Chapter X.- The Working Day
We started with the supposition that labour power is bought and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commodities, is determined by the working time necessary to its production. If the production of the average daily means of subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours, he must work, on the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour power, or to reproduce the value received as the result of its sale. The necessary part of his working day amounts to 6 hours, and is, therefore, caeterisparibus* a given quantity. But with this, the extent of the working day itself is not yet given.
Let us assume that the line A B represents the length of the necessary working time, say 6 hours. If the labour be prolonged 1, 3 or 6 hours beyond A B, we have 3 other lines:
Working day I. Working day II. Working day III. A B — C A B C A B C
representing 3 different working days of 7, 9, and 12 hours. The extension B C of the line A B represents the length of the surplus
nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rent and profits, be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of 10 or of 12 millions of inhabitants" (Ricardo,
1. c, p. 416). Long before Ricardo, Arthur Young, a fanatical upholder of surplus produce, for the rest, a rambling, uncritical writer, whose reputation is in the inverse ratio of his merit, says, "Of what use, in a 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, &c, London, 1774, p. 47).
Very curious is "the strong inclination ... to represent net wealth as beneficial to the labouring class ... though it is evidently not on account of being net" (Th. Hopkins, On Rent of Land, &c, London, 1828, p. 126).
labour. As the working day is A B + B C or A C, it varies with the variable quantity B C. Since A B is constant, the ratio of B C to A B can always be calculated. In working day I, it is^, in working day II, -g, in working day III, -f of A B. Since, further, the ratio
surp us wor ing îme, determines the rate of the surplus value, the necessary working time, latter is given by the ratio of B C to A B. It amounts in the 3 different working days respectively to 16~f, 50 and 100 per cent. On the other hand, the rate of surplus value alone would not give us the extent of the working day. If this rate, e.g., were 100 per cent., the working day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours. It would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the working day, necessary-labour and surplus-labour time, were equal in extent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts was.
The working day is thus not a constant, but a variable quantity. One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the working time required for the reproduction of the labour power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies with the duration of the surplus labour. The working day is, therefore, determinable, but is, per se, indetermi-nate.[1]
Although the working day is not a fixed, but a fluent quantity, it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain limits. The minimum limit is, however, not determinable; of course, if we make the extension line B C or the surplus labour = 0, we have a minimum limit, i.e., the part of the day which the labourer must necessarily work for his own maintenance. On the basis of capitalist production, however, this necessary labour can form a part only on 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 condi-tioned by two things. First, by the physical bounds of labour power. Within the 24 hours of the natural day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force. A horse, in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8 hours. During part of the day this force must rest, sleep; during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs, to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physical limita-tions, the extension of the working day encounters moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the working day fluctuates, therefore, within physical and social bounds. But both these limiting conditions are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest latitude. So we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i. e., of the most different lengths.
The capitalist has bought the labour power at its day rate. To him its use value belongs during one working day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is a working day? n
At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule,ly6 the necessary limit of the working day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour.[2]'
Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour power he has purchased of him.[3]»
It the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.[4]'
The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possi-
" This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce: What is a pound?[17]* A question that could only have been proposed, because Peel was as much in the dark as to the nature of money as the "little shilling men" [175] of Birmingham.
[21] "It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expended capital the greatest possible quantity of labour (d'obtenir du capital dépensé la plus forte somme de travail possible)." J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil, Traité théorique et pratique des entreprises industrielles, 2nd ed. Paris, 1857, p. 62.
[31] "An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial State.... There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the labouring poor of this kingdom: particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also consume their time, the most fatal of consumptions." [J. Cunnigham,] An Essay on Trade and Commerce, &c, p. 47 and 153.
ble benefit out of the use value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress ' [7] [7] of the process of production, rises:
The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c, I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as today. You preach to me constantly the gospel of "saving" and "abstinence". Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour power, which you pay me from day to day, is IJÖS^ICT o r T0950" of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily T^Ö instead of-§g^j of its total value, i. e., only-^ of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of -f of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place.[178] You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity."
We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working day, no limit to surplus labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an anti-nomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i. e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i. e., the working class.
SECTION 2.—THE GREED FOR SURPLUS LABOUR. MANUFACTURER AND BOYARD
Capital has not invented surplus labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production,[21] whether this proprietor be the Athenian %aXöq x&Ya0öc,(1) Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus,b Norman baron, American slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist.[3]' It is, however, clear that in any
,: During the great strike of the London builders, 1860-61, for the reduction of the working day to 9 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. Peto, was in the odour of sanctity. (This same Peto, after 1867, came to an end à la Strousberg.) [179]
[21] "Those who labour ... in reality feed both the pensioners //called the rich// and themselves" (Edmund Burke, 1. c, [p]p. 2[-3]).
[11] Niebuhr in his Roman History says very naively: "It is evident that works like the given economic formation of society, where not the exchange value but the use value of the product predominates, surplus labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity 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 recognised form of overwork. Only read Diodorus Siculus.[11] Still these are exceptions in antiquity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms of slave labour, corvée labour, &c, are drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the sale of their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilised horrors of overwork are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the negro labour in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consumption. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital interest to these states, the overworking of the negro and sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years of labour became a factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products. It was now a question of production of surplus labour itself. So was it also with the corvée, e. g., in the Danubian Principalities (now Roumania).
The comparison of the greed for surplus labour in the Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English factories has a special interest, because surplus labour in the corvée has an independent and palpable form.
Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour, and 6 hours of surplus labour. Then the free labourer gives the capi-
Etruscan, which in their ruins astound us, presuppose in little (!) states lords and vassals" [p. 74]. Sismondi says far more to the purpose that "Brussels lace" presupposes wage lords and wage slaves.
talist every week 6 x 6 or 36 hours of surplus labour. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. But this is not evident on the surface. Surplus labour and necessary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express the same relationship by saying, e.g., that the labourer in every minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist, etc. It is otherwise with the corvée. The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant does for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus labour on behalf of the Boyard. The one he does on his own field, the other on the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour time exist, therefore, independently, side by side one with the other. In the corvée the surplus labour is accurately marked off from the necessary labour. This, however, can make no difference with regard to the quantitative relation of surplus labour to necessary labour. Three days' surplus labour in the week remain three days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself, whether it be called corvée or wage labour. But in the capitalist the greed for surplus labour appears in the straining after an unlimited extension of the working day, in the Boyard more simply in a direct hunting after days of corvée."
In the Danubian Principalities the corvée was mixed up with rents in kind and other appurtenances of bondage, but it formed the most important tribute paid to the ruling class. Where this was the case, the corvée rarely arose from serfdom; serfdom much more frequently on the other hand took origin from the corvée.[2]' This is what took place in the Roumanian provinces. Their original mode of production was based on community of the soil, but not in the Slavonic or
[1] That which follows refers to the situation in the Roumanian provinces before the change [1 4 3] effected since the Crimean war.
'*> This holds likewise for Germany, and especially for Prussia east of the Elbe. In the 15th century the German peasant was nearly everywhere a man, who, whilst subject to certain rents paid in produce and labour 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 peasants' war put an end to that. Not only were the conquered South German peasants again en-slaved. From the middle of the 16th century the peasants of Eastern Prussia, Branden-burg, Pomerania, and Silesia, and soon after the free peasants of Schleswig-Holstein were degraded to the condition of serfs //Maurer, [Geschichte der] Fronhöfe, vol. iv [pp. 522-23, 530]; Meitzen, Der Boden [und die landwirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse] des preussischen Staates; Hanssen, [Die Aufhebung der] Leibeigenschaft in Schleswig-Holstein.— Indian form. Part of the land was cultivated in severalty as freehold by the members of the community, another part — ager publicus — was cultivated by them in common. The products of this common labour served partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and other accidents, partly as a public store for providing the costs of war, religion, and other common expenses. In course of time military and clerical dignitaries usurped, along with the common land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the free peasants on their common land was transformed into 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 under pretence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corvée, which the Russian general Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was of course dictated by the Boyards themselves. Thus Russia conquered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian provinces, and the applause of liberal crétins throughout Europe.
According to the "Règlement organique",[180] 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: (1), 12 days of general labour; (2), one day of field labour; (3), one day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With deep insight into political economy, however, the working day is not taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working day necessary to the production of an average daily product; and that average daily product is determined in so crafty a way that no Cyclops would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words, the Règlement itself declares with true Russian irony that by 12 working days one must understand the product of the manual labour of 36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day of wood carrying in like manner three times as much. In all, 42 corvée days. To this had to be added the so-called jobagie, service due to the lord for extraordinary occasions. In proportion to the size of its population, every village has to furnish annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This additional corvée is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant. Thus the prescribed corvée amounts to 56 working days yearly. But the agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence of the severe climate only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays and holidays, 30 on an average for bad weather, together 70 days, do not count. 140 working days remain. The ratio of the corvée to the necessary labour ^ or 66f % gives a much smaller rate of surplus value than that which regulates the labour of the English agricultural or factory labourer. This is, however, only the legally prescribed corvée. And in a spirit yet more "liberal" than the English Factory Acts, the "Règlement organique" has known how to facilitate its own evasion. After it has made 56 days out of 12, the nominal day's work of each of the 56 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 day's work for some kinds of agricultural labour is interprétable 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 'Règlement organique' cried a Boyard drunk with victory, amount to 365 days in the year." "
If the Règlement organique of the Danubian provinces was a positive expression of the greed for surplus labour which every paragraph legalised, the English Factory Acts are the negative expression of the same greed. These acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour power, by forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made by a state that is ruled by capitalist and landlord. Apart from the working-class movement that daily grew more threatening, the limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same necessity which spread guano over the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly as the diminishing military standard in Germany and France.[2]'
" Further details are to be found in E. Regnault's Histoire politique et sociale des Principautés Danubiennes, Paris, 1855 [, pp. 304 sqq.].
[21] "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 lessens if his due growth is interfered with, either by physical or social conditions. In all European countries in which the conscription 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 centimetres; in 1818 (law of March 10th), 157; by the law of March 21, 1832, 156 c. m.; on the average in France more than half are rejected on account of deficient height or bodily weakness. The military standard in Saxony was in 1780, 178 c. m. It is now 155. In Prussia it is 157. According to the statement of Dr. Meyer in the Bavarian Gazette, May 9th, 1862, the result of an average of 9 years is, that in Prussia out of 1,000 con-scripts 716 were unfit for military service, 317 because of deficiency in height, and 399 because of bodily defects.... Berlin in 1858 could not provide its contingent of recruits; it was 156 men short." J. von Liebig: Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agrikultur und Physiologie, 1862, 7th Ed., Th. 1, [Einleitung,] pp. 117, 118.
The Factory Act of 1850 ' [8] ' now in force (1867) allows for the average working day 10 hours, i.e., for the first 5 days 12 hours from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m., including^ an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner, and thus leaving lOy working hours, and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., of which -j an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working hours are left, 10TT for each of the first 5 days, 7^ for the last.[1] Certain guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, directly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published half-yearly, by order of Parliament. They give regular and official statistics of the capitalistic greed for surplus labour.
Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors.[2]
"The fraudulent mill-owner begins work a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) before 6 a.m., and leaves off a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after 6 p. m. He takes 5 minutes from the beginning and from the end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10 minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally allowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after 2 p.m. on Saturday. Thus his gain is —
Before 6 a. m 15 minutes. After 6 p. m 15 At breakfast time 10 " At dinner time 20 "
Five days — 300 minutes, 60 "
On Saturday before 6 a. m 15 minutes. At breakfast time 10 " After 2 p. m 15
40 minutes. Total weekly 340 minutes.
[1] The history of the Factory Act of 1850 will be found in the course of this chapter. ''' 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 Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, von Friedrich Engels, Leipzig, 1845. How completely Engels understood the nature of the capitalist mode of production is shown by the Factory Reports, Reports on Mines, &c, 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 Children's Employment Commission, published 18 to 20 years later (1863-1867). These deal especially with the branches of industry in which the Factory Acts had not, up to 1862, been 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 1848, that age of paradise, of which the commercial travellers for the great firm of Free-trade, blatant as ignorant, tell 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.
Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50 working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and occasional stoppages) is equal to 27 working-days." ')
"Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied by weeks, are equal to two and a half days of produce in the year."[2]'
"An additional hour a day gained by small instalments before 6 a. m., after 6 p. m., and at the beginning and end of the times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to working 13 months in the year."3;
Crises during which production is interrupted and the factories work "short time", i. e., for only a part of the week, naturally do not affect the tendency to extend the working day. The less business there is, the more profit has to be made on the business done. The less time spent in work, the more of that time has to be turned into surplus labour time.
Thus the Factory Inspectors report on the period of the crisis from 1857 to 1858:
"It may seem inconsistent that there should be any overworking at a time when trade is so bad; but that very badness leads to the transgression by unscrupulous men, they get the extra profit of it. ... In the last half year," says Leonard Horner, "122 mills in my district have been given up; 143 were found standing", yet, overwork is continued beyond the legal hours.[41]
"For a great part of the time," says Mr. Howell, "owing to the depression of trade, many factories were altogether closed, and a still greater number were working short time. I continue, however, to receive about the usual number of complaints that half, or three-quarters of an hour in the day, are snatched from the workers by encroaching upon the times professedly allowed for rest and refreshment." 5l
The same phenomenon was reproduced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton crisis from 1861 to 1865.[6]'
"It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse, when persons are found at work in a factory, either at a meal hour, or at some illegal time, that they will not leave the mill at the appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force them to cease work" //cleaning their machinery, &c.,// "especially on Saturday afternoons. But, if the hands
[1] "Suggestions, &c. by Mr. L. Horner, Inspector of Factories", in: Factories Regulation Acts. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9th August, 1859, pp. 4, 5.
[2] Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for the half year, October, 1856, p. 35. ' Reports, &c, 30th April, 1858, [p]p. 9[,10]. [41] Reports, &c, 1. c , p. 10. 5i Reports, &c, 1. c , p. 25. <" Reports, &c, for the half year ending 30th April, 1861. See Appendix No. 2; Reports, &c, 31st October, 1862, pp. 7, 52, 53. The violations of the Acts became more numerous during the last half year 1863. Cf. Reports, &c, ending 31st October, 1863, p. 7.
remain in a factory after the machinery has ceased to revolve ... they would not have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart specially for cleaning, &c, either before 6 p.m." /jsic!// "or before 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoons."[1]
"The profit to be gained by it (overworking 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....[2] In cases where the additional time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course of the day, there are in-superable difficulties to the inspectors making out a case."[3]
These "small thefts" of capital from the labourer's meal and recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as "petty pilferings of minutes"[4] "snatching a few minutes",[5] or, as the labourers technically called them, "nibbling and cribbling at meal-times".[6]
It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus value by surplus labour, is no secret.
"If you allow me," said a highly respectable master to me, "to work only ten min-
[1] Reports, &c, October 31st, 1860, p. 23. With what fanaticism, according to the evidence of manufacturers given in courts of law, their hands set themselves against every interruption in factory labour, the following curious circumstance shows. In the beginning of June, 1836, information reached the magistrates of Dewsbury (Yorkshire) that the owners of 8 large mills in the neighbourhood of Batley had violated the Factory Acts. Some of these gentlemen were accused of having kept at work 5 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 for sleep at midnight. And these children had to do the ceaseless labour of 30 hours in the "shoddyhole", as the hole is called, in which the woollen rags are pulled in pieces, and where a dense atmosphere of dust, shreds, &c, forces even the adult workman 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 mulcted in £20. Dryden anticipated these gentry:
"Fox full fraught in seeming sanctity, That feared an oath, but like the devil would lie, That look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer, And durst not sin! before he said his prayer!" , 8 2 utes in the day overtime, you put one thousand a year in my pocket." " "Moments are the elements of profit."[2]'
Nothing is from this point of view more characteristic than the designation of the workers who work full time as "full-timers," and the children under 13 who are only allowed to work 6 hours as "half-timers". The worker is here nothing more than personified labour time. All individual distinctions are merged in those of "full-timers" and "half-timers".[3]'
Endnotes
[17] See S. Mayer, Die sociale Frage in Wien. Studie eines "Arbeitgebers", Wien, 1871.— 13
[17 5] Little shilling men, the Birmingham school of political economy formed in the first half of the 19th century. Its adherents propounded the theory of an ideal monetary unit and correspondingly viewed money only as "the names of account of money". The representatives of the Birmingham school advanced a project to reduce the gold content in the monetary unit in England. Hence the name of the school itself. See also K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 319-20).—241
[31] See K. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law (present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 3-129).—19
[178] This is a quotation from a speech delivered by D. Hansemann, a leader of the Rhenish Liberal bourgeoisie, in the first United Diet on June 8, 1847. See also K. Marx, The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution (present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 168-78).—242
[179] By the manifesto Marx probably means The Labour Question. An Address to Capitalists, and Employ ers, of the Building Trades, Being a Few Reasons in Behalf of a Reduction of the Hours of Labour, London, 1861. S. M. Peto, British railway businessman, went bankrupt in 1866. The same fate befell the German financier and speculator B. H. Strausberg in 1873.— 243
[143] In 1864, after the Rumanian National Assembly, dominated by the landowners (boyars), had rejected a draft land reform proposed by the government, Prince Alexander Kusa, Hospodar of the Danubian Principalities, effected a coup d'état, which led to the dissolution of the reactionary National Assembly, the publication of a new constitution, the widening of the electorate and the strengthening of the government's role. Adopted in this new political situation, the Agrarian Law of 1864 provided for the abolition of serfdom and the endowment of the peasantry with land on the basis of redemption payments.—178, 245
[180] The Reglement organique, the first constitution of the Danubian Principalities (Mol-
[8] The Established Church — the state national church in England, the Church of England. The Thirty-Nine Articles, which enunciated the articles of faith of the Church of England, were worked out during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and approved by the British Parliament in 1571.— 10
[5] Le mort saisit le vif, son hoir le plus proche et habile à lui succéder (The dead holds the living in his grasp...) — a formula of the French common law.— 9
[1] Capital—Marx's major work to which he devoted four decades (from the early 1840s till the end of his life). Marx started studying political economy at the end of 1843 in Paris. His aim was to write a treatise containing a critical analysis of political economy. As a result of his research in this field appeared such works as the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, Wage Labour and Capital, Manifesto of the Communist Party and others. After an interval caused by the 1848-49 revolution, Marx continued his economic studies in London, where he lived as a refugee from August 1849. Here he studied the works of different economists, the history of economic development and the economics of his time in various countries, especially in England which was then a classic example of a capitalist country. He investigated theories of money, credit and the causes of economic crises, the history of landownership and the theory of ground rent, the socio-economic condition of the working class and questions of population, the history of technology and other problems. -By 1857 he had completed his enormous preparatory work and then proceeded to the final stage — the systématisation and generalisation of the collected material. From January 1857 to June 1858, Marx wrote a manuscript containing 50 signatures, which was, in fact, the first rough draft of Capital. In the present edition it was published in vols 28 and 29. At first Marx intended to publish his work in separate instalments, and the first instalment, as he wrote, "should form a relative whole" (see present edition, Vol. 40, p. 287), which embraces only the first section of Book I — the section consisting of 3 chapters: 1) The Commodity; 2) Money or Simple Circulation and 3) Capital. However, the final variant of the first instalment — A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy — does not contain the third chapter. Marx wrote the chapter on commodity especially. He wrote the chapter on money for "the first instalment" on the basis of the manuscript of 1857-58. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One was published in 1859 (present edition, Vol. 29). It was to be followed by "the second instalment", i. e. by the chapter on capital. However, soon afterwards, Marx had to postpone this work for a year and a half as he was occupied in writing the pamphlet Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17) and in other urgent matters. Only in August 1861, did he begin work on "the second instalment". By the middle of 1863, he had written a new rough draft which was considerably longer than the manuscript of 1857-58 — 23 notebooks, having a total volume of about 200 signatures. The complete manuscript of 1861-63, which is considered to be the second rough draft of Capital, is reproduced in vols 30-34 of the present edition. Later on Marx decided to divide the theoretical part of the work on capital into 3 parts. The historico-critical section was to be the fourth and concluding part, and was to be based on the part of the 1861-63 manuscript entitled "Theories of Surplus Value". In his letter to Kugelmann dated October 13, 1866, Marx writes, "The whole work is thus divided into the following parts: Book I. The Process of Production of Capital. Book II. The Process of Circulation of Capital. Book III. Structure of the Process as a Whole. Book IV. On the History of the Theory" (see present edition, Vol. 42, p. 328). Marx also gave up his plan to publish the work in separate instalments and decided first to complete the whole work and then to publish it. Marx continued his work, concentrating mainly on those parts that were not sufficiently elaborated in the 1861-63 manuscript. He studied an enormous quantity of economic and technical literature, including books on agriculture, on credit and money and turnover. He also studied statistical material, various parliamentary documents, official reports on child labour in industry, on housing conditions of the British working class, etc. Marx then wrote a new manuscript (from August 1863 to the end of 1865), which constituted a more detailed variant of the three theoretical volumes of Capital. Only after the whole work was completed (January 1866), did Marx begin preparing it for the press, having decided, on Engels' advice, not to prepare the whole work but only Volume I of Capital. The final touches were made by Marx with great thoroughness and, in fact, became yet another recasting of Volume I of Capital as a whole. To ensure the integrity, completeness and clarity of the exposition, Marx thought it necessary to reproduce in a comparatively short form the major problems dealt with in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (published in 1859) at the beginning of Volume I of Capital—they now constitute the whole of the first part "Commodities and Money" (in the first edition which was not yet subdivided into parts the first chapter bore this title). After the publication of Volume I of Capital (September 1867), Marx continued work on it in preparation for publication in German and translation into foreign lan-guages. For the second edition (1872) he made more subdivisions and also a lot of changes in the text (see this volume, pp. 12-13), gave important instructions for the Russian edition, published in Petersburg in 1872 and the first foreign translation of Capital, once more changed the book's structure and thoroughly edited the French edition (1872-75). Marx intended to take into consideration most of the changes made in the French edition when preparing the third German edition of Volume I. At the same time, after the publication of Volume I of Capital Marx continued his work on the subsequent volumes, intending to finish the whole edition as soon as possible. However, he was unable to do so. A lot of time was taken up by his activities in the General Council of the First International, and his work was increasingly hampered by poor health. After Marx's death, Engels finished preparing the third (1883) German edition of Volume I of Capital for press, which was taken as the basis for the translation into English made by Samuel Moore and Eduard Aveling and edited by Engels (1887).— 1,311
[2] Marx is referring to the sections "Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities" and "Theories of the Medium of Circulation and of Money" in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 292-302, 389-417), which he later abandoned as he intended to prepare a special historico-critical concluding volume of Capital (see Note 1).— 7, 532
[3] A reference to Lassalle's work Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch der ökonomische Julian, oder: Capital und Arbeit, Berlin, 1864, Drittes Kapitel: "III. Tausch, Werth und freie Concurrenz", especially p. 149.— 8
[4] Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur! (It is of you that the story is told) — Horace, Satires, Bk. I, Satire 1.— 8, 272
[21] The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright. Defending the interests of manufacturers, the League secured the repeal of the Corn Laws which provided for the limitation and prohibition of grain imports, which served the interests of the landed aristocracy. The Corn Law adopted in 1815 prohibited the import of corn while the price of bread in England itself remained less than 80 sh. per quarter. In 1822 this law was slightly altered, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced, according to which there was a rise in import duties on corn when its price fell on the home market and vice versa. Trying to achieve the repeal of corn laws and to establish trade in corn, the League aimed at reducing domestic prices for corn and thus at reducing wages for wage-workers.The slogan of free trade was widely used by the League in its advocacy of the unity of interests of workers and manufacturers. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846.'— 15, 296, 458, 462, 667, 703
[7] The Civil War in America broke out in April 1861 and ended in April 1865. It was a war of the North against the Confederacy of the Southern States. The decisive role in the victory of the North in April 1865 was played by the workers and farmers. The international democratic public and the international working-class movement sympathised with and gave all possible support to the position of the Northern States.—9, 207, 262, 398, 540, 720, 760
[11] 1 ' The plan outlined here was not realised by Marx. The work referred to here as Book II, was published by Engels as Volume II of Capital (1885) after Marx's death, and Book III as Volume III of Capital (1894). Book IV was not published in Marx's or Engels' lifetime. See also Note 2.— 11, 565
[41] Engels wrote his work In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx specially for the purpose of defending Marx against repeated accusations of deliberately falsifying a quotation from Gladstone's speech of 16 April 1863 (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 95-176).—38
[6] The American War of Independence (1775-1783) — a revolutionary war fought by 13 British colonies in North America. As a result of their victory an independent state was formed, the United States of America. This war had a great impact on the development of the European revolutionary-democratic movement, in particular on the French revolution of the end of the 18th century.—9, 748