4) Day & Night Work. The Relay System.
Constant Capital exists
to soak up Labour and thereby create Surplus Value. Any time that
Constant Capital is not soaking up Labour – downtime – is a loss
to the Capitalist from several standpoints. Firstly, Labour could
have been employed during that period, and been producing Surplus
Value. Secondly, the Capitalist advanced Capital for the purchase of
this Constant Capital, and expects to be making a return on it
constantly. Thirdly, if it stands idle, there might be a cost in
restarting it, for example, in firing up kilns, furnaces etc.
For all these reasons,
as well as those referred to previously, in relation to depreciation,
Capital seeks to ensure that Constant Capital is in continuous
operation. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, this was
done via a two-shift system.
“It is well known that this
relay system, this alternation of two sets of workers, held full sway
in the full-blooded youth-time of the English cotton manufacture, and
that at the present time it still flourishes, among others, in the
cotton spinning of the Moscow district. This 24 hours’ process of
production exists to-day as a system in many of the branches of
industry of Great Britain that are still “free,” in the
blast-furnaces, forges, plate-rolling mills, and other metallurgical
establishments in England, Wales, and Scotland. The working-time here
includes, besides the 24 hours of the 6 working-days, a great part
also of the 24 hours of Sunday. The workers consist of men and women,
adults and children of both sexes. The ages of the children and young
persons run through all intermediate grades, from 8 (in some cases
from 6) to 18.” (p 245-6)
Marx once again cites
the Factory Inspectors' Reports on the abuses arising from it.
“It is impossible,” the report continues,
“for any mind to realise the amount of work described in the
following passages as being performed by boys of from 9 to 12 years
of age ... without coming irresistibly to the conclusion that such
abuses of the power of parents and of employers can no longer be
allowed to exist.” (p 246)
As some of the Reports
indicated, where workers often children, covered for others off sick,
they would frequently work not just a 12 hour shift, but a 24 or even
36 hour shift! This was in all kinds of industry and odious
conditions such as in steel manufacture, where people were working in
temperatures of between 86-90 degrees.
“It is true that there is this loss from
machinery lying idle in those manufactories in which work only goes
on by day. But the use of furnaces would involve a further loss in
our case. If they were kept up there would be a waste of fuel
(instead of, as now, a waste of the living substance of the workers),
and if they were not, there would be loss of time in laying the fires
and getting the heat up (whilst the loss of sleeping time, even to
children of 8 is a gain of working-time for the Sanderson tribe), and
the furnaces themselves would suffer from the changes of
temperature.” (Whilst those same furnaces suffer nothing from the
day and night change of labour.)” (E.F. Sanderson quoted on p 251)
5) THE
STRUGGLE FOR A NORMAL WORKING-DAY.
COMPULSORY LAWS FOR THE
EXTENSION OF THE WORKING-DAY FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 14TH TO THE END
OF THE 17TH CENTURY
For
Capital, the working day is essentially 24 hours, less that time that
workers must have to replenish and reproduce themselves. In the
early period of industrial capitalism, where what Capital requires
above all is masses of undifferentiated, unskilled labour, even the
time for education or other cultural development is minimal. The
hypocrisy was illustrated by Marx, who points out that Sunday working
by workers for Capital was defended, whilst, “In
England even now occasionally in rural districts a labourer is
condemned to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath, by working in
his front garden.” (Note 1, p 252)
But, just as depriving
the land of its fertility has a cost to the farmer, so wearing out and
destroying labour-power has a cost for capital.
“If then the unnatural extension of the
working-day, that capital necessarily strives after in its unmeasured
passion for self-expansion, shortens the length of life of the
individual labourer, and therefore the duration of his labour-power,
the forces used up have to be replaced at a more rapid rate and the
sum of the expenses for the reproduction of labour-power will be
greater; just as in a machine the part of its value to be reproduced
every day is greater the more rapidly the machine is worn out. It
would seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points in
the direction of a normal working-day.” (p 253)
Marx compares this with
slavery. The slave owner buys a slave in the same way they buy a
horse. If they lose either by overwork or abuse, it is a direct
loss. However, if there is an abundant supply of cheap slaves, the
slave owner might still be prepared to overwork them in order to
maximise the earnings from them.
“It is accordingly a maxim of slave
management, in slave-importing countries, that the most effective
economy is that which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest
space of time the utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting
forth. It is in tropical culture, where annual profits often equal
the whole capital of plantations, that negro life is most recklessly
sacrificed. It is the agriculture of the West Indies, which has been
for centuries prolific of fabulous wealth, that has engulfed millions
of the African race. It is in Cuba, at this day, whose revenues are
reckoned by millions, and whose planters are princes, that we see in
the servile class, the coarsest fare, the most exhausting and
unremitting toil, and even the absolute destruction of a portion of
its numbers every year.” (Cairnes, “The Slave Power”, quoted on
p 254)
“For slave-trade read labour-market, for
Kentucky and Virginia, Ireland and the agricultural districts of
England, Scotland, and Wales, for Africa, Germany. We heard how
over-work thinned the ranks of the bakers in London. Nevertheless,
the London labour-market is always over-stocked with German and other
candidates for death in the bakeries.” (p 254)
The making up of the
destroyed labour force proceeded very much along the lines of
slavery. Marx quotes the speech of William Ferrand MP in Parliament
(27th April, 1863),
“But then the manufacturers proposed to the
Poor Law Commissioners that they should send the “surplus-population”
of the agricultural districts to the north, with the explanation
“that the manufacturers would absorb and use it up.”
The Bury Guardian said,
on the completion of the French treaty, that “10,000 additional
hands could be absorbed by Lancashire, and that 30,000 or 40,000 will
be needed.” After the “flesh agents and sub-agents” had in vain
sought through the agricultural districts,
“a deputation came up to London, and waited
on the right hon. gentleman [Mr. Villiers, President of the Poor Law
Board] with a view of obtaining poor children from certain union
houses for the mills of Lancashire.”” (p 254-5)
This ability to use up
Labour and replace it with a new generation (often stunted and
unhealthy) or new supplies from the countryside or from abroad, gave
capital the view that Labour Power could continue to be used up.
Capital eventually realised that could not continue for ever, but,
“In every stockjobbing swindle every one
knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one
hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself
has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après
moi le déluge! [After me, the flood] is the watchword of
every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is
reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless
under compulsion from society. To the out-cry as to the physical and
mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of over-work, it
answers: Ought these to trouble us since they increase our profits?
But looking at things as a whole, all this does not, indeed, depend
on the good or ill will of the individual capitalist. Free
competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in
the shape of external coercive laws having power over every
individual capitalist.” (p 252)
“We, therefore, find, e.g., that in the
beginning of 1863, 26 firms owning extensive potteries in
Staffordshire, amongst others, Josiah Wedgwood, & Sons, petition
in a memorial for “some legislative enactment.” Competition with
other capitalists permits them no voluntary limitation of
working-time for children, &c. “Much as we deplore the evils
before mentioned, it would not be possible to prevent them by any
scheme of agreement between the manufacturers. ... Taking all these
points into consideration, we have come to the conviction that some
legislative enactment is wanted.” (“Children’s Employment
Comm.” Rep. I, 1863, p. 322.) Most recently a much more striking
example offers. The rise in the price of cotton during a period of
feverish activity, had induced the manufacturers in Blackburn to
shorten, by mutual consent, the working-time in their mills during a
certain fixed period. This period terminated about the end of
November, 1871. Meanwhile, the wealthier manufacturers, who combined
spinning with weaving, used the diminution of production resulting
from this agreement, to extend their own business and thus to make
great profits at the expense of the small employers. The latter
thereupon turned in their extremity to the operatives, urged them
earnestly to agitate for the 9 hours’ system, and promised
contributions in money to this end.” (Note 2, p 257)
Laws were introduced,
the English Labour Statutes, from the 14th Century
onwards. Their objective was to lengthen the working day. This
compulsion was required because at this stage, the balance of forces
is largely in favour of Labour and against Capital. After the Black
Death had ravaged the population, that balance was tipped in favour
of Labour even further, with all wages rising. Even with the force
of law, it was impossible to impose long hours on Labour, and the
hours set out in those Statutes were much less than workers ended up
working in the 19th Century.
“Hence it is natural that the lengthening of
the working-day, which capital, from the middle of the 14th to the
end of the 17th century, tries to impose by State-measures on adult
labourers, approximately coincides with the shortening of the
working-day which, in the second half of the 19th century, has here
and there been effected by the State to prevent the coining of
children’s blood into capital. That which to-day, e.g.,
in the State of Massachusetts, until recently the freest State of the
North-American Republic, has been proclaimed as the statutory limit
of the labour of children under 12, was in England, even in the
middle of the 17th century, the normal working-day of able-bodied
artisans, robust labourers, athletic blacksmiths.” (p 258)
“Still, during the greater part of the 18th
century, up to the epoch of Modern Industry and machinism, capital in
England had not succeeded in seizing for itself, by the payment of
the weekly value of labour-power, the whole week of the labourer,
with the exception, however, of the agricultural labourers. The fact
that they could live for a whole week on the wage of four days, did
not appear to the labourers a sufficient reason that they should work
the other two days for the capitalist.” (p 260)
The response of Capital
was simple.
It is the same
motivation which today encourages Capital to seek to reduce the
free-time workers might enjoy at the end of their working lives. By
robbing them of the Pension entitlements they have built up over
decades of contributions from their wages, and increasing the
retirement age, it forces them to continue providing free labour to
Capital for additional years, thereby increasing the profits of
Capital.
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