the hours of labour to an outrageous extent was established;1 the period that was especially characterised by an accelerated accumulation of capital here, by pauperism there. (2) Increasing intensity and productiveness of labour with simultaneous shortening of the working-day. Increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour, both have a like effect. They both augment the mass of articles produced in a given time. Both, therefore, shorten that portion of the working-day which the labourer needs to produce his means of subsistence or their equivalent. The minimum length of the working-day is fixed by this necessary but contractile portion of it. If the whole working-day were to shrink to the length of this portion, surplus-labour would vanish, a consummation utterly impossible under the régime of capital. Only by suppressing the capitalist form of production could the length of the working-day be reduced to 1 "Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit beyond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages noticed in the evidence" (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, 1814-15), "they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the growth of capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and unremitted. They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were constantly in action, effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the population of a country being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food." (Malthus: "Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent," Lond., 1815, p. 48, note.) All honour to Malthus that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours of labour, a fact to which he elsewhere in his pamphlet draws attention, while Ricardo and others, in face of the most notorious facts, make invariability in the length of the working-day the ground-work of all their investigations. But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working-day, combined with an extraordinary development of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working class "supernumerary," particularly when. ever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this "over-population" by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production. 2" A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from the greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes, the most numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by necessitous circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former workmen were, from the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time to increase production." (Essays on Pol. Econ., in which are illustrated the prinsipal causes of the present national distress. Lond., 1830, p. 248.) the necessary labour-time. But, even in that case, the latter would extend its limits. On the one hand, because the notion of "means of subsistence" would considerably expand, and the labourer would lay claim to an altogether different standard of life. On the other hand, because a part of what is now surplus-labour, would then count as necessary labour; I mean the labour o. forming a und for reserve and accumulation. The more the productiveness of labour increases, the more can the working-day be shortened; and the more the workingday is shortened, the more can the intensity of labour increase. From a social point of view, the productiveness increases in the same ratio as the economy of labour, which, in its turn, includes not only economy of the means of production, but also the avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous. The intensity and productiveness of labour being given, the time which society is bound to devote to material production is shorter, and as a consequence, the time at its disposal for the free development, intellectual and social, of the individual is greater, in proportion as the work is more and more evenly divided among all the able-bodied members of society, and as a particular class is more and more deprived of the power to shift the natural burden of labour from its own shoulders to those of another layer of society. In this direction, the shortening of the working-day finds at last a limit in the generalisation of labour. In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time. CHAPTER XVIII. VARIOUS FORMULÆ FOR THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE. We have seen that the rate of surplus-value is represented by the following formulæ. Surplus-value() I. Variable Capital = = Surplus-value The two first of these formulæ represent, as a ratio of values, that which, in the third, is represented as a ratio of the times during which those values are produced. These formula, supplementary the one to the other, are rigorously definite and We therefore find them substantially, but not consciously, worked out in classical political economy. There we meet with the following derivative formulæ. correct. II. Surplus-labour Surplus-value Surplus-product One and the same ratio is here expressed as a ratio of labour-times, of the values in which those labour-times are embodied, and of the products in which those values exist. It is of course understood that, by "Value of the Product," is meant only the value newly created in a working-day, the constant part of the value of the product being excluded. In all of these formulæ (II.), the actual degree of exploitation of labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed. Let the working-day be 12 hours. Then, making the same assumptions as in former instances, the real degree of exploitation of labour will be represented in the following proportions. These derivative formulæ express, in reality, only the pro portion in which the working-day, or the value produced by it, is divided between capitalist and labourer. If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree of self-expansion of capital, the following erroneous law would hold good: Surplus-labour or surplus-value can never reach 100%.1 Since the surplus-labour is only an aliquot part of the working-day, or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value created, the surplus-labour must necessarily be always less than the working-day, or the surplus-value always less than the total value created. In order, however, to attain the ratio of 100:100 they must be equal. In order that the surplus-labour may absorb the whole day (i. e., an average day of any week or year), the necessary labour must sink to zero. But if the necessary labour vanish, so too does the surpluslabour, since it is only a function of the former. The ratio Surplus-labour can therefore never reach the limit of 100, still less rise to. But not so the rate of surplusvalue, the real degree of exploitation of labour. Take, e.g., the estimate of L. de Lavergne, according to which the English agricultural labourer gets only, the capitalist (farmer) on the other hand of the product or of its value, apart from the question of how the booty is subsequently divided between the Working-day or Surplus-value 1 Thus, e.g., in "Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der Ricardo'schen Theorie von der Grundrente und Begründung einer neuen Rententheorie. Berlin, 1851." I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erroneous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production. Note by the Editor of the 3rd Edition. It may be seen from this how favourably Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and sound ideas. The subsequent publication of Rodbertus' letters to Rud. Meyer has shown that the above acknowledgment by Marx wants restricting to some extent, In those letters this passage occurs: "Capital must be rescued not only from labour, but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial capitalist as economical and political functions, that have been delegated to him with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know no other social organisation. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be reduced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call his book, must be warded off. Altogether, Marx's book is not so much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital." (Briefe, &c., von Dr. Rodbertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer, Berlin, 1881, I. Bd. p. 111., 48. Brief von Rodbertus.). To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Rodbertus in his "social letters" finally dwindle down. 2 That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced, is of course left out in this caluclation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of England, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high, capitalist, the landlord and others. According to this, the surplus-labour of the English agricultural labourer is to his necessary labour as 3:1, which gives a rate of exploitation of 300%. The favourite method of treating the working-day as constant in magnitude became, through the use of the formulæ II., a fixed usage, because in them surplus-labour is always compared with a working-day of given length. The same holds good when the repartition of the value produced is exclusively kept in sight. The working-day that has already been realised in a given value, must necessarily be a day of given length. The habit of representing surplus-value and value of labourpower as fractions of the value created-a habit that originates in the capitalist mode of production itself, and whose import will hereafter be disclosed-conceals the very transaction that characterises capital, namely the exchange of variable capital for living labour-power, and the consequent exclusion of the labourer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we have the false semblance of an association, in which labourer and capitalist divide the product in proportion to the different eleInents which they respectively contribute towards its formation.1 Surplus-labour of 6 hours Moreover, the formulæ II. can at any time be reconverted into formulæ I. If, for instance, we have Working-day of 12 hours the necessary labour-time being 12 hours less the surpluslabour of 6 hours, we get the following result, There is a third formula which I have occasionally already anticipated; it is After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer possible to be misled, by the formula Unpaid labour into con 1 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of co-operation, nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic char |