apart from the working-class movement that daily grew more threatening, the limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same necessity which spread guano over the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly as the diminishing military standard in Germany and France. 13
The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the average working day 10 hours, i. e. , for the first 5 days 12 hours from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. , including 1/2 an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner, and thus leaving 101/2 working-hours, and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a. m. to 2 p. m. , of which 1/2 an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working-hours are left, 101/2 for each of the first 5 days, 71/2 for the last. 14
Certain guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, directly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published half-yearly, by order of Parliament. They give regular and official statistics of the capitalistic greed for surplus labour.
Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors. 15
--The fraudulent mill-owner begins work a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) before 6 a. m. , and leaves off a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after 6 p. m. He takes 5 minutes from the beginning and from the end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10 minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally allowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after 2 p. m. on Saturday. Thus his gain is -
Before 6 a. m. , After 6 p. m. ,
At breakfast time, At dinner time,
Five days - 300 minutes, On Saturday before 6 a. m. ,
At breakfast time, After 2 p. m. ,
Total weekly,
15 minutes. 15 "
10 "
20 "
60 "
15 minutes. 10 "
15 "
40 minutes. 340 minutes.
? ? ? 164
Chapter 10
Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50 working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and occasional stoppages) is equal to 27 working days. ? 16
--Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied by weeks, are equal to two and a half days of produce in the year. ? 17
--An additional hour a day gained by small instalments before 6 a. m. , after 6 p. m. , and at the beginning and end of the times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to working 13 months in the year. ? 18
Crises during which production is interrupted and the factories work --short time,? i. e. , for only a part of the week, naturally do not affect the tendency to extend the working day. The less business there is, the more profit has to be made on the business done. The less time spent in work, the more of that time has to be turned into surplus labour-time.
Thus the Factory Inspector's report on the period of the crisis from 1857 to 1858:
--It may seem inconsistent that there should be any overworking at a time when trade is so bad; but that very badness leads to the transgression by unscrupulous men, they get the extra profit of it. . . . In the last half year, says Leonard Horner, 122 mills in my district have been given up; 143 were found standing,? yet, over- work is continued beyond the legal hours. ? 19
--For a great part of the time,? says Mr. Howell, --owing to the depression of trade, many factories were altogether closed, and a still greater number were working short time. I continue, however, to receive about the usual number of complaints that half, or three-quarters of an hour in the day, are snatched from the workers by encroaching upon the times professedly allowed for rest and refreshment. ? 20
The same phenomenon was reproduced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton-crises from 1861 to 1865. 21
--It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse, when persons are found at work in a factory, either at a meal hour, or at some illegal time, that they will not leave the mill at the appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force them to cease work [cleaning their machinery, &c. ], especially on Saturday afternoons. But, if the hands remain in a factory after the machinery has ceased to revolve . . . they would not have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart specially for cleaning, &c. , either before 6 a. m. [sic. ! ] or before 2 p. m. on Saturday afternoons. ? 22
--The profit to be gained by it (over-working in violation of the Act) appears to be, to many, a greater temptation than they can resist; they calculate upon the chance of not being found out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs, which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they find that if they should be detected there will still be a considerable balance of gain. . . . 23 In cases where the additional time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course of the day, there are insuperable difficulties to the inspectors making out a case. ? 24
These --small thefts? of capital from the labourer's meal and recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as --petty pilferings of minutes,? 25--snatching a few minutes,? 26 or, as the labourers technically called them, --nibbling and cribbling at meal-times. ? 27
It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus value by surplus labour, is no secret.
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--If you allow me,? said a highly respectable master to me, --to work only ten minutes in the day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my pocket. ? 28 --Moments are the elements of profit. ? 29
Nothing is from this point of view more characteristic than the designation of the workers who work full time as --full-timers,? and the children under 13 who are only allowed to work 6 hours as --half-timers. ? The worker is here nothing more than personified labour-time. All individual distinctions are merged in those of --full-timers? and --half-timers? 30
Section 3: Branches of English Industry Without Legal Limits to Exploitation
We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of the working day, the were-wolf's hunger for surplus labour in a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins31, caused capital at last to be bound by the chains of legal regulations. Now, let us cast a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploitation of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was so yesterday.
Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, --that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilised world . . . . Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate. . . .
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. 1
Although the working day is not a fixed, but a fluent quantity, it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain limits. The minimum limit is, however, not determinable; of course, if we make the extension line B--C or the surplus labour = 0, we have a minimum limit, i. e. , the part of the day which the labourer must necessarily work for his own maintenance. On the basis of capitalist production, however, this necessary labour can form a part only of the working day; the working day itself can never be reduced to this minimum. On the other hand, the working day has a maximum limit. It cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maximum limit is conditioned by two things. First, by the physical bounds of labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force. A horse, in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8 hours. During part of the day this force must rest, sleep; during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs, to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physical limitations, the extension of the working day encounters moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the
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working day fluctuates, therefore, within physical and social bounds. But both these limiting conditions are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest latitude. So we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i. e. , of the most different lengths.
The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate. To him its use-value belongs during one working day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is a working day? 2
At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule [the outermost limit], the necessary limit of the working day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour. 3
Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. 4
If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. 5
The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:
The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c. , I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of --saving? and --abstinence. ? Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour- power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour- power, which you pay me from day to day is 1/(365*30) or 1/10950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily 1/10950 instead of 1/3650 of its total value, i. e. , only 1/3 of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of 2/3 of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity. 6
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We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working day, no limit to surplus labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i. e. , the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i. e. , the working-class.
Section 2: The Greed for Surplus-Labor, Manufacturer and Boyard
Capital has not invented surplus labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production7, whether this proprietor be the Athenian ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [well- to-do man], Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus [Roman citizen], Norman baron, American slave- owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist. 8 It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange-value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over-work becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death is here the recognised form of over-work. Only read Diodorus Siculus. 9 Still these are exceptions in antiquity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave-labour, corve? e-labour, &c. , are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilised horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the negro labour in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consumption. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to these states, the over-working of the negro and sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years of labour became a factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products.
It was now a question of production of surplus labour itself: So was it also with the corve? e, e. g. , in the Danubian Principalities (now Roumania).
The comparison of the greed for surplus labour in the Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English factories has a special interest, because surplus labour in the corve? e has an independent and palpable form.
Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour, and 6 hours of surplus labour. Then the free labourer gives the capitalist every week 6 x 6 or 36 hours of surplus labour. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. But this is not evident on the surface. Surplus labour and necessary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express the same relationship by saying, e. g. , that the labourer in
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every minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist, etc. It is otherwise with the corve? e. The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant does for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus labour on behalf of the Boyard. The one he does on his own field, the other on the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time exist, therefore, independently, side by side one with the other. In the corve? e the surplus labour is accurately marked off from the necessary labour. This, however, can make no difference with regard to the quantitative relation of surplus labour to necessary labour. Three days' surplus labour in the week remain three days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself, whether it be called corve? e or wage-labour. But in the capitalist the greed for surplus labour appears in the straining after an unlimited extension of the working day, in the Boyard more simply in a direct hunting after days of corve? e. 10
In the Danubian Principalities the corve? e was mixed up with rents in kind and other appurtenances of bondage, but it formed the most important tribute paid to the ruling class. Where this was the case, the corve? e rarely arose from serfdom; serfdom much more frequently on the other hand took origin from the corve? e. 11 This is what took place in the Roumanian provinces. Their original mode of production was based on community of the soil, but not in the Slavonic or Indian form. Part of the land was cultivated in severalty as freehold by the members of the community, another part - ager publicus - was cultivated by them in common. The products of this common labour served partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and other accidents, partly as a public store for providing the costs of war, religion, and other common expenses. In course of time military and clerical dignitaries usurped, along with the common land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the free peasants on their common land was transformed into corve? e for the thieves of the common land. This corve? e soon developed into a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not in point of law, until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal under presence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corve? e, which the Russian General Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was of course dictated by the Boyards themselves. Thus Russia conquered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian provinces, and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe.
According to the --Re`glement organique,? as this code of the corve? e is called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called landlord, besides a mass of detailed payments in kind: (1), 12 days of general labour; (2), one day of field labour; (3), one day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With deep insight into Political Economy, however, the working day is not taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working day necessary to the production of an average daily product; and that average daily product is determined in so crafty a way that no Cyclops would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words, the Re? glement itself declares with true Russian irony that by 12 working days one must understand the product of the manual labour of 36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day of wood carrying in like manner three times as much. In all, 42 corve? e days. To this had to be added the so-called jobagie, service due to the lord for extraordinary occasions. In proportion to the size of its population, every village has to furnish annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This additional corve? e is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant. Thus the prescribed corve? e amounts to 56 working days yearly. But the agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence of the severe climate only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays and holidays, 30 on an average for bad weather, together 70 days, do not count. 140 working days remain. The ratio of the corve? e to the necessary labour 56/84 or 66 2/3 % gives a much smaller rate of surplus value than that which regulates the labour of the English agricultural or factory labourer. This is, however, only the legally prescribed corve? e. And in a spirit yet more --liberal? than the English Factory Acts, the --Re`glement organique? has known
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how to facilitate its own evasion. After it has made 56 days out of 12, the nominal day's work of each of the 56 corve? e days is again so arranged that a portion of it must fall on the ensuing day. In one day, e. g. , must be weeded an extent of land, which, for this work, especially in maize plantations, needs twice as much time. The legal day's work for some kinds of agricultural labour is interpretable in such a way that the day begins in May and ends in October. In Moldavia conditions are still harder.
--The 12 corve? e days of the ? Re`glement organique' cried a Boyard drunk with victory, amount to 365 days in the year. ? 12
If the Re`glement organique of the Danubian provinces was a positive expression of the greed for surplus labour which every paragraph legalised, the English Factory Acts are the negative expression of the same greed. These acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power, by forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made by a state that is ruled by capitalist-and landlord. Apart from the working-class movement that daily grew more threatening, the limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same necessity which spread guano over the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly as the diminishing military standard in Germany and France. 13
The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the average working day 10 hours, i. e. , for the first 5 days 12 hours from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. , including 1/2 an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner, and thus leaving 101/2 working-hours, and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a. m. to 2 p. m. , of which 1/2 an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working-hours are left, 101/2 for each of the first 5 days, 71/2 for the last. 14
Certain guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, directly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published half-yearly, by order of Parliament. They give regular and official statistics of the capitalistic greed for surplus labour.
Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors. 15
--The fraudulent mill-owner begins work a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) before 6 a. m. , and leaves off a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after 6 p. m. He takes 5 minutes from the beginning and from the end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10 minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally allowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after 2 p. m. on Saturday. Thus his gain is -
Before 6 a. m. , After 6 p. m. ,
At breakfast time, At dinner time,
Five days - 300 minutes, On Saturday before 6 a. m. ,
At breakfast time, After 2 p. m. ,
Total weekly,
15 minutes. 15 "
10 "
20 "
60 "
15 minutes. 10 "
15 "
40 minutes. 340 minutes.
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Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50 working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and occasional stoppages) is equal to 27 working days. ? 16
--Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied by weeks, are equal to two and a half days of produce in the year. ? 17
--An additional hour a day gained by small instalments before 6 a. m. , after 6 p. m. , and at the beginning and end of the times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to working 13 months in the year. ? 18
Crises during which production is interrupted and the factories work --short time,? i. e. , for only a part of the week, naturally do not affect the tendency to extend the working day. The less business there is, the more profit has to be made on the business done. The less time spent in work, the more of that time has to be turned into surplus labour-time.
Thus the Factory Inspector's report on the period of the crisis from 1857 to 1858:
--It may seem inconsistent that there should be any overworking at a time when trade is so bad; but that very badness leads to the transgression by unscrupulous men, they get the extra profit of it. . . . In the last half year, says Leonard Horner, 122 mills in my district have been given up; 143 were found standing,? yet, over- work is continued beyond the legal hours. ? 19
--For a great part of the time,? says Mr. Howell, --owing to the depression of trade, many factories were altogether closed, and a still greater number were working short time. I continue, however, to receive about the usual number of complaints that half, or three-quarters of an hour in the day, are snatched from the workers by encroaching upon the times professedly allowed for rest and refreshment. ? 20
The same phenomenon was reproduced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton-crises from 1861 to 1865. 21
--It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse, when persons are found at work in a factory, either at a meal hour, or at some illegal time, that they will not leave the mill at the appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force them to cease work [cleaning their machinery, &c. ], especially on Saturday afternoons. But, if the hands remain in a factory after the machinery has ceased to revolve . . . they would not have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart specially for cleaning, &c. , either before 6 a. m. [sic. ! ] or before 2 p. m. on Saturday afternoons. ? 22
--The profit to be gained by it (over-working in violation of the Act) appears to be, to many, a greater temptation than they can resist; they calculate upon the chance of not being found out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs, which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they find that if they should be detected there will still be a considerable balance of gain. . . . 23 In cases where the additional time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course of the day, there are insuperable difficulties to the inspectors making out a case. ? 24
These --small thefts? of capital from the labourer's meal and recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as --petty pilferings of minutes,? 25--snatching a few minutes,? 26 or, as the labourers technically called them, --nibbling and cribbling at meal-times. ? 27
It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus value by surplus labour, is no secret.
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--If you allow me,? said a highly respectable master to me, --to work only ten minutes in the day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my pocket. ? 28 --Moments are the elements of profit. ? 29
Nothing is from this point of view more characteristic than the designation of the workers who work full time as --full-timers,? and the children under 13 who are only allowed to work 6 hours as --half-timers. ? The worker is here nothing more than personified labour-time. All individual distinctions are merged in those of --full-timers? and --half-timers? 30
Section 3: Branches of English Industry Without Legal Limits to Exploitation
We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of the working day, the were-wolf's hunger for surplus labour in a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins31, caused capital at last to be bound by the chains of legal regulations. Now, let us cast a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploitation of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was so yesterday.
Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, --that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilised world . . . . Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate. . . .
