 CHAPTER IX. THE Degree of Exploitation of Labor Power. The surplus value generated in the process of production by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consideration, in the first place as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent elements. The capital C is made up of two components, one the sum of money C laid out upon the means of production, and the other the sum of money V expended upon the labor power. C represents the portion that has become constant capital, and V the portion that has become variable capital. At first then, large C equals C plus V. For example, if 500 pounds is the capital advanced, its components may be such that the 500 equals 410 constant plus 90 variable. With the process of production is finished, we get a commodity whose value equals C plus V plus S, where S is the surplus value, or taking our former figures, the value of this commodity may be 410 constant plus 90 variable plus 90 surplus. The original capital has now changed from C to C prime from 500 to 590 pounds. The difference is S, or a surplus value of 90 pounds, since the value of the constituent elements of the product is equal to the value of the advanced capital. It is mere tautology to say that the excess of the value of the product over the value of its constituent elements is equal to the expansion of the capital advanced or to the surplus value produced. Nevertheless, we must examine this tautology a little more closely. The two things compared are the value of the product and the value of its constituent consumed in the process of production. Now we have seen how that portion of the constant capital, which consists of the instruments of labor, transfers to the production only a fraction of its value, while the remainder of that value continues to reside in those instruments. Since this remainder plays no part in the formation of value, we may at present leave it to one side. To introduce it into the calculation would make no difference. For instance, taking our formal example, small c equals 410 pounds. Suppose this sum to consist of 312 value of raw material, 44 value of auxiliary material, and 54 value of the machinery worn away in the process, and suppose that the total value of the machinery employed is 1,054 pounds. Out of this latter sum, then, we reckon as advanced for the purpose of turning out the product, the sum of 54 pounds alone, which the machinery loses by wear and tear in the process, for this is all it parts with to the product. Now if we also reckon the remaining 1,000 pounds, which still continues in the machinery as transferred to the product, we ought also to reckon it as a part of the value advanced, and thus make it appear on both sides of our calculation. We should, in this way, get 1,500 pounds on one side and 1,590 on the other. The difference of these two sums, or the surplus value, would still be 90 pounds. Throughout this book, therefore, by constant capital advanced for the production of value, we always mean, unless the context is repugnant there, too, the value of the means of production actually consumed in the process and that value alone. 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 part of the annual returns. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, Second Edition, London, 1836, page 269. This being so, let us return to the formula, large c equals c plus v, which we saw was transformed into c prime equals c plus v plus s, big c becoming c prime. We know that the value of the constant capital is transferred to and merely reappears in the product. The new value actually created in the process, the value produced, or value product, is therefore not the same as the value of the product. It is not, as it would at first sight appear, c plus v plus s or 410 constant plus 90 variable plus 90 surplus, but v plus s or 90 variable plus 90 surplus, not 590 but 180 pounds. If small c equals zero, or in other words, if there were branches of industry in which the capitalist could dispense with all means of production made by previous labor, whether they be raw material, auxiliary material, or instruments of labor, employing only labor power and materials supplied by nature, in that case there would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. This component of the value of the product, i.e. the 410 pounds in our example, would be eliminated, but the sum of 180 pounds, the amount of new value created, or the value produced, which contains 90 pounds of surplus value, would remain just as great as if small c represented the highest value imaginable. We should have c equals zero plus v equals v or c prime, the expanded capital equals v plus s, and therefore c prime minus c equals s as before. On the other hand, if s equals zero, or in other words, if the labor power whose value is advanced in the form of variable capital were to produce only its equivalent, we should have large c equals c plus v, or c prime, the value of the product, c plus v plus zero, or c equals c prime. The capital advanced would in this case not have expanded its value. From what has gone before, we know that surplus value is purely the result of a variation in the value of v of that portion of the capital which is transformed into labor power. Consequently, v plus s equals v plus v, or v plus an increment of v. But the fact that it is v alone that varies, and the conditions of that variation are obscured by the circumstance that in consequence of the increase in the variable component of the capital, there is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It was originally 500 and becomes 590 pounds. Therefore, in order that our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must make abstraction from that portion of the value of the product, in which constant capital alone appears, and consequently must equate the constant capital to zero or make c equals zero. This is merely an application of a mathematical rule employed whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes, related to each other by the symbols of addition and subtraction only. A further difficulty is caused by the original form of the variable capital. In our example, c prime equals 410 constant plus 90 variable plus 90 surplus, but 90 is a given and therefore a constant quantity, hence it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But in fact, the term 90 variable is here merely a symbol to show that this value undergoes a process. The portion of the capital invested in the purchase of labor power is a definite quantity of materialized labor, a constant value like the value of the labor power purchased. But in the process of production, the place of the 90 pounds is taken by the labor power in action. Dead labor is replaced by living labor, something stagnant by something flowing, a constant by a variable. The result is the reproduction of V plus an increment of V. From the point of view then of capitalist production, the whole process appears as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value, which is transformed into labor power. Both the process and its result appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such expressions as 90 variable capital or so much self-expanding value appear contradictory, this is only because they bring to the surface a contradiction imminent in capitalist production. At first sight it appears a strange proceeding to equate the constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If, for example, we wish to calculate the amount of England's profits from the cotton industry, we first of all deduct the sums paid for cotton to the United States, India, Egypt, and other countries. In other words, the value of the capital that merely reappears in the value of the product is put at zero. Of course the ratio of surplus value not only to that portion of the capital from which it immediately springs and whose change of value it represents, but also to the sum total of capital advanced is economically of very great importance. We shall therefore in the third book treat of this ratio exhaustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital to expand its value by being converted into labor power, it is necessary that another portion be converted into means of production. In order that variable capital may perform its function, constant capital must be advanced in proper proportion, a proportion given by the special technical conditions of each labor process. The circumstance, however, that retorts and other vessels are necessary to a chemical process does not compel the chemist to notice them in the results of his analysis. If we look at the means of production in their relation to the creation of value and to the variation in the quantity of value apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material in which labor power the valued creator incorporates itself. Neither the nature nor the value of this material is of any importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labor expended in the process of production. That supply once given, the material may rise or fall in value, or even be as land in the sea without any value in itself, but this will have no influence on the creation of value or on the variation in the quantity of value. Footnote. What LaCretia says is self-evident. Neil Passe queried a nihilo. Out of nothing, nothing can be created. Creation of value is transformation of labor power into labor. Labor power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of nourishing matter. End note. In the first place, then, we equate the constant capital to zero. The capital advanced is consequently reduced from C plus V to V, and instead of the value of the product C plus V plus S, we now have the value produced, V plus S. Given the new value produced equals 180 pounds, which sum consequently represents the whole labor expended during the process, then subtracting from it 90 pounds, the value of the variable capital, we have remaining 90 pounds, the amount of the surplus value. This sum of 90 pounds, or S, expresses the absolute quantity of surplus value produced. The relative quantity produced, or the increase percent of the variable capital, is determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus value to the variable capital, or is expressed by S over V. In our example, this ratio is 90 over 90, which gives an increase of 100%. This relative increase in the value of the variable capital, or the relative magnitude of the surplus value, I call the rate of surplus value. Footnote. In the same way, the English use the term rate of profit, rate of interest. We shall see, in Book 3, 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. Endnote. We have seen that the laborer, during one portion of the labor process, produces only the value of his labor power, that is, the value of his means of subsistence. Now, since his work forms part of a system, based on the social division of labor, he does not directly produce the actual necessaries which he himself consumes. He produces instead a particular commodity, yarn, for example, whose value is equal to the value of those necessaries or of the money with which they can be bought. The portion of his day's labor devoted to this purpose will be greater or less in proportion to the value of the necessaries that he daily requires on an average, or what amounts to the same thing in proportion to the labor time required on an average to produce them. If the value of those necessaries represent, on average, the expenditure of six hours labor, the workman must, on average, work for six hours to produce that value. If instead of working for the capitalist, he worked independently on his own account, he would, other things being equal, still be obliged to labor for the same number of hours, in order to produce the value of his labor power, and thereby to gain the means of subsistence necessary for his conservation or continued reproduction. But as we have seen during that portion of his day's labor, in which he produces the value of his labor power, say three shillings, he produces only an equivalent for the value of his labor power already advanced by the capitalist. The new value created only replaces the variable capital advanced. It is owing to this fact that the production of the new value of three shillings takes the semblance of a mere reproduction. That portion of the working day, then, during which this reproduction takes place, I call necessary labor time, and the labor expended during that time I call necessary labor. Necessary as regards the laborer, because independent of the particular social form of his labor, necessary as regards capital, and the world of capitalists, because on the continued existence of the laborer depends their existence also. Footnote. Note added in the third German edition. The author resorts here to the economic language in current use. It will be remembered that on page 182, present edition, page 174, it was shown that in reality the laborer advances to the capitalist and not the capitalist to the laborer. Friedrich Engels. And note. Note. In this work we have up to now employed the term necessary labor time to designate the time necessary under given social conditions for the production of any commodity. Hence forward we use it to designate also the time necessary for the production of the particular commodity labor 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. End note. During the second period of the labor process, that in which his labor is no longer necessary labor, the workman it is true laborers, expends labor power, but his labor being no longer necessary labor, he creates no value for himself. He creates surplus value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing. This portion of the working day I name surplus labor time, and to the labor expended during that time I give the name of surplus labor. It is every bit as important for a correct understanding of surplus value to conceive it as a mere conglulation of surplus labor time, as nothing but materialized surplus labor, as it is for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive it as a mere conglulation of so many hours of labor, as nothing but materialized labor. The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave labor and one based on wage labor, lies only in the mode in which the surplus labor is, in each case, extracted from the actual producer, the laborer. Footnote. Herr Wilhelm Thucydides Roscher has found a mayor'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 nowadays due to the thrift of the capitalist, on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilization, it is the strong who compel the weak to economize. First C, page 78, to economize what? Labor or superfluous wealth that does not exist. What is it that makes such men as Roscher account for the origin of surplus value by Amir Richafay of the more or 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. Endnote. Since, on the one hand, the values of the variable capital and of the labor power purchased by that capital are equal, and the value of this labor power determines the necessary portion of the working day, and since, on the other hand, the surplus value is determined by the surplus portion of the working day, it follows that surplus value bears the same ratio to variable capital, that surplus labor does to necessary labor, or in other words, the rate of surplus value, S over V, equals surplus labor over necessary labor. Both ratios, S over V and surplus labor over necessary labor, express the same thing in different ways, in the one case by reference to materialized, incorporated labor, in the other by reference to living, fluent labor. The rate of surplus value is therefore an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labor power by capital, or of the laborer by the capitalist. Footnote. Although the rate of surplus value is an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labor power, it is in no sense an expression for the absolute amount of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labor five hours and the surplus labor is five hours, the degree of exploitation is one hundred percent. The amount of exploitation is here measured by five hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labor equals six hours and the surplus labor equals six hours, the degree of exploitation remains as before one hundred percent, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased twenty percent, namely from five hours to six. Endnote. We assumed in our example that the value of the product four hundred and ten constant plus ninety variable plus ninety surplus, and that the capital advanced equals five hundred pounds. Since the surplus value equals ninety pounds and the advanced capital equals five hundred pounds, we should, according to the usual way of reckoning, get as the rate of surplus value, generally confounded with the rate of profits, eighteen percent. A rate so low as possibly to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey and other harmonizers. But in truth the rate of surplus value is not equal to S over large C or S over large C plus V. Thus it is not ninety over five hundred, but ninety over ninety or one hundred percent, which is more than five times the apparent degree of exploitation. Although in the case we have supposed, we are ignorant of the actual length of the working day and of the duration in days or weeks of the labor process, as also of the number of laborers employed, yet the rate of surplus value S over V accurately discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression, surplus labor over necessary labor, the relation between the two parts of the working day. This relation is here one of equality, the rate being one hundred percent. Hence it is plain the laborer, in our example, works one half of the day for himself, the other half for the capitalist. The method of calculating the rate of surplus value is therefore shortly as follows. We take the total value of the product and put the constant capital, which merely reappears in it, equal to zero. What remains is the only value that has, in the process of producing the commodity, been actually created. If the amount of surplus value be given, we have only to deduct it from this remainder to find the variable capital, and vice versa, if the latter be given, and we require to find the surplus value. If both be given, we have only to perform the concluding operation, Viz, to calculate S over V, the ratio of the surplus value to the V variable capital. Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by means of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the application of the novel principles underlying it. First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing 10,000 mule spindles, spinning number thirty-two yarn from American cotton and producing one pound of yarn weekly per spindle. We assume the waste to be six percent. Under these circumstances, 10,600 pounds of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 pounds goes to waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was seven and three-quarters pence per pound. The raw material, therefore, costs in round numbers 342 pounds. The 10,000 spindles, including preparation machinery and motive power, cost, we will assume, one pound per spindle, amounting to a total of 10,000 pounds. The wear and tear we put at 10 percent, or 1,000 pounds yearly, equals 20 pounds weekly. The rent of the building we suppose to be 300 pounds a year, or six pounds a week. Coal consumed for 100 horsepower indicated at four pounds of coal per horsepower per hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed in heating the mill. 11 tons a week at eight shillings, six pence a ton, amounts to about four and a half pounds a week. Gas, one pound a week, oil, etc., four and a half pounds a week. Total cost of the above auxiliary materials, 10 pounds weekly. Therefore, the constant portion of the value of that week's product is 378 pounds. Wages amount to 52 pounds a week. The price of the yarn is 12 and one-half pence per pound, which gives for the value of 10,000 pounds the sum 510 pounds. The surplus value is therefore, in this case, 510 minus 430 equals 80 pounds sterling. We put the constant part of the value of the product at zero, as it plays no part in the creation of value. There remains 132 pounds as the weekly value created, which equals 52 pounds variable plus 80 pounds surplus. The rate of surplus value is therefore, 80 over 52 equals 153 and 11 and 13ths percent. In a working day of 10 hours with average labor, the result is, necessary labor equals 3 and 31, 33 hours, and surplus labor equals 6 and 233s. Footnote. The above data, which may be relied upon, were given me by a Manchester spinner. In England, the horsepower of an engine was formerly calculated from the diameter of its cylinder. Now the actual horsepower shown by the indicator is taken. Endnote. One more example. Jacob gives the following calculation for the year 1815. Owing to the previous adjustment of several items, it is very imperfect. Nevertheless, for our purpose, it is sufficient. In it, he assumes the price of wheat to be eight shillings a quarter and the average yield per acre to be 22 bushels. Value produced per acre. Seed, one pound nine shillings. Maneuver, two pounds ten shillings. Wages, three pounds ten shillings. Total, seven pounds nine shillings. Tithes, rates, and taxes, one pound one shilling. Rent, one pound eight shillings. Farmers profit and interest, one pound two shillings. Total, three pounds eleven shillings. Assuming that the price of the product is the same as its value, we here find the surplus value distributed under the various heads of profit, interest, rent, etc. We have nothing to do with these in detail. We simply add them together and the sum is the surplus value of three pounds eleven shillings. The sum of three pounds nineteen shillings paid for seed and manure is constant capital and we put it equal to zero. There is left the sum of three pounds ten shillings, which is the variable capital advance, and we see that a new value of three pounds ten shillings plus three pounds eleven shillings has been produced in its place. Therefore, S over V equals three pounds eleven shillings over three pounds ten shillings, given a rate of surplus value of more than one hundred percent. The laborer employs more than one half of his working day in producing the surplus value, which different persons under different pretexts share amongst themselves. Footnote. The calculations given in the text are intended merely as illustrations. We have, in fact, assumed that prices equals values. We shall, however, see in Book Three that even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple manner. Endnote. End of Section Twenty-Four. Chapter Nine, Section Two of Capital, Volume One. Capital. A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume One, by Karl Marx. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Friedrich Engels. Chapter Three. The Production of Absolute Surplus Value. Chapter Nine. The Rate of Surplus Value. Section Two. The Representation of the Components of the Value of the Product by Corresponding Proportional Parts of the Product Itself. Let us now return to the example by which we were shown how the capitalist converts money into capital. The product of a working day of twelve hours is twenty pounds of yarn, having a value of thirty shillings. No less than eight-tenths of this value, or twenty-four shillings, is due to mere reappearance in it, of the value of the means of production, twenty pounds of cotton, value twenty shillings, and spindle worn away, four shillings. It is therefore constant capital. The remaining two-sixth, or six shillings, is the new value created during the spinning process. Of this, one-half replaces the value of the day's labor power, or the variable capital. The remaining half constitutes a surplus value of three shillings. The total value, then, of the twenty pounds of yarn is made up as follows. Thirty shillings value of yarn equals twenty-four shillings constant, plus three shillings variable, plus three shillings surplus. Since the whole of this value is contained in the twenty pounds of yarn produced, it follows that the various components parts of this value can be represented as being contained respectively in corresponding parts of the product. If the value of thirty shillings is contained in twenty pounds of yarn, then eight-tenths of this value, or the twenty-four shillings that form its constant part, is contained in eight-tenths of the product, or in sixteen pounds of yarn. Of the latter, thirteen and one-third represent the value of the raw material, the twenty shillings worth of cotton spun, and two and two-thirds pounds represents the four shillings worth of spindle, and etc., worn away in the process. Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the twenty pounds of yarn is represented by thirteen and one-third pounds of yarn. This latter weight of yarn contains, it is true by weight, no more than thirteen and one-third pounds of cotton worth thirteen and one-third shillings, but the six and two-thirds shillings additional value contained in it are the equivalent for the cotton consumed in spinning the remaining six and two-thirds pounds of yarn. The effect is the same as if those six and two-thirds pounds of yarn contained no cotton at all, and the whole twenty pounds of cotton were as concentrated in the thirteen and one-third pounds 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 two and two-thirds pounds of yarn, in which the four shillings, the remainder of the constant capital is embodied, represents nothing but the value of the auxiliary materials and instruments of labor consumed in producing the twenty pounds of yarn. We have, therefore, arrived at this result, although eight-tenths of the product, or sixteen pounds of yarn, is in its character of an article of utility just as much the fabric of the spinner's labor as the remainder of the same product, yet when viewed in this connection it does not contain and has not absorbed any labor 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 capital is sells it for twenty-four shillings, and with the money replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that the sixteen pounds worth of yarn is nothing more than so much cotton and spindle waste in disguise. On the other hand, the remaining two-tenths of the product, or four pounds of yarn, represent nothing but the new value of six shillings created during the twelve-hour spinning process. All the value transferred to those four pounds from the raw material and instruments of labor consumed was, so to say, intercepted in order to be incorporated into the sixteen pounds first spun. In this case it is as if the spinner had spun four pounds of yarn out of air, or as if he had spun them without the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the spontaneous gift of nature, transferred no value to the product. Of this four pounds 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 labor consumed, or the three-shillings variable capital, the other-half represents the three-shilling surplus value. Since twelve working hours of the spinner are embodied in six shillings, it follows that in yarn of the value of thirty shillings there must be embodied sixty working hours, and this quantity of labor time does in fact exist in the twenty pounds of yarn, for in eight-tenths or sixteen pounds there are materialized the forty-eight hours of ten labor expended before the commencement of the spinning process, on the means of production, and in the remaining two-tenths or four pounds there are materialized the twelve 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. To split up in this manner the product into different parts of which one represents only the labor previously spent on the means of production, or the constant capital, another only the necessary labor spent during the process of production, or the variable capital, and another and last part, only the surplus labor expended during the same process, or the surplus value, to do this, is, as we'll 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 twelve 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 twelve hours twenty pounds of yarn, or in one hour one and two-thirds pounds. Consequently he produces in eight hours twelve and two-thirds pounds, 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 one hour and thirty-six minutes is two and two-thirds pounds of yarn. This represents the value of the instruments of labor that are consumed in twelve hours. In the following hour and twelve minutes the spinner produces two pounds of yarn worth three shillings, a value equal to the whole value he creates in his six hours necessary labor. Finally in the last hour and twelve minutes he produces another two pounds of yarn whose value is equal to the surplus value created by his surplus labor during half a day. This method of calculation serves the English manufacturer for everyday use. It shows he will say that in the first eight hours or two-thirds 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 eight hours of his working day the value of the cotton. In the following hour and thirty-six minutes the value of the instruments of labor worn away, in the next hour and twelve 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, etc., 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 materials and instruments of labor 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. CHAPTER IX. SECTION III. OF CAPITAL VOLUME I. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. CAPITAL, A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION, VOLUME I, by Carl Marx. TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, BY SAMUEL MOORE AND EDWARD AVILING, AND EDITED BY FREEDRICK ANGELS. PART III. THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPRISE VALUE. CHAPTER IX. THE RATE OF SURPRISE VALUE. SECTION III. SENIORS LAST HOUR. One fine morning in the year 1836, Nassau W. Sr., who may be called the bella spree 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 embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manufacturers, in a pamphlet entitled Letters on the Factory Act as it effects the cotton manufacturer, London, 1837. Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage. Under the present law, no mill in which persons under eighteen years of age are employed can be worked more than eleven and a half hours a day, that is, twelve hours for five 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 one hundred thousand pounds, eighty thousand in his mill and machinery, and twenty thousand 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 fifteen percent, ought to be goods worth fifteen thousand pounds. Of this one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds each of the twenty-three half hours of work produces five and one hundred and fifteenths or one twenty-third. Of these twenty-three twenty-thirds, constituting the whole one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds, twenty, that is to say, one hundred thousand pounds out of the one hundred and fifteen simply replace the capital. One twenty-third, or five thousand out of the one hundred and fifteen thousand, makes up for the deterioration of the mill and machinery. The remaining two twenty-thirds, that is, the last two of the twenty-three half hours of every day, produce the net profit of ten percent. 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 twenty-six hundred pounds 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. Senior, first C, pages twelve and thirteen. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no importance for our purpose. For instance, the assertion that the 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, etc., London, eighteen-thirty-seven, that they are worth no more than so-called analysis. Leonard Horner was one of the factory inquiry commissioners in eighteen-thirty-three, and inspector, or rather, censor of factories till eighteen-fifty-nine. He rendered undying service to the English working class. He carried on a lifelong 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 mill. Apart from efforts in principle, Senior's statement is confused. What he really intends to say was this. The manufacturer employs the workmen for eleven and a half hours, or for twenty-three half hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year may be conceived to consist of eleven and one-half hours, or twenty-three half hours, but each multiplied by the number of working days in the year. On this supposition, the twenty-three half hours yield an annual product of one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds. One-half hour yields one twenty-third times one hundred and fifteen thousand. Twenty-half hours yield twenty twenty-thirds times one hundred and fifteen thousand equals one hundred thousand, i.e., they replace no more than the capital advanced. There remain three-half hours which yield three and three twenty-thirds times one hundred and fifteen thousand equals five thousand, or the gross profit. Of these three-half hours, one yields one twenty-third times one hundred and fifteen thousand equals five thousand, i.e., it makes up for the wear and tear of the machinery. The remaining two half hours, i.e., the last hour, yield two twenty-thirds times one hundred and fifteen thousand equals ten thousand, or the net profit. In the text, Senior converts the last two twenty-third of the product into portions of the working day itself. And the professor calls this an analysis. If giving credence to the outcries of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend the best part of the day in the production, i.e., the reproduction and replacement of the value of the buildings, machinery, cotton, coal, etc., then his analysis was superfluous. His answer would simply have been, gentlemen, if you work your meals for ten hours instead of eleven and a half, then other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery, etc., 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 labor, but to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery, raw material, etc., 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 workmen replaced or reproduced his wages in two half hours, in that case he should have continued his analysis thus. According to your figures, the workmen 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 labors that he produces any value at all and the amount of his labor is measured by his labor time. This, you say, amounts to eleven and one-half hours a day. He employs one portion of these eleven and one-half 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 five and three-quarters hours and your net profit in the other five and three-quarters hours. Again, since the value of the yarn produced in two 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 eleven and one-half working hours, of which five and three-quarters hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour but one, and five and three-quarters the value of the yarn produced in the last hour. We come now 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 five and three-quarters hours labor? 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 five and three-quarters working hours, of which four and three-quarters 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 five and three-quarters hours and the yarn produced in one hour also contains five and three-quarters hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the result that the value created by his five and three-quarters 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 labor 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 labor, not to its quantity. It is true he will in one hour transfer to the yarn more value in the shape of cotton, then 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 two working hours, whether they are the first two or the last two hours of the working day, in that yarn there are incorporated eleven and one-half working hours, or just a whole day's work, i.e., two hours of his own work, and nine and one-half hours of other peoples. And my assertion that, in the first five and three-quarters hours, he produces his wages, and in the last five and three quarters 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 labor, instead of payment of labor power, I only talk your own slaying. 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 one hundred percent, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is not the least doubt that if you make you hands toil for thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, and, as may be expected from you, treat the work done in that extra one hour and a half as pure surplus labor, then the latter will be increased from five and three-quarters hours to seven and one-quarters hours labor, and the rate of surplus value from one hundred percent to one hundred twenty-six and two twenty-thirds percent. So that you are altogether too sanguine in expecting that by such an addition of one and a half hours to the working day, the rate will rise from one hundred to two hundred percent 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 two pessimists of you when you fear that with the reduction of the hours of labor from eleven and one-half to ten, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus labor will fall from five and three-quarters hours to four and three-quarters hours, a period that still gives a very profitable rate of surplus value, namely eighty two and fourteen twenty-thirds percent. But this dreadful last hour, about which you have invented more stories, then 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. Whenever your last hour strikes an earnest, think of the Oxford Professor. And now, gentlemen, fare well, and may we meet again in yonder better world, but not before. Senior invented the battle cry of the last hour in eighteen thirty-six. In the London Economist of the fifteenth April, eighteen forty-eight, the same cry was again raised by James Wilson, an economic mandarin of high standing, this time in opposition to the ten-hours bill. If, on the one hand, senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer, the existence of the 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 Ur showed that if children and young persons under eighteen of years of age, instead of being kept the full twelve 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 eighteen forty-eight, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this last, this fatal hour. Thus Mr. Howell, in his report of the twenty-first May, eighteen fifty-five, 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 eighteen fifty. Reports of the inspector of factories for the half year, ending thirtieth April, eighteen fifty-five, pages nineteen and twenty. In the year eighteen forty-eight, after the passing of the ten hours bill, the masters of some flak spinning mills, scattered few and far between, over the country on the borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill onto 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 demoralize the children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the parent of vice. On this the factory report of thirty-first October, eighteen forty-eight says, the atmosphere of the flak-smills in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents work is so loaded with dust and fiber from the raw material that it is exceptionally unpleasant to stand even ten 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 the mouth being immediately filled by the clouds of flax dust from which there is no escape. The labor 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 idling to their own children, who after allowing for mealtimes are fettered for ten whole hours to such an occupation in such an atmosphere. These children work longer than the laborers in the neighboring villages. Such cruel talk about idleness and vice ought to be branded as the purest can't and the most shameless hypocrisy. That portion of the public, who about twelve 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 labor 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 labor of children is reduced to a full ten hours, their morals, together with the net profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last, this fatal hour. C. reports of the inspector of factories for 31st October, 1848, page 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 defenseless 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. And note. Note. 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 interest, 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 Enthelton. Some of his countrymen, the Browns, Jones, and Robinson's of Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have monklike, rendered it by Entzegang. End note. End of Section 26. CHAPTER IX. A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CAPITAL AS PRODUCTION, VOLUME ONE, by Carl Marx. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Friedrich Engels. PART III. THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPRISE VALUE. CHAPTER IX. THE RATE OF SURPRISE VALUE. SECTION IV. SURPRISE PRODUCTS. The portion of the product that represents the surplus value, one-tenth of the twenty pounds, or two pounds of yarn, in the example given in Section II, we call surplus produce. Just as the rate of surplus value is determined by its relation, not to the total sum 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 labor. 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 nation's wealth should be measured not by the absolute quantity produced, but by the relative magnitude of the surplus produce. To an individual with a capital of twenty thousand pounds, whose profits were two thousand pounds per annum, it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a one hundred or one thousand men, whether the commodity produced sold for ten thousand or twenty thousand pounds, provided in all cases his profit were not diminished below two thousand pounds. Is not the real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rents and profits be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of ten or of twelve millions of inhabitants. RECARDO 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 modern 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, London, seventeen seventy-four, page forty-seven, end footnote. The sum of the necessary labor in the surplus labor, i.e., of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the value of his labor power, and produces the surplus value, this sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i.e., the working day. RECARDO P. 416 CHAPTER X, SECTION I OF CAPITAL VOLUME I This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anna Siwon. CAPITAL. A critical analysis of capitalist production. VOLUME I by Karl Marx. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Averling, and edited by Frederick Engels. PART III. THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPRISE VALUE. CHAPTER X. THE WORKING DAY. SECTION I. THE LIMITS OF THE WORKING DAY. We started with the supposition that labor 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 laborer takes up six hours, he must work on the average six hours every day to produce his daily labor power, or to reproduce the value received as the result of its sale. The necessary part of his working day amounts to six hours, and is, therefore, Cytorus paribus, a given quantity. But with this, the extent of the working day itself is not yet given. Let us assume that a line A, B represents the length of the necessary working time, say, six hours. If the laborer prolonged one, three, or six hours beyond A, B, we have three other lines, representing three different working days of seven, nine, and twelve hours. Working day one, A, B, C. Working day two, A, B, C. Working day three, A, B, C. The extension B, C of the line A, B represents the length of the surplus labor. As the working day is A, B, plus 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 one, it is one over six. In working day two, three over six. In working day three, six over six of A, B. Since further the ratio surplus working time over necessary working time determines the rate of the surplus value, the letter is given by the ratio of B, C to A, B. It amounts in the three different working days respectively to 16 to thirds, 50, and 100 percent. 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 percent, the working day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours. It would indicate that the two constituent parts of the working day, necessary labor and surplus labor 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 labor power of the laborer himself. But its total amount varies with the duration of the surplus labor. The working day is therefore determinable, but is per se indeterminate. Footnote, a day's laborer is vague, it may be long or short. An essay on trade and commerce, containing observations on Texas, etc., London, 1770, page 73. And a footnote. 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 BC, or the surplus labor is zero, we have a minimum limit, i.e., the part of the day which the laborer must necessarily work for his own maintenance. On the basis of capitalist production, however, this necessary laborer 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 labor 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 eight 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 laborer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social ones, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the 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 a 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i.e., of the most different lengths. The capitalist has bought the labor power at its day rate. To him, its use value belongs during one working day. He has thus acquired the right to make the laborer work for him during one day. But what is a working day? Footnote. This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. What is a pound? A question that could only have been proposed because Peel was as much in the dark as the nature of money as the little shilling man of Birmingham. And a footnote. At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The capitalist has his own views of this ultimate tour, 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 labor. Footnote. It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expanded capital the greatest possible quantity of labor. D'obtenir du capital dépense la plus forte sommes de travail possible. J.G. Courcel Senuel. Traiter théorique et pratique des entreprises industrielles. Second edition Paris 1857 page 63. And a footnote. Capital is dead labor that vampire-like only lives by sucking living labor and lives the more the more labor it sucks. The time during which the laborer works is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labor power he has purchased of him. Footnote. An hour's labor lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial state. There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the laboring poor of this kingdom, particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also consume their time, the most fatal of consumptions. An essay on trade and commerce etc. Page 47 and 153. And a footnote. If the laborer consumes his disposable time for himself he robs the capitalist. Footnote. Si le manouvrier libre prend une instant de repos, l'économie sordide qui le suit des jeux avec une cuitude, prétend qu'il avole. En lingue, théorie des lois civilles etc. London 1767, T2 page 466. And a footnote. The capitalist then takes a 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 laborer, which had been stifled in installment stress of the process of production, rises. The commodity that I've 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 labor 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 labor 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 etc. I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as today. You preach to me constantly the gospel of saving and abstinence. Good. I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband, my sole wealth, labor 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 labor power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labor I lose in substance. The use of my labor power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that doing a reasonable amount of work, an average laborer can live is 30 years, the value of my labor power which you pay me from day to day is one divided by 365 times 30 or one divided by 10,950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years you pay me daily one divided by 10,950 instead of one divided by 3650 of its total value i.e. only one third of its daily value and you rob me therefore every day of two thirds of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labor power whilst you use that of three 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 odor 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 throw up there is my own heart beating. I demand the normal working day because I like every other seller demand the value of my commodity. Footnote. During the great strike of the London builders 1860 to 1861 for the reduction of the working day to nine hours their committee published a manifesto that contained to some extent the plea of our worker. The manifesto alludes not without irony to the fact that the greatest profit monger amongst the building masters a certain Sir M. Pito was in the odor of sanctity. The same Pito after 1867 came to an end Alastruzberg and the footnote. 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 labor. 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 laborer 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 labor i.e the working class end of part three chapter 10 section one chapter 10 section two of capital volume one this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anna Simon. Capital a critical analysis of capitalist production volume one by Karl Marx translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and edited by Frederick Engels part three the production of absolute surplus value chapter 10 the working day section two the greed for surplus labor manufacturer and boyard capital has not invented surplus labor wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production the laborer 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 production whether this proprietor be the Athenian Charles Chakatos Etruscan Theocrat Sivis Romanus Norman Barron American slave owner Wallachian boyard modern landlord or capitalist two footnotes first footnote those who labor in reality feed both the pensioners called the rich and themselves Edmund Burke one C P2 second footnote Nibur in his roman history says very naively it is evident that works like the Etruscan which in their runes astound us presuppose in little states lords and vassals cismundi says far more to the purpose that Brussels lays presupposes wage lords and wage slaves end of footnotes 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 labor will be limited by a given set of ones which may be greater or less and that here no bandless thirst for surplus labor arises from the nature of the production itself hence in antiquity overwork 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 recognized form of overwork only read diodorus syculus footnote one cannot see these unfortunates in the gold mines between Egypt Ethiopia and Arabia who cannot even have their bodies clean or their nakedness clothed without pitying their miserable lot there is no indulgence no forbearance for the sick the feeble the aged for women's weakness all must forced by blows work on until death puts an end to their sufferings and their distress diodorus syculus book to chapter 13 and a footnote still these are exceptions in antiquity but as soon as people whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave labor corvée labor etc are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production the sale of their products the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest the civilized horrors of overwork are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery serve them etc hence the negro labor in the southern states 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 overworking of the negro and sometimes the using up of his life in seven years of labor 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 labor itself so was it also with the corvée e.g. in the danubian principalities now romania the comparison of the greed for surplus labor in the danubian principalities with the same greed in english factories has a special interest because surplus labor in the corvée has an independent and palpable form suppose the working day consists of six hours of necessary labor and six hours of surplus labor then the free laborer gives the capitalist every week six times six or 36 hours of surplus labor it is the same as if he worked three days in the week for himself and three days in the week gratis for the capitalist but this is not evident on the surface surplus labor and necessary labor glide one into the other i can therefore express the same relationship by saying e.g. that a laborer in every minute works 30 seconds for himself and 30 for the capitalist etc it is otherwise with the corvée the necessary labor which the valacian peasant does for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from a surplus labor on behalf of the boyard the one he does on his own field the other on the sagnorial estate both parts of the labor time exist therefore independently side by side one with the other in the corvée the surplus labor is accurately marked off from the necessary labor this however can make no difference with regard to the quantitative relation of surplus labor to necessary labor three days surplus labor in the week remain three days that yield no equivalent to the labor himself whether it be called the corvée or wage labor but in the capitalist the greed for surplus labor appears in the straining after an unlimited extension of the working day in the boyard more simply in a direct hunting after days of corvée footnote that which follows refers to the situation in the Romanian provinces before the change affected since the Crimean war and the footnote in the Danubian principalities the corvée was mixed up with rents in kind and other appartenances bondage but it formed the most important tribute paid to the ruling class where this was the case the corvée rarely arose from serfdom serfdom much more frequently on the other hand took origin from the corvée footnote this holds likewise for Germany and especially for Prussia east of the elbow in the 15th century the german peasant was nearly everywhere a man who whilst subject to certain rents paid in produce and labor was otherwise at least practically free the german colonists in Brandenburg Pomerania Silesia and eastern Prussia were even legally acknowledged as free men the victory of the nobility in the peasant's war put an end to that not only were the conquered south german peasants again enslaved from the middle of the 16th century the peasants of eastern prussia brandenburg pomerania and silesia and soon after the free peasants of Schleswig-Holstein were degraded to the condition of serfs Marne, Frohnhove, Forthfolium, Meizen, der Boden des Preussissenstaats, Hansen, Leib-Eikenschaft in Schleswig-Holstein, F.E. end of footnote this is what took place in the Romanian 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 severity as freehold by the members of the community another part agar publicus was cultivated by them in common the products of this common labor served partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and other accidents partly as a public stool 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 labor spent upon it the labor of the free peasants on their common land was transformed into corvée for the thieves of the common land this corvée 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 and their pretence of abolishing serfdom the code of the corvée which the Russian general Kislev proclaimed in 1831 was of course dictated by the Boyards themselves thus Russia conquered with one blow the magnets of the Danubian provinces and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe according to the reclume organique as this code of the corvée is called every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called landlord besides a mass of detailed payments in kind one 12 days of general labor two one day of field labor three one day of woodcarrying 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 reclume itself declares with true Russian irony that by 12 working days one must understand the product of the manual labor of 36 days by one day of field labor three days and by one day of woodcarrying in like manner three times as much in all 42 corvée days to this had to be added the so-called yobagi 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 yobagi this additional corvée is estimated at 14 days for each Malakian peasant thus the prescribed corvée amounts to 56 working days yearly but the agricultural year in Malakia 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 corvée to the necessary labor 56 divided by 84 or 66 and two-thirds percent gives a much smaller rate of surplus value than that which regulates the labor of the English agricultural or factory labor this is however only the legally prescribed corvée and in spirit yet more liberal than the English factory acts the reclume organique has known how to facilitate its own after it has made 56 days out of 12 the nominal days work of each of the 56 corvée 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 days work for some kinds of agricultural labor is interpretable in such a way that the day begins in may and ends in october in Moldavia conditions are still harder the 12 corvée days of the réglement organique cried a boyard drunk with victory amounted to 365 days in the year footnote further details are to be found in eric nos histoires politiques et sociales des principautés d'annubiens paris 1855 and the footnote if the réglement organique of the denubian provinces was a positive expression of the greed for surplus labor which every paragraph legalized the English factory acts are the negative expression of the same greed these acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining of labor 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 labor 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 footnote in general and within certain limits exceeding the medium size of their kind is evidence of the prosperity of organic beings as to man his bodily height lessons if his due growth is interfered with either by physical or local conditions in all european countries in which the construction holds since its introduction the medium height of adult men and generally their fitness for military service has diminished before the revolution 1789 the minimum for the infantry in france was 165 centimeters in 1818 law of march 10th 157 by the law of march 21st 1832 156 centimeters on the average in france more than half are rejected on account of deficient height or bodily weakness the military standard in sexony was in 1780 178 centimeters it is now 155 in prussia it is 157 according to the statement of dr meyer in the bavarian gazette may 9 1862 the result of an average of nine years is that in prussia out of 1000 conscripts 716 were unfit for military service 317 because of deficiency in height and 399 because of bodily defects burlin 1858 could not provide its contingent of recruits and it was 156 men short javon libig the kimi in her anwendung of agriculture and physiology 1862 seventh edition volume one pages 117 and 118 and a footnote the factory act of 1850 now in force 1867 allows for the average working day 10 hours i.e. for the first five days 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. including half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner and thus leaving 10 and a half working hours and eight hours for saturday from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. of which half an hour is subtracted for breakfast 60 working hours are left 10 and a half for each of the first five days 7 and a half for the last footnote the history of the factory act of 1850 will be found in the course of this chapter and the footnote 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 labor let us listen for a moment to the factory inspectors footnote i only touch here and there on the period from the beginning of modern industry in england to 1845 for this period i refer the reader to die lager der arbeiten klasse in england von friedig engels leipzig 1845 how completely engels understood the nature of the capitalist mode of production is shown by the factory reports reports on mines etc that have appeared since 1845 and how wonderfully he painted the circumstances in detail is seen on the most superficial comparison of his work with the official reports of the children's employment commission published 18 to 20 years later 1863 to 1867 these deal especially with the branches of industry in which the factory acts had not up to 1862 be introduced in fact are not yet introduced here then little or no alteration had been enforced by authority in the conditions painted by engels i borrow my examples chiefly from the free trade period after 1849 that age of paradise of which the commercial travelers for the great firm of free trade blatant as ignorant tells such fabulous tales for the rest england figures here in the foreground because she is the classic representative of capitalist production and she alone has a continuous set of official statistics of the things we are considering and a footnote start of citation the fraudulent mill owner begins work a quarter of an hour sometimes more sometimes less before six a.m and leaves off a quarter of an hour sometimes more sometimes less after six p.m he takes five minutes from the beginning and from the end of the half hour normally allowed for breakfast and ten 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 15 minutes after 6 p.m 15 minutes at breakfast time 10 minutes at dinnertime 20 minutes for one day 16 minutes five days 300 minutes on saturday before 6 a.m 15 minutes at breakfast time 10 minutes after 2 p.m 15 minutes total for saturday 40 minutes total weekly 340 minutes all five 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 end of quotation footnote suggestions etc by mr l horner inspector of factories in factories regulation acts ordered by the house of commons to be printed 9th august 1859 pages 4 and 5 and the footnote start quote five minutes a day's increased work multiplied by weeks are equal to two and a half days of produce in the year end of quote footnote reports of the inspector of factories for the half year october 1856 page 35 and the footnote start of quote an additional hour a day gained by small installments 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 end of quote footnote reports etc 30th april 1858 page 9 and the footnote 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 labor time thus the factory inspectors report on the period of the crisis from 1857 to 1858 start quote 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 lennard horner 122 mills in my district have been given up 143 were found standing yet overwork has continued beyond the legal hours end of quote footnote reports etc one c page 10 end of footnote start quote for a great part of the time says mr. whole 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 up other times professedly allowed for rest and refreshment end of quote footnote reports etc lc page 25 end of footnote the same phenomenon was reproduced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton crises from 1861 to 1865 footnote reports etc for the half year ending 30 april 1861 see appendix number two reports etc 31st october 1862 pages 752 53 the violations of the acts became more numerous during the last half year 1863 conform reports etc ending 31st october 1863 page 7 end of footnote start of quote 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 seize work cleaning their machinery etc especially on saturday afternoons but if the hands remain in the factory after the machinery has ceased to revolve they would not have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart especially for cleaning etc either before six a.m sick or before two p.m on saturday afternoons end of quote footnote reports etc october 31st 1860 page 23 with what fanaticism according to the evidence of manufacturers giving in courts of law their hands set themselves against every interruption in factory labor the following curious circumstance shows in the beginning of june 1836 information reached the magistrates of joseberry yorkshire that the owners of eight large mills in the neighborhood of batley had violated the factory acts some of these gentlemen were accused of having kept at work five boys between 12 and 15 years of age from 6 a.m on friday to 4 p.m on the following saturday not allowing them any respite except for meals and one hour of sleep at midnight and these children had to do this ceaseless labor of 30 hours in the shoddy hole as the hole is called in which the woolen rags are pulled in pieces and where a dense atmosphere of dust shreds etc forces even the adult workmen to cover his mouth continually with handkerchiefs for the protection of his lungs the accused gentlemen affirm in lieu of taking an oath as quakers they were too scrupulously religious to take an oath that they had in their great compassion for the unhappy children allowed them four hours for sleep but the obstinate children absolutely would not go to bed the quaker gentlemen were mulked in 20 pounds dryden and dissipated these gentry fox full fraud and seeming sanctity that feared an oath but like the devil would lie that looked by glint and had the holy lear and durst not sin before he said his prayer and a footnote start of quote the prophet 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 footnote report 31st of october 1856 page 34 and a footnote 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 end of quote footnote lc page 35 and a footnote these small thefts of capital from the laborers meal and recreation time the factory inspectors also designate as petty pilferings of minutes snatching a few minutes or as the laborers technically called them nibbling and crippling at mealtimes footnotes lc page 48 and a footnote it is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus value by surplus labor is no secret start of quote if you allow me set a highly respectable master to me to work only 10 minutes in the day over time you put 1000 a year in my pocket end of quote footnote lc page 48 and the footnote start of quote moments are the elements of profit end of quote footnote report of the inspectors etc 30th april 1860 page 56 and a footnote 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 six hours as half-timers the worker is here nothing more than personified labor time all individual distinctions are merged in those of full-timers and half-timers footnote this is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports and the footnote end of part 3 chapter 10 section 2