Let us assume that the worker
works three days of the week to
replace his wages and three days
to produce surplus-value for the
capitalist. Putting it otherwise, it
means that with a twelve-hour
working-day he works six hours
daily for his wages and six hours
for the production of surplus-value.
One can get only six days out of
the week, seven at most, even by
including Sunday, but one can
extract six, eight, ten, twelve,
fifteen or e ven more hours of
labour out of every working-day.
The worker sells the capitalist a
working-day for his day’s wages.
But, what is a working-day? Eight
hours or eighteen?
It is in the capitalist’s interest
to make the workging-day as long
as possible. The longer it is, the
more surplus-value is produced.
The worker correctly feels that
every hour of labour which he
performs over and above the
replacements of his wage is
unjustly taken from him; he
experiences with his own body
what it means to work excessive
hours. The capitalist fights for his
profit, the worker for his health, for
a few hours of daily rest, to be
able, as a human being, to have
other occupations than working,
sleeping and eating. It may be
remarked in passing that it does
not depend at all upon the good
will of the individual capitalists
whether they desire to embark on
this struggle or not, since
competition compels even the
most philanthropic among them to
join with his colleagues and to
make a working-time as long as
theirs the rule.
The struggle for the fixing of
the working-day has lasted from
the first appearance of free
workers in history up to the
present day. In various trades
different traditional working-days
July - 2018
prevail, but in reality they are
seldom observed. Only where the
law fixes the working-day and
supervises its observance can
one really say that there exists a
normal working-day. And up to now
this is the case almost exclusively
in the factory districts of England.
Here the ten-hour working-day
(ten-and-a-half hours on five days,
seven-and-a-half hours on
Saturday) has been fixed for all
women and for youths of thirteen
to eighteen; and since the men
cannot work without them, they
also come under the ten-hour
working-day. This law has been
won by English factory workers
through years of endurance,
through the most persistent,
stubborn struggle with the factory
owners, through freedom of the
press, the right of association and
assembly, and also through adroit
utilization of the divisions within the
ruling class itself. It has become
the palladium of the English
workers; it has gradually been
extended to all important branches
of industry and last year to almost
all trades, at least to all those in
which women and children are
employed. The present work
contains most exhaustive material
on history of this legislative
regulation of the working-day in
England. The next “North-German
Reichstag” will also have factory
regulations, and therefore the
regulation of factory labour, to
discuss. We expect that none of
the deputies elected by German
workers will go to discuss this bill
without previously making
themselves thoroughly conver-
sant with Marx’s book. Much can
be achieved there. The divisions
within the ruling classes are more
favourable to the workers than
they ever in England, because
universal suffrage compels the
ruling classes to court the favour
of the workers. Four or five
representatives of the proletariat
are a power under these circum-
stances, if they know how to use
their position, if above all they know
what is at issue, which the
bourgeois do not know. And Marx’s
book gives them in ready form all
the material required for this.
We will pass over a number
of other very fine investigations of
more theoretical interest and
come to the final chapter which
deals with the accumulation of
capital. Here it is first shown that
the capitalist mode of production,
i.e., that which presupposes
capitalists on the one hand and
wage-workers on the other, not
only continually reproduces the
capital of the capitalist, but also
continually reproduces the poverty
of the workers at the same time;
so that it is ensured that there
always exist anew, on the one
hand, capitalists who are the
owners of all means of subsi-
stence, raw materials and
instruments of labour, and, on the
other, the great mass of workers
who are compelled to sell their
labour-power to these capitalists
for an amount of the means of
subsistence which at best just
suffices to maintain them capable
of working and to bring up a new
generation of able-bodied
proletarians. But capital is not
merely reproduced; it is continually
increased and multiplied – and so
is its power over the propetyless
class of workers. And just as
capital itself is reproduced on an
ever-greater scale, so the modern
capitalist mode of production
reproduces the class of
propertyless workers also on an
ever-greater scale and in ever-
greater numbers. “….Accumlation
[of capital] reproduces the capital-
relation on a progressive scale,
more capitalists or larger
7