7) THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL
WORKING-DAY.
RE-ACTION OF THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS ON OTHER
COUNTRIES
It is because the driving force, the purpose, of
capitalist production is the creation of Surplus Value that the first
and most striking attempts to extend the working day manifest
themselves in those industries first “revolutionised by
water-power, steam, and machinery, in those first creations of the
modern mode of production, cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning, and
weaving. The changes in the material mode of production, and the
corresponding changes in the social relations of the producers gave
rise first to an extravagance beyond all bounds, and then in
opposition to this, called forth a control on the part of Society
which legally limits, regulates, and makes uniform the working-day
and its pauses. This control appears, therefore, during the first
half of the nineteenth century simply as exceptional legislation.”
(p 282)
But, it was soon apparent that many types of
production had now become dominated by Capitalistic relations, and
so, instead of exceptional legislation, what was required was more
general legislation.
When capitalist production has developed, the
individual labourer selling his labour-power on the 'free market'
essentially disappears, because they are forced to succumb to the
massively greater power of capital. The individual workers can only
obtain the value of their labour-power, including the establishment
of a normal working day, if they combine and act collectively.
“As the contest takes place in the arena of
modern industry, it first breaks out in the home of that industry —
England. The English factory workers were the champions, not only of
the English, but of the modern working-class generally, as their
theorists were the first to throw down the gauntlet to the theory of
capital.” (p 283)
Other countries, therefore, lagged behind Britain.
In the US, as Marx described in his debates with Weston, in the
initial period, as it had been in Britain, prior to the Industrial
Revolution, labour had the upper hand against capital. In the US,
wages were relatively high, because labour was relatively scarce. As
soon as workers saved enough to buy a cheap piece of land, they
turned themselves back into peasants. But, when industrialisation in
the US takes off, and when large scale immigration changes that
situation, capital gains the upper hand. Moreover,
“In the United States of North America, every
independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery
disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in
the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death
of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War
was the eight hours’ agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued
boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New
England to California. The General Congress of labour at Baltimore
(August 16th, 1866) declared:
“The first and great necessity of the
present, to free the labour of this country from capitalistic
slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the
normal working-day in all States of the American Union. We are
resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is
attained.” (p 284)
And the same demand for an 8 hour day was adopted
by the First International at its Congress in Geneva.
“It must be acknowledged that our labourer
comes out of the process of production other than he entered. In the
market he stood as owner of the commodity “labour-power” face to
face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The
contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved,
so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The
bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no “free agent,”
that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the
time for which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire
will not lose its hold on him “so long as there is a muscle, a
nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited.” For “protection”
against “the serpent of their agonies,” the labourers must put
their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a law,
an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers
from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and
their families into slavery and death. In place of the pompous
catalogue of the “inalienable rights of man” comes the modest
Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make clear
“when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own
begins.”” (p 285-6)
Lessons of Marx's Analysis Of The Working Day
In general, capital proceeds on the basis of the
extraction of Relative Surplus Value, the analysis of which Marx is
coming to shortly. That is because relative surplus value is far
more efficient a means of exploitation than absolute surplus value.
Relative surplus value is more appropriate to the conditions of a
more mature and developed form of of capitalism, which having used up
a large amount of the labour reserve, has been led to replace labour
with machines, and in the process has had to develop a more educated
and skilled workforce. Moreover, relative surplus value arises
naturally out of the drive of each individual capital, under the lash
of competition to raise the level of productivity.
However, in the early stages of industrialisation,
there is a large Latent Reserve Army of Labour, and capital only
needs a large amount of unskilled labour. It begins by using that
up, including its cheapest components, the women and children. In
that respect it proceeds in a similar way to slavery when it has
access to large numbers of cheap slaves.
It does so, not because the Capitalists themselves
were necessarily greedy individuals. Often they were not. Marx
refers sarcastically to those who were members of the RSPCA and other
such charitable causes. Many 19th Century Capitalists
like Carnegie were philanthropists. The point is that as
representatives of capital, rather than as individuals, they were
controlled, not by their own individual sentiments and morals, but by
the needs of Capital and of competition, and its objective laws.
Marx quotes to this effect.
““The conduct of each of these classes
(capitalists and workmen) has been the result of the relative
situation in which they have been placed.” (Reports, &c., for
31st October, 1848, p. 113.)” (Note 1, p 282)
“With suppressed irony, and in very well
weighed words, the Factory Inspectors hint that the actual law also
frees the capitalist from some of the brutality natural to a man who
is a mere embodiment of capital, and that it has given him time for a
little “culture.” “Formerly the master had no time for anything
but money; the servant had no time for anything but labour” (l.c.,
p. 48).” (Note 1, p 286)
Marx makes this even clearer in Volume III, where he writes,
"It will
never do, therefore, to represent capitalist production as something which it
is not, namely as production whose immediate purpose is enjoyment or the
manufacture of the means of enjoyment for the capitalist. This would be
overlooking its specific character, which is revealed in all its inner essence." (Chapter 15)
However, those objective laws themselves indicated
to capital that the wasteful using up of labour could not continue,
which is why individual capitalists themselves recognised the need
for regulation e.g. the petition by Wedgwood and others to limit the
working day. The Capitalist State as the Executive Committee of the
ruling class acts to provide regulation in the interests of Capital
in General rather than at the level of Many Capitals. As Marx put it,
"And the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labour-power by
all capitalists.” (p 276)
But, the size of the Latent Reserve moves up and
down, and the need of capital to preserve labour varies with it. The
progress towards a normal working day, is protracted and reflects
these fluctuations, and the relative strength of the contending
classes that goes with it. It takes the form of class struggle, but
it is not just a labour-capital class struggle. It encompasses the
class struggle that was taking place between capital and landed
property. So, at one point, where capital needs the support of
workers for repeal of the Corn Laws, it offers the reforms of the
Factory Acts. When that is won, and the reality of a Long Wave
downturn set in, reducing the demand for Labour, Capital reneges on
the deal, and attempts to claw back a greater portion of the working
day for profit. Now, landed property strikes back at Capital by trying
to make an alliance with the workers to impose restrictions on
Capital.
Nor is the
battle between Labour and Capital
simply one fought out at an
industrial level via the
Trades Unions.
In fact,
Marx set out the
limitations of that in his
debates, in the
First International, with
Weston -
Value, Price and Profit
. Capital would always have the upper hand.
But, labour during this period had also
established its own co-operative factories and shops. Robert Owen in
the mills at New Lanark, had introduced a 10 hour day as far back as
1810, along with many other reforms, which demonstrated that
factories could be operated more efficiently and profitably where
workers were not overworked etc. The workers textile co-operatives
in Lancashire, as Marx demonstrated, were more efficient and
profitable than their privately owned competitors, despite the
obstacles placed in their way.
“Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only
maintained the necessity of a limitation of the working-day in
theory, but actually introduced the 10 hours’ day into his factory
at New Lanark. This was laughed at as a communistic Utopia; so were
his “Combination of children’s education with productive labour
and the Co-operative Societies of Workingmen", first called into
being by him. To-day, the first Utopia is a Factory Act, the second
figures as an official phrase in all Factory Acts, the third is
already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug.” (Note 2, p
283)
“After a 30 years’ struggle, fought with
almost admirable perseverance, the English working classes, improving
a momentaneous split between the landlords and money lords, succeeded
in carrying the Ten Hours’ Bill. The immense physical, moral, and
intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives,
half-yearly chronicled in the reports of the inspectors of factories,
are now acknowledged on all sides. Most of the continental
governments had to accept the English Factory Act in more or less
modified forms, and the English Parliament itself is every year
compelled to enlarge its sphere of action...
But there was in store a still greater victory
of the political economy of labour over the political economy of
property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the
co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold
“hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be
overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that
production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern
science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of
masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of
labour need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of
extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave
labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and
inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying
its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart. In
England, the seeds of the co-operative system were sown by Robert
Owen; the workingmen’s experiments tried on the Continent were, in
fact, the practical upshot of the theories, not invented, but loudly
proclaimed, in 1848.”
But, the fluctuations in demand for labour-power, which led to the ebb and flo of progress towards a normal working day have not ceased. In the 25 years prior to 1890, the economy once again entered a Long Wave downturn, what became known as the First Great Depression. As the demand for Labour-power declined, so capital attempted to add to relative surplus value extraction, by once more using absolute surplus value to raise the mass of profits. This tendency is more pronounced as Engels points out in his Preface to the Condition of the Working Class, amongst the small Capitalists, who frequently cannot survive without these "penny-pinching" methods.
It is seen once again in the Long Wave Downturn of the 1920's and 30's, where presented with a mass of surplus labour-power, Capital once again uses it up wastefully to produce Absolute Surplus Value. In fact, this is not surprising. Relative Surplus Value depends upon the introduction of new technologies, systems and other means of raising productivity. This is also a precondition for the Long Wave Boom, which assists in raising the rate of profit, provides a series of new Use Values to be produced and sold as commodities, and so on. It is, precisely the fact that the new technologies from the previous Innovation Cycle, have run their course, that productivity can no longer be increased rapidly, that the range of new commodities has declined, which brings the Boom to a close. But, it is also what means that the ability of Capital to increase Surplus Value via, Relative Surplus Value declines, forcing it to look once more to means of Absolute Surplus Value extraction such as getting people to start work on their mobile phone or laptop, before they get to work, to intensify the pace of work, to increase multi-tasking, to extend the working life via the increase in the pension age and so on.
The main lesson of the struggle over the working day, as set out by Marx in his debates with Weston is that although there are periods of Long Wave Boom, when the balance of forces may tip in the direction of Labour, enabling it to at least obtain the Value of Labour Power, so long as Labour works for Capital, Capital will have the upper hand, and so these Trades Union, and even reformist parliamentary struggles, will be severely limited in their potential. Only by workers ceasing working for Capital, and instead making the means of production once more work for them, can that be stopped. That is why, as Marx pointed out above, the example of the Workers Co-operatives,
"By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labour need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart."
On Sunday's,
Andrew Marr programme, Nick Clegg set out his plans for pauperising
parents and grandparents. Faced with massively inflated house
prices, the bubble in which must burst at some time, Clegg, rather
than proposing to deal with Britain's housing problem, by announcing
plans for massive house building, for measures against speculation
and so on, instead proposed to boost debt levels even further, and to
get parents and grandparents to assume responsibility for that debt,
by placing their Pension Funds and other savings at risk, by using
them as collateral for their children's mortgages on massively
overvalued property!
But, in
fact, despite its mantra this is a Government whose solution for most
things seems to be additional debt. They complain, for example, that
Banks are not lending enough to individuals, and small firms. They
have put thousands of students in the position of starting life in
massive debt, because of the increase in Tuition Fees, and the need
to pay for them, and other living expenses by taking on massive
amounts of Student Debt. Now, they want to pauperise those workers
who have managed to build up a modicum of savings over their
lifetime, by getting them to underwrite mortgages on properties whose
values must before too long fall way below those mortgages.
In the
period of the post war Long Wave Boom, the relative shortage of
labour allowed some workers to save enough money to buy a house.
Many were able to build up small company pensions – though the
value of those was already hit badly due to the Stock Market Crash
that followed on the credit fuelled stock market bubble created by
Thatcher and Reagan. Some were able to build up an amount of
savings. Already, the policies of the Liberal-Tory Government have
begun to eat into that buffer. The Stock Market Crash of 2000, was
followed by the Financial Meltdown of 2008. That has undermined many
Pension valuations, and money that people might have saved in PEP's
and ISA's. Where people played it safe, as they thought, and put
their money into a simple Bank Deposit account, they find that as a
result of the policies pursued by the Government and Bank of England,
they are receiving next to no interest on their money, whilst
inflation has way outstripped it, for the last 5 years. For the same
reason, had they put their money into Bonds, the yield they are able
to obtain on them, is negligible. At the same time, and for the same
reason, anyone who has built up a Pension pot, finds that with
current Annuity Rates, their pension will be a fraction of what they
anticipated.
But, not
satisfied with screwing people in that way, now the Liberals want to
get their hands on what is left of older people's savings and assets.
The reason the Liberals are putting forward this proposal is clear.
Along with the Tory wing of the Liberal-Tory Party, they have sought
to screw more Absolute Surplus Value out of people by extending the
Working Life, increasing the State Retirement Age. But, some people
who have managed to build up savings of one sort or another may still
be able to retire at their expected age, because with the erosion of
the State Pension, what they lose might be small compared to their
company pension. The Liberal-Tories need to erode any independent
means of support that workers might have. They need to do that for a
further reason in respect of housing.
In the US,
when house prices fell by around 75%, many people who had recently
taken out mortgages, simply walked away from the property, and the
debt, leaving it with the banks who had recklessly lent money. That
is the last thing the Liberal-Tories want to see happen. On any
metric, UK house prices are in a massive bubble. To get back to any
of the historic averages, they need to fall by 50%, and whenever such
a correction occurs, they always overshoot. UK house prices should,
and at some point will fall by around 75%-80%. The Liberal-Tories
along with the Bank of England, are pulling out all the stops to
prevent that, but all they can do is delay it, and make it worse when
it does happen.
They are
trying to prevent it, not because of any concern for house buyers –
if they had a concern for house buyers then as I pointed out in my
post
An Answer To James Bevan's Question
they would be doing everything they could to reduce house prices –
but out of concern for the banks who will go bust when all of that
private debt goes bad. If the Liberal-Tories really wanted to help
house buyers, and others seeking shelter, they would announce a
massive Council House building programme; they would scrap the Green
Belt, which protects the large landowners, and keeps land prices
artificially high; they would introduce punitive taxation on empty
homes; and they would stop the money printing designed to prop up the
banks.
But, by
getting parents and grandparents to underwrite the unaffordable
mortgages on over priced property of their children, the
Liberal-Tories provide another line of defence for the Banks. If
house prices crash by 80%, the majority of home owners, and home
buyers will not be adversely affected, as I set out in the blog
above. In fact, many, looking to move to a better house, would
benefit considerably from lower prices. Only those who have taken
out mortgages in the last 10-15 years are likely to be adversely
affected, the worst affected being those that took out mortgages in
the last 5-10 years. But, for this minority, as happened in the US,
the best thing to do would be to simply walk away from the property,
and hand the keys back to the bank along with the debt. The
Liberal-Tories want to avoid that.
What the
Liberal proposal, put forward this morning by Clegg amounts to is
that they want parents and grandparents to keep the bloated property
prices inflated for a while longer. Then, when the crash comes, the
fact that parents and grandparents have sunk their own savings into
these properties means that the banks losses are reduced. The banks
unable to get their money back from the children, who took out the
unaffordable mortgages on the inflated property, will instead take it
off their parents and grandparents! That will put pressure on the
kids not to default, not to walk away from the property, and thereby
to turn themselves and their parents and grandparents into debt
slaves.
