"To all intents and purposes, therefore, as an Act for any benevolent or educational purpose, it is a failure; since it can scarcely be called benevolent to permit, which is tantamount to compelling, women and children to work 14 hours a day with or without meals, as the case may be, and perhaps for longer hours than these, withoiit limit as to age, without reference to sex, and without regard to the social habits of the families of the neighbourhood, in which such works (bleaching and dyeing) are situ- ated." (Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1863, p. 40.)
baking were placed under special Acts, by which, in the former, the labour of young persons and women during the night-time (from 8 in the evening to 6 in the morning), and in the latter, the employment of journeymen bakers under 18, between 9 in the evening and 5 in the morning were forbidden. We shall return to the later proposals of the same Commission, which threatened to deprive of their " freedom " all the impor- tant branches of English Industry, with the exception of agri- culture, mines, and the means of transport.^ bECTION 7. — THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL WORKING-DAY. RE-ACTION OF THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS ON OTHER COUNTRIES.
The reader will bear in mind that the production of surplus- value, or the extraction of surplus-labour, is the specific end and aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production, quite apart from any changes in the mode of production, whicli may arise from the subordination of labour to capital. He will remember that as far as we have at present gone, only the inde- pendent labourer, and therefore only the labourer legally quali- fied to act for himself, enters as a vendor of a commodity into a contract with the capitalist. If, therefore, in our historical sketch, on the one hand, modern industry; on the other, the labour of those who are physically and legally minors, play important parts, the former was to us only a special depart- ment, and the latter onl}^ a specially striking example of labour exploitation. Without, however, anticipating the subsequent development of our inquiry, from the mere connexion of the historic facts before us, it follows: First. The passion of capital for an unlimited and reckless extension of the working day, is first gratified in the industries earliest revolutionised by water-power, steam, and machinery, in those first creations of the modern mode of production, cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning, and weaving. The changes in the material mode of production, and the corresponding changes in the social relations of the producers ^ gave rise first 1 Note to the 2n(i Ed. Since 1866, when I wrote the above passages, a re-action has again set in.
2 "The conduct of each of these classes (capitalists and workmen) has been the result of the relative situation in which they have been placed." (Reports, &c., for The Working Day. 285 to an extravagance beyond all bounds, and then in opposition to this, called forth a control on the part of Society which legally limits, regulates, and makes uniform the working day and its pauses. This control appears, therefore, during the first half of the nineteenth century simply as exceptional legislation.^ As soon as this primitive dominion of the new mode of production was conquered, it was found that, in the meantime, not only had many other branches of production been made to adopt the same factory system, but that manu- factures with more or less obsolete methods, such as potteries, glass-making, &c., that old-fashioned handicrafts, like baking, and, finally, even that the so-called domestic industries, such as nail-making, ^ had long since fallen as completely under capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves. Legisla- tion was, therefore, compelled to gradually get rid of its ex- ceptional character, or where, as in England, it proceeds after the manner of the Roman Casuists, to declare any house in which work was done to be a factory.^ Second, The history of the regulation of the working day in certain branches of production, and the struggle still going on in others in regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that the isolated labourer, the labourer as "free" vendor of his labour-power, when capitalist production has once attained a certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance. The creation of a normal working day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working class. As the contest takes place in the arena of modern industry, it first breaks out in the home of that industry — England.* The English factory 1 '* The employments, placed under restriction, were connected vvith the manufac- ture of textile fabrics by the aid of steam or water-power. There were two conditions to which an employment must be subject to cause it to be inspected, viz., the use of steam or water-power, and the manujfacture of certain specified fibres." (Keports, &c., for 31st October, 1864, p. 8.)
2 On the condition of so-called domestic industries, specially valuable materials are to be found in the latest reports of the Children's ICmployment Commission.
3 " The Acts of last Session (1864)...embrace a diversity of occupations, the customs in which differ greatly, and the use of mechanical power to give motion to machinery is no longer one of the elements necessary, as formerly, to constitute, in legal phrase, a * Factory.'" (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1864, p. 8.)
4 Belgium, the paradise of Continental Liberalism, shows no trace of this move- ment. Even in the coal and metal mines, labourers of both sexes, and all ages, are consumed, in perfect "freedom," at any period, and through any length of time. Of every 1000 persons employed there, 733 are men, 88 women, 135 boys, and 44 girls 286 Capitalist Production, workers were the champions, not only of the English, but of the modern working-class generally, as their theorists were the first to throw down the gauntlet to the theory of capital.^ Hence, the philosopher of the Factory, Ure, denounces as an ineffable disgrace ta the English working-class that they in- scribed "the slavery of the Factory Acts " on the banner which they bore against capital, manfully striving for "perfect free- dom of labour. "2 France limps slowly behind England. The February revolu- tion was necessary to bring into the world the 12 hours' law,* which is much more deficient than its Enorlish orio'inal. For o o all that, the French revolutionary method has its special advantages. It once for all commands the same limit to the working-day in all shops and factories without distinction, whilst English legislation reluctantly yields to the pressure of circumstances, now on this point, now on that, and is getting lost in a hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enact- ments.^ On the other hand, the French law proclaims as a under 16; in the blast-furnaces, &;c., of every 1000, 688 are men, 149 women, 98 boys, and 85 girls under 16. Add to this the low wages for the enormous exploitation of mature and immature labour-power. The average daily pay for a man is 2s. 8d., for a woman, Is. 8d., for a boy, Is. 2^d. As a result, Belgium had in 1863, as compared with 1850, nearly doubled both the amount and the value of its exports of coal, iron, &c.
1 Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation of the working day in theory, but actually introduced the 10 hours' day into his factory at New Lanark. This was laughed at as a communistic Utopia; so were his " Combination of children's education with productive labour," and the Co-operative Societies of working-men, first called into being by him. To-day, the first Utopia is a Factory Act, the second figures as an official phrase in aU Factory Acts, the thiid is already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug.
2 Ure: "French translation, Philosophie des Llanufactures." Paris, 1836, Vol. II., 3 In the Compte Rendu of the International Statistical Congress at Paris, 1855, it is stated: " The French law, which limits the length of daily labour in factories and workshops to 12 hours, does not confine this work to definite fixed hours. For children's labour only the work-time is prescribed as between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. Therefore, some of the masters use the right which this fatal silence gives them to keep their works going, without intermission, day in, day out, possibly with the exception of Sunday. For this puri^ose they use two different sets of workers, of whom neither is in the workshoj) more than 12 hours at a time, but the work of the establishment lasts day and night. The law is satisfied, but is humanity? " Besides "the destructive influence of night labour on the human organism," stress is also laid upon "the fatal influence of the association of the two sexes by night in the same badly-lighted workshops."
* " For instance, there is within my district one occupier who, within the same curti- lage, is at the same time a bleacher and dyer under the Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act, a printer under the Print Works Act, and a finisher under the Factory Act."
The Working Day^ 287 principle that which in England was only won in the name of children, minors, and women, and has been only recently' for the first time claimed as a general right.^ In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery dis- figured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours' agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of Labour at Baltimore (August 16th, 1866) declared: " The first and great necessity of the present, to free the labour of this country from capitalistic slavery, is the pass- ing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal work- ing-day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained." ^ At the same time, the Congress of the International Working Men's Association at Geneva, on the proposition of the London General Council, resolved that "the limitation of the working-day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive...the Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working-day."
Thus the movement of the working-class on both sides of the Atlantic, that had grown instinctively out of the conditions (Report of Mr. Baker, in Reports, &c., for October 31st, 1861, p. 20.) After enume- ratiug the different provisions of these Acts, and the complications arising from them, Mr. Baker says: *' It will hence aj^^^ear that it must be very difficult to secure the execution of these three Acts of Parliament where the occupier chooses to evade the law." But what is assured to the lawyers by this is lawsuits.
^ Thus the Factory Inspectors at last venture to say: "These objections (of capital to the legal limitation of the working-day) must succumb before the broad principle of the rights of labour...There is a time when the master's right in his workman's labour ceases, and his time becomes his own, even if there were no exhaustion in the question." (Reports, &c., for 31st Oct., 1862, p. 54.)
^ " AVe, the workers of Dunkirk, declare that the length of time of labour required under the present system is too great, and that, far from leaving the worker time for rest and education, it plunges him into a condition of servitude but little better than slavery. That is why we decide that 8 hours are enough for a working-day, and ought to be legally recognised as enough; why we call to our help that powerful lever, the press;...and why we shall consider all those that refuse us this help as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer." (Resolution of the Working Men of Dunkiik, New York State, 1866.)
2 88 Capitalist Production.
of production themselves, endorsed the words of the English Factory Inspector, R J. Saunders: " Further steps towards a reformation of society can never be carried out with any hope of success, unless the hours of labour be limited, and the pre- scribed limit strictly enforced." ^ It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other than he entered. In the market he stood as owner of the commodity " labour-power " face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he dis- posed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is dis- covered that he was no " free agent," that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it,^ that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him " so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited." * For " protection " against " the serpent of their agonies," the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death."* In place of the pompous catalogue of the " inalienable rights of man " comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make clear '* when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins." " Quantum mutatus ab illo!
2 "The proceedings (the manoeuvres of capital, e.gr,, from 1848-50) have afforded, moreover, incontrovertible proof of the fallacy of the assertion so often advanced, that operatives need no protection, but may be considered as free agents in the disposal of the only property which they possess — the labour of their hands and the sweat of their brows." (Reports, &c., for April 30th, 1850, p. 45.) "Free labour (if so it may be termed) even in a free country, requires the strong arm of the law to protect it." (Reports, &c., for October 31st, 1864, p. 34.) "To permit, which is tantamount to compelling.. to work 14 hours a day with or without meals," &c. (Repts,, &c., for April 30th, 1863, p, 40.) s Friedrich Engels, 1. c, p. 5.
-* The 10 Hours' Act has, in the branches of industry that come under it, "put an end to the premature decrepitude of the former long-hour workers." (Reports., &c., for 31st Oct., 1859, p, 47.) " Capital (in factories) can never be employed in keep- ing the machinery in motion beyond a limited time, without certain injury to the health and morals of the labourers employed; and they are not in a position to l^rotect themselves." (1. c, p. 8.)
^ " A still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker's own time and his master's. The worker knows now when that whicli he sells is Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value, 289 CHAPTER XL RATE AND MASS OF SURPLUS-VALUE.
In this chapter, as hitherto, the value of labour-power, and therefore the part of the working-day necessary for the repro- duction or maintenance of that labour-power, are supposed to be given, constant magnitudes.
This premised, with the rate, the mass is at the same time given of the surplus- value that the individual labourer furnishes to the capitalist in a definite period of time. If, e.g.^ the necessary labour amounts to 6 hours daily, expressed in a quantum of gold ^= 3 shillings, then 8s. is the daily value of one labour-power or the value of the capital advanced in the buying of one labour-power. If, further, the rate of surplus- value be = 100 %, this variable capital of 8s. produces a mass of surplus- value of 3s., or the labourer supplies daily a mass of surplus-labour equal to 6 hours.
But the variable capital of a capitalist is the expression in money of the total value of all the labour-powers that he employs simultaneously. Its value is, therefore, equal to the average value of one labour-power, multiplied by the number of labour-powers employed. With a given value of labour- power, therefore, the magnitude of the variable capital varies directly as the number of labourers employed simultaneously. If the daily value of one labour-power = 3s., then a capital of 300s. must be advanced in order to exploit daily 100 labour- powers, of n times 3s., in order to exploit daily n labour- powers.
ended, and when his own begins; and by possessing a sure foreknowledge of this, is enabled to pre-arrange his own minutes for liis own purposes," (1, c, p. 52,) " By making them masters of their own time (the Factory Acts) have given them a moral energy which is directing them to the eventual possession of political power" (1, c,, p. 47). With suppressed irony, and in very well weighed words, the Factory In- spectors hint that the actual law also frees the capitalist from some of the brutality natural to a man who is a mere embodiment of capital, and that it has given him time for a little "culture." "Formerly the master had no time for anything but money j the servant had no time for anything but labour " (1. c, p, 48), 290 Capitalist Production.
In the same way, if a variable capital of 3s., being the daily value of one labour-power; produce a daily surplus- value of 3s., a variable capital of 300s. will produce a daily surplus-value of 300s., and one of n times 3s. a daily surplus-value of n x 3s. The mass of the surplus-value produced is therefore equal to the surplus-value which the working-day of one labourer supplies multiplied by the number of labourers employed. But as further the mass of surplus- value which a single labourer produces, the value of labour-power being given, is determined by the rate of the surplus- value, this law follows: the mass of the surplus- value pi'oduced is equal to the amount of the variable capital advanced, multiplied by the rate of surplus- value; in other words: it is determined by the compound ratio between the number of labour-powers exploited simultaneously by the same capitalist and the degree, of exploitation of each individual labour-power.
Let the mass of the surplus- value be S, the surplus- value supplied by the individual labourer in the average day s, the variable capital daily advanced in the purchase of one individual labour-power v, the sum total of the variable capital V, the value of an average labour-power P, its degree of exploitation t (nSSSboOr) ^^^ ^^ number of labourers employed n; we have: It is always supposed, not only that the value of an average labour-power is constant, but that the labourers employed by a capitalist are reduced to average labourers. There are ex- ceptional cases in which the surplus- value produced does not increase in proportion to the number of labourers exploited, but then the value of the labour-power does not remain con- stant.
In the production of a definite mass of surplus-value, there- fore, the decrease of one factor may be compensated by the in- crease of the other. If the variable capital diminishes, and at the same time the rate of surplus-value increases in the same Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value, 291 ratio, the mass of surplus- value produced remains unaltered. If on our earlier assumption the capitalist must advance 300s., in order to exploit 100 labourers a day, and if the rate of surplus-value amounts to oO %, this variable capital of 800s. yields a surplus-value of 150s. or of 100 x 3 working hours. If the rate of surplus-value doubles, or the working-day, instead of being extended from 6 to 9, is extended from 6 to 12 hours and at the same time variable capital is lessened by half, and reduced to 150s., it yields also a surplus- value of 150s. or 50 x 6 working hours. Diminution of the variable capital may there- fore be compensated by a proportionate rise in the degree of exploitation of labour-power, or the decrease in the number of the labourers employed by a proportionate extension of the working-day. Within certain limits therefore the supply of labour exploitable by capital is independent of the supply of labourers.^ On the contrary, a fall in the rate of surplus-value leaves unaltered the mass of the surplus-value produced, if the amount of the variable capital, or number of the labourers em- ployed, increases in the same proportion.
Nevertheless, the compensation of a decrease in the number of labourers employed, or of the amount of variable capital advanced, by a rise in the rate of surplus- value, or by the lengthening of the working-day, has impassable limits. What- ever the value of labour-power may be, whether the working time necessary for the maintenance of the labourer is 2 or 10 hours, the total value that a labourer can produce, day in, day out, is always less than the value in which 24 hours of labour are embodied, less than 12s., if 12s. is the money expression for 24 hours of realized labour. In our former assumption, accord- ing to which 6 working hours are daily necessary in order to reproduce the labour-power itself or to replace the value of the capital advanced in its purchase, a variable capital of 1500s., that employs 500 labourers at a rate of surplus-value of 100 % with a 12 hours' working-day, produces daily a surplus- value of 1500s. or of 6 X 500 working hours. A capital of 300s. that employs 1 This elementary law appears to be unknown to the vulgar economists, who, upside- down Archimedes, in the determination of the market-])rice of labour by supply and demand, imagine they have found the fulcrum by means of which, not to move the world, but to stop its motion.
292 Capitalist Pivduction.
100 labourers a day with a rate of surplus-value of 200 % or with a working-day of 18 hours, produces only a mass of surplus-value of 600s. or 12 x 100 working hours; and its total value-product, the equivalent of the variable capital advanced plus the surplus-value, can, day in, day out, never reach the sum of 1200s. or 24 x 100 workinor hours. The absolute limit of the average working-day — this being by Nature always less than 24 liours — sets an absolute limit to the compensation of a re- duction of variable capital by a higher rate of surplus- value, or of the decrease of the number of labourers exploited by f!»^igher degree of exploitation of labour-power. This palpable law is of importance for the clearing up of many phenomena, arising from a tendency (to be worked out later on) of capital to re- duce as much as possible the number of labourers employed by it, or its variable constituent transformed into labour-power, in contradiction to its other tendency to produce the greatest possible mass of surplus- value. On the other hand, if the mass of labour-power employed, or the amount of variable capital, increases, but not in proportion to the fall in the rate of surplus- value, the mass of the surplus-value produced, falls.
A third law results from the determination, of the mass of the surplus- value produced, by the two factors: rate of surplus- value and amount of variable capital advanced. The rate of surplus-value, or the degree of exploitation of labour-power, and the value of labour-power, or the amount of necessary working time being given, it is self-evident that the greater the variable capital, the greater would be the mass of the value produced and of the surplus-value. If the limit of the working- day is given, and also the limit of its necessary constituent, the mass of value and surplus-value that an individual capitalist produces, is clearly exclusively dependent on the mass of labour that he sets in motion. But this, under the conditions supposed above, depends on the mass of labour-power, or the number of labourers whom he exploits, and this number in its turn is determined by the amount of the variable capital advanced. With a given rate of surplus -value, and a given value of labour- power, therefore, the masses of surplus-value produced vary directly as the amounts of the variable capitals advanced.
Rate and Mass of Surplus- Vahie. 293 Now we know that the capitalist divides his capital into two parts. One part he lays out in means of production. This is the constant part of his capital. The other part he lays out in living labour-power. This part forms his variable capital. On the basis of the same mode of social production, the division of capital into constant and variable differs in different branches of production, and within the same branch of production, too, this relation changes with changes in the technical conditions and in the social combinations of the processes of production. But in whatever proportion a given capital breaks up into a constant and a variable part, whether the latter is to the former as 1: 2 or 1: 10 or 1: X, the law just laid down is not affected by this. For, according to our previous analysis, the value of the constant capital reappears in the value of the product, but does not enter into the newly produced value, the newly created value-product. To employ 1000 spinners, more raw material, spindles, fee, are, of course, required, than to employ 100. The value of these additional means of production how- ever, may rise, fall, remain unaltered, be large or small; it has no influence on the process of creation of surplus-value by means of the labour-powers that put them in motion. The law demonstrated above now, therefore, takes this form: the masses of value and of surplus-value produced by different capitals — the value of labour-power being given and its degree of ex- ploitation being equal — vary directly as the amounts of the variable constituents of these capitals, ^.e., as their constituents transformed into living labour-power.
This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appear- ance. Every one knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus-value than a baker, who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate terms are as yet wanted, as from the standpoint of elementary algebra many intermediate terms are wanted to understand that J may represent an actual magnitude. Classical economy, although not formulating the law, holds instinctively 294 Capitalist Production.
to it, because it is a necessary consequence of the general law of value. It tries to rescue the law from collision with contradictory phenomena by a vioieut abstraction. It will be seen later^ how the school of Ricardo has come to grief over this stumbling-block. Vulgar economy which, indeed, " has really learnt nothing," here as everywhere sticks to appearances in opposition to the law which regulates and explains them. In opposition to Spinoza, it believes that " ignorance is a suffi- cient reason."
The labour which is set in motion by the total capital of a society, day in, day out, may be regarded as a single collective working-day. If, e.g.^ the number of labourers is a million, and the average working-day of a labourer is 10 hours, the social working-day consists often million hours. With a given length of this working-day, whether its limits are fixed physically or socially, the mass of surplus-value can only be increased by increasing the number of labourers, i.e., of the labouring population. The growth of population here forms the mathe- matical limit to the production of surplus-value by the total social capital. On the contrary, with a given amount of population, this limit is formed by the possible lengthening of the working-day.^ It will, however, be seen in the following chapter that this law only holds for the form of surplus-value dealt with up to the present.
From the treatment of the production of surplus-value, so far, it follows that not every sum of money, or of value, is at pleasure transformable into capital. To effect this transforma- tion, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange- value must be presupposed in the hands of the individual possessor of money or commodities. The minimum of variable capital is the cost price of a single labour-power, employed the whole year through, day in, day out, for the production of surplus- value. If this labourer were in possession of his own means 1 Further particulars will be given in Book IV.
2 " The labour, that is the economic time, of society, is a given portion, say ten hours a day of a million of people, or ten million hours Capital has its boundary of increase. This boundary may, at any given period, be attained in the actual extent of economic time employed." (' An Essay on the Political Economy of Nations." London, 1821, pp. 47, 49.)
Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value. 295