Capital did not invent surplus labor”, begins Marx. This section focuses of the historical tendency for the owners of the means of production to attempt to extract greater and greater amounts of surplus labor out of workers, often in an unscrupulous manner. He gives two main examples. The first is the system of the “corvée” in the Danubian provinces of precapitalist Russia. The second example is that of a fraudulent capitalist factory owner. Under the corvée system of the early 19th century, the peasant owed a specific quantity of labor to the landlord annually.
220-601 Exam This labor consisted of 12 general labor days, one day of field labor, and one day of wood carrying. This amounted to a total of 14 days a year. These days were not average work days, however. They amounted to the total time necessary to produce an average daily product. Russian leaders took such great liberties in deciding what an average daily product was that it turned out to be equal to three days of actual work. The 14 days of corvée became 42 days of required labor. Marx then gives a few more examples of ways the landlords were able to tack on more and more days to the corvée. The second main example for the strong appetite for surplus labor is that of a fraudulent factory owner that illegally extends the working day. He does this by starting work 10 or 15 minutes early or by shaving a few minutes off of the beginning and ending of breaks and lunch hours. These small additions of work add up to hours of uncompensated surplus labor over the course of a week,
220-602 Exam and weeks of surplus labor over the course of a year. In this section, Marx presents the historical debate regarding the work day and the exploitation of children. Using examples of match manufacturing and bread-making, Marx describes the issues children faced by working long hours in poor conditions at extremely young ages. In many cases, these children died or faced long-term ailments. Marx also covers similar issues of exploitation of children in both Ireland and Scotland. Means of production (constant capital) exists to be used to produce commodities. When not in use, no surplus-labor is occurring. This unproductive time can only be seen as good for the capitalist if the time the constant capital lies dormant is used so that the worker can rest and be more productive when again using the means of production to create a commodity. Although is it ideal for the capitalist to have people who could work constantly (24 hours a day), the workers would suffer and thus profits could not continue to increase. In order to produce 24 hours a day, the capitalist realized that by instituting shift-work, he
N10-003 Exam could both maximize his profits while allowing the individual worker to get his necessary rest Ideally a capitalist would have an individual worker producing 24 hours a day with only so much rest time as the worker needed to continue to function. The worker is nothing more to the capitalist than labor-power and a means to accumulate surplus-value and so the worker’s personal time means nothing to the capitalist. Yet according to Marx, having this attitude is a double-edge sword in that if the capitalist had his way and exploited the worker to this extent, he would in essence be killing his own workforce. However the value of labor-power (the worker) includes all of the commodities that go into keeping the worker alive. In the end, it is more expensive for the capitalist to replace a worker than to keep one sustained adequately. Ultimately it is in capital’s best interest to not have an individual work 24 hours a day with only necessary breaks but to have a work day that is short enough to sustain healthy strong labor-power.