Chapter XX.- Time Wages
Wages themselves again take many forms, a fact not recognisable in the ordinary economic treatises which, exclusively interested in the material side of the question, neglect every difference of form. An exposition of all these forms however, belongs to the special study of wage labour,[455] not therefore to this work. Still the two fundamental forms must be briefly worked out here.
The sale of labour power, as will be remembered, takes place for a definite period of time. The converted form under which the daily, weekly, &c, value of labour power presents itself, is hence that of time wages, therefore day wages, &c.
Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th chapter, on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of labour power and surplus value, pass by a simple transformation of form, into laws of wages. Similarly the distinction between the exchange value of labour power, and the sum of the necessaries of life into which this value is converted, now reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages. It would be useless to repeat here, with regard to the phenomenal form, what has been already worked out in the substantial form. We limit ourselves therefore to a few points characteristic of time wages.
The sum of money'[1] which the labourer receives for his daily or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according to the length of the working day, that is, according to the amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, i. e., very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour.[2]' We must, therefore, in considering time wages, again distinguish between the sum total of the daily or weekly wages, &c, and the price of labour. How then to find this price, i.e., the money value of a given quantity of labour? The average price of labour is found, when the average daily value of the labour power is divided by the average number of hours in the working day. If, e.g., the daily value of labour power is 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working hours, and if the working day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour is —^ shillings = 3d.
The price of the working hour thus found serves as the unit measure for the price of labour.
It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c, may remain the same, although the price of labour falls constantly. If, e. g., the habitual working day is 10 hours and the daily value of the labour power 3s., the price of the working hour is 3 — d. It falls to 3d. as soon as the working day rises to 12 hours, to 2~d. as soon as it rises to 15 hours. Daily or weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the price of labour remains constant or even falls. If, e. g., the working day is 10 hours, and the daily value of labour power 3 shillings, the price of one working hour is 3yd. If the labourer in consequence of increase of trade works 12 hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage now rises to 3 shillings 1— d.
[11] The value of money itself is here always supposed constant. •' "The price of labour is the sum paid for a given quantity of labour" (Sir Edward West, Price of Corn and Wages of Labour, London, 1826, p. 67). West is the author of the anonymous Essay on the Application of Capital to Land. By a Fellow of the University College of Oxford, London, 1815. An epoch-making work in the history of political economy.
without any variation in the price of labour. The same result might follow if, instead of the extensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased." The rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore be accompanied by a price of labour that remains stationary or falls. The same holds as to the income of the labourer's family, as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head of the family is increased by the labour of the members of his family. There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price of labour independent of the reduction of the nominal daily or weekly wages.[21]
As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily, weekly labour, &c, the daily or weekly wages depend on the price of labour which itself varies either with the value of labour power, or with the difference between its price and its value. Given, on the other hand, the price of labour, the daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity of the daily or weekly labour.
The unit measure for time wages, the price of the working hour, is the quotient of the value of a day's labour power, divided by the number of hours of the average working day. Let the latter be 12 hours, and the daily value of labour power 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 hours of labour. Under these circumstances the price of a working hour is 3d., the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now employed less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the week), e. g., only 6 or 8 hours, he receives, with this price of labour, only 2s.
" "The wages of labour depend upon the price of labour and the quantity of labour performed.... An increase in the wages of labour does not necessarily imply an en-hancement of the price of labour. From fuller employment, and greater exertions, the wages of labour may be considerably increased, while the price of labour may continue the same." West, I.e., pp. 67, 68, 112. The main question: "How is the price of labour determined?" West, however, dismisses with mere banalities.
[2] This is perceived by the fanatical representative of the industrial bourgeoisie of the 18th century, the author of the Essay on Trade and Commerce often quoted by us, although he puts the matter in a confused way: "It is the quantity of labour and not the price of it (he means by this the nominal daily or weekly wages) that is determined by the price of provisions and other necessaries: reduce the price of necessaries very low, and of course you reduce the quantity of labour in proportion. Master-manufacturers know that there are various ways of raising and felling the price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal amount" (fj. Cunningham,] 1. c, pp. 48, 61). In his Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages, London, 1830, in which N. W. Senior uses West's work without mentioning it, he says: "The labourer is principally interested in the amount of wages" (p. 15), that is to say the labourer is principally interested in what he receives, the nominal sum of his wages, not in that which he gives, the amount of labour!
or Is. 6d. a day.[11] As on our hypothesis he must work on the average 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day's wage corresponding merely to the value of his labour power, as according to the same hypothesis he works only half of every hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is clear that he cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we saw the destructive consequences of overwork; here we find the sources of the sufferings that result to the labourer from his insufficient employment.
If the hour's wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not bind himself to pay a day's or a week's wage, but only to pay wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour wage, or the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since
. . -i l l • daily value of labour power this unit is determined by the ratio — ; ;—: : — , working day oi a given number ol hours it, of course, loses all meaning as soon as the working day ceases to contain a definite number of hours. The connexion between the paid and the unpaid labour is destroyed. The capitalist can now wring from the labour a certain quantity of surplus labour without allowing him the labour time necessary for his own subsistence. He can annihilate all regularity of employment, and according to his own convenience, caprice, and the interest of the moment, make the most enormous overwork alternate with relative or absolute cessation of work. He can, under the pretence of paying "the normal price of labour", abnormally lengthen the working day without any corresponding compensation to the labourer. Hence the perfectly rational revolt in 1860 of the London labourers,[456] employed in the building trades, against the attempt of the capitalists to impose on them this sort of wage by the hour. The legal limitation of the working day put an end to such mischief, although not, of course, to the diminution of employment caused by the competition of machinery, by changes in the quality of the labourers employed, and by crises partial or general.
[1] The effect of such an abnormal lessening of employment is quite different from that of a general reduction of the working day, enforced by law. The former has nothing to do with the absolute length of the working day, and may occur just as well in a working day of 15, as of 6 hours. The normal price of labour is in the first case calculated on the labourer working 15 hours, in the second case on his working 6 hours a day on the average. The result is therefore the same if he in the one case is employed only for 7 —, in the other only for 3 hours.
With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour may remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its normal level. This occurs every time that, the price of labour (reckoned per working hour) remaining constant, the working day is prolonged beyond
, ^, TC • t 1 r i-daily value of labour power ., j its customary length. II in the traction: l ; c the de-working day nominator increases, the numerator increases yet more rapidly. The value of labour power, as dependent on its wear and tear, increases with the duration of its functioning, and in more rapid proportion than the increase of that duration. In many branches of industry where time wage is the general rule without legal limits to the working time, the habit has, therefore, spontaneously grown up of regarding the working day as normal only up to a certain point, e. g., up to the expiration of the tenth hour ("normal working day", "the day's work", "the regular hours of work"). Beyond this limit the working time is overtime, and is, taking the hour as unit-measure, paid better ("extra pay"), although often in a proportion ridiculously small.[11]
The normal working day exists here as a fraction of the actual working day, and the latter, often during the whole year, lasts longer than the former.2) The increase in the price of labour with the extension of the working day beyond a certain normal limit, takes such a shape in various British industries that the low price of labour during the so-called normal time compels the labourer to work during the better paid overtime, if he wishes to obtain a sufficient wage at all.3)
[11] "The rate of payment for overtime" (in lace-making) "is so small, from \ d. and — d. to 2d. per hour, that it stands in painful contrast to the amount of injury produced to the health and stamina of the workpeople.... The small amount thus earned is also often obliged to be spent in extra nourishment" ("Child. Empl. Com., II. Rep.", p. xvi, n. 117).
[21] E. g., in paper-staining before the recent introduction into this trade of the Factory Act.[457] "We work on with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of 10 — hours is finished by 4.30 p. m., and all after that is overtime, and we seldom leave off working before 6 p. m., so that we are really working overtime the whole year round" (Mr. Smith's "Evidence in Child. Empl. Com., I. Rep.", p. 125).
[31] E. g., in the Scotch bleaching-works. "In some parts of Scotland this trade //before the introduction of the Factory Act in 1862.[458]—F.E.jj was carried-on by a system of overtime, i. e., ten hours a day were the regular hours of work, for which a nominal wage of Is. 2d. per day was paid to a man, there being every day overtime for three or four hours, paid at the rate of 3d. per hour. The effect of this system ... a man could not earn more than 8s. per week when working the ordinary hours... without overtime they could not earn a fair day's wages" ("Rep. of Insp. of Factories", April 30th, 1863, p. 10). "The higher wages, for getting adult males to work longer hours, are Legal limitation of the working day puts an end to these ameni-ties.[11]
It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working days, in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages.[2]' A. Redgrave, factory inspector, illustrates this by a comparative review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which wages rose in the factories under the 10 hours' law, whilst they fell in the factories in which the work lasted 14 to 15 hours daily.[31]
From the law: "the price of labour being given, the daily or weekly wage depends on the quantity of labour expended," it follows, first of all, that, the lower the price of labour, the greater must be the quantity of labour, or the longer must be the working day for the labourer to secure even a miserable average wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts here as a stimulus to the extension of the labour time.[4]'
On the other hand, the extension of the working time produces, in
a temptation too strong to be resisted" ("Rept. of Insp. of Fact.", April 30th, 1848, p. 5). The book-binding trade in the city of London employs very many young girls from 14 to 15 years old, and that under indentures which prescribe certain definite hours of labour. Nevertheless, they work in the last week of each month until 10, 11, 12, or 1 o'clock at night, along with the older labourers, in a very mixed company. "The masters tempt them by extra pay and supper", which they eat in neighbouring public houses. The great debauchery thus produced among these "young immortals" ("Children's Employment Comm., V. Rept.", p. 44, n. 191) is compensated by the fact that among the rest many Bibles and religious books are bound by them.
[1] See "Reports of Insp. of Fact.", 30th April, 1863, 1. c. With very accurate appreciation of the state of things, the London labourers employed in the building trades declared, during the great strike and lock-out of 1860, that they would only accept wages by the hour under two conditions (1), that, with the price of the working hour, a normal working day of 9 and 10 hours respectively should be fixed, and that the price of the hour for the 10 hours' working day should be higher than that for the hour of the 9 hours' working day; (2), that every hour beyond the normal working day should be reckoned as overtime and proportionally more highly paid.[459] its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a fall in the day's or week's wages.
The determination of the price of labour by:
daily value of labour power
, working day of a given number of hours shows that a mere prolongation of the working day lowers the price of labour, if no compensation steps in. But the same circumstances which allow the capitalist in the long run to prolong the working day, also allow him first, and compel him finally, to nominally lower the price of labour, until the total price of the increased number of hours is lowered, and, therefore, the daily or weekly wage. Reference to two circumstances is sufficient here. If one man does the work of 1^ or 2 men, the supply of labour increases, although the supply of labour power on the market remains constant. The competition thus created between the labourers allows the capitalist to beat down the price of labour, whilst the falling price of labour allows him, on the other hand, to screw up still further the working time.[1]* Soon, however, this command over abnormal quantities of unpaid labour, i. e., quantities in excess of the average social amount, becomes a source of competition amongst the capitalists themselves. A part of the price of the commodity consists of the price of labour. The unpaid part of the labour price need not be reckoned in the price of the commodity. It may be presented to the buyer. This is the first step to which competition leads. The second step to which it drives, is to exclude also from the selling price of the commodity, at least a part of the abnormal surplus value created by the extension of the working day. In this way an abnormally low selling price of the commodity arises, at first sporadically, and becomes fixed by degrees; a lower selling price which henceforward becomes the constant basis of a miserable wage for an excessive working time, as originally it was the product of these very circumstances. This movement is simply indicated here, as the analysis of competition does not belong to this part of our subject.[460]
Nevertheless, the capitalist may, for a moment, speak for himself.
"In Birmingham there is so much competition of masters one against another, that many are obliged to do things as employers that they would otherwise be ashamed of; and yet no more money is made, but only the public gets the benefit."(1)
The reader will remember the two sorts of London bakers, of whom one sold the bread at its full price (the "full-priced" bakers), the other below its normal price ("the underpriced", "the undersellers")." The "full-priced" denounced their rivals before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry:
"They only exist now by first defrauding the public, and next getting 18 hours' work out of their men for 12 hours' wages.... The unpaid labour of the men was made ... the source whereby the competition was carried on, and continues so to this day.... The competition among the master bakers is the cause of the difficulty in getting rid of night-work. An underseller, who sells his bread below the cost price according to the price of flour, must make it up by getting more out of the labour of the men.... If I got only 12 hours' work out of my men, and my neighbour got 18 or 20, he must beat me in the selling price. If the men could insist on payment for overwork, this would be set right.... A large number of those employed by the undersellers are foreigners and youths, who are obliged to accept almost any wages they can obtain."-
This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows, how the appearance only of the relations of production mirrors itself in the brain of the capitalist. The capitalist does not know that the normal price of labour also includes a definite quantity of unpaid labour, and that this very unpaid labour is the normal source of his gain. The category, surplus labour time, does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the normal working day, which he thinks he has paid for in the day's wages. But overtime does exist for him, the prolongation of the working day beyond the limits corresponding with the usual price of labour. Face to face with his underselling competitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this overtime. He again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid labour, just as well as does the price of the customary hour of labour. For example, the price of one hour of the 12 hours' working day is 3d., say the value product of half a working hour, whilst the price of the overtime working hour is 4d., or the
" "Children's Employment Com., III. Rep.", Evidence, p. 66, n. 22. 2: "Report, &c, Relative to the Grievances Complained of by the Journeymen Bakers". Lond., 1862, p. VII, and ib. Evidence, notes 479, 359, 27. Anyhow the full-priced also, as was mentioned above, and as their spokesman, Bennett, himself admits, make their men "generally begin work at 11 p. m. ... up to 8 o'clock the next morning ... they are then engaged all day long ... as late as 7 o'clock in the evening" (1. c, p. 22).
value product of -f of a working hour. In the first case the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second, one-third of the working hour without paying for it.
Endnotes
[4 5 5] According to Marx's plan for his work on economics (what is known as the "six books plan"), the third book was intended to encompass a special theory of wage labour. (See present edition, Vol. 29, p. 261.) However, in view of changes in that plan in the course of subsequent work, the book was never written by Marx.— 542
[4 5 6] This strike began in fact in July 1859 and ended in February 1860.— 545
[457] The Factory Act of 1850 was introduced in the paper-staining industry in 1864. See this volume, p. 300.— 546
[458] The reference is to An Act to Prevent the Employment... (see Note 251).— 546
[4] Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur! (It is of you that the story is told) — Horace, Satires, Bk. I, Satire 1.— 8, 272
[459] See The Times of March 28, 1861 and April 4, 1861.—547
[460] Marx apparently proposed to study this question in detail in a book on wage labour (see Note 455). See also present edition, Vol. 33, p. 386; Vol. 34, pp. 23-2 5 . - 5 4 8 46
[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
[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
[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
[31] See K. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law (present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 3-129).—19