This rampant competition can result in capital damaging its own longer-term interests, by physically destroying the working-class, which is the source of its surplus value. It then requires capital in general, via its state, to impose regulation over the actions of the many capitals. As Marx put it, in relation to the Factory Acts, in Capital I, Chapter 15,
“Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical reaction of society against the spontaneously developed form of the process of production, is, as we have seen, just as much the necessary product of modern industry as cotton yarn, self-actors, and the electric telegraph.”
“Machinery does not wear out exactly in the same ratio in which it is used. Man, on the contrary, decays in a greater ratio than would be visible from the mere numerical addition of work.” (p 80)
Hence the requirement for overtime to be paid at enhanced rates, which also reflects this proportionately greater rise in the value of labour-power.
“They only set limits to the tyrannical usurpations of capital. Time is the room of human development. A man who has no free time to dispose of, whose whole lifetime, apart from the mere physical interruptions by sleep, meals, and so forth, is absorbed by his labour for the capitalist, is less than a beast of burden. He is a mere machine for producing Foreign Wealth, broken in body and brutalized in mind. Yet the whole history of modern industry shows that capital, if not checked, will recklessly and ruthlessly work to cast down the whole working class to this utmost state of degradation.” (p 80-81)
But, even if capital does pay enhanced rates of pay for overtime, this may still represent a fall in real terms. If the enhanced rates do not fully compensate for the additional wear and tear on the worker, they will still suffer a fall in wages, in real terms. The additional value created by labour, by its extension will be proportionately greater than the additional value in wages, so leading to a fall in relative wages, and rise in relative profits.
And, that can be achieved in other ways, as I have noted in relation to current developments, too. Marx notes that, by drawing in the workers' family to production, the capitalist obtains, say, 200 hours of labour, during the week, rather than 80 hours. But, where, previously the worker required wages equal to 40 hours of labour, to maintain their family, leaving 40 hours as surplus value, this same 40 hours can be shared amongst the wages of the entire family, which was usually paid to the male head of the household.
Even if their family wage rose to the equivalent of 50 hours labour, bringing a rise in money and real wages, it would mean that surplus value rose to 150 hours, a rise of the rate of surplus value from 100% to 300%. Similarly, today, as rising employment means more people in households are employed, raising household incomes, and real wages, this is consistent with hourly wages not rising as fast as prices, resulting in falling relative wages, and rising relative profits.
“Even with given limits of the working day, such as they now exist in all branches of industry subjected to the factory laws, a rise of wages may become necessary, if only to keep up the old standard value of labour. By increasing the intensity of labour, a man may be made to expend as much vital force in one hour as he formerly did in two. This has, to a certain degree, been effected in the trades, placed under the Factory Acts, by the acceleration of machinery, and the greater number of working machines which a single individual has now to superintend. If the increase in the intensity of labour or the mass of labour spent in an hour keeps some fair proportion to the decrease in the extent of the working day, the working man will still be the winner. If this limit is overshot, he loses in one form what he has gained in another, and ten hours of labour may then become as ruinous as twelve hours were before. In checking this tendency of capital, by struggling for a rise of wages corresponding to the rising intensity of labour, the working man only resists the depreciation of his labour and the deterioration of his race.” (p 81-2)
In fact, with Fordism, this relationship was institutionalised, particularly after WWII. So called “mutuality agreements” meant that unions agreed with bosses that there would be increased productivity per worker, each year, in return for higher money wages, and these higher money wages also meant higher real wages, as commodity values fell – though commodity prices rose, as a result of inflation/reduction in the value of the currency. Some of the rise in productivity came from improved technology, but some also came from this rise in speed-up, i.e. running existing machines/assembly lines at a faster pace, requiring workers to do more in the same time, also facilitated by the use of piece-wages and productivity bonuses, rather than time-wages.
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