Das Kapital

Capitalists have two goals when it comes to production: the production of commodities that have use values that can also serve as exchange values and to have those commodities worth more than all the commodities used to make them, giving them “surplus-value” (293). The value of this commodity includes the work, the raw materials, and the wear and tear on any tools and machines, which all fall under Marx’s label of “means of production” (295).

Marx breaks down the stages of labor to “unrest” (the planning and actual work) to “being” (the final creation of the commodity), which he also terms the process from “motion” to “objectivity” (296). Overall, a commodity is “nothing more than a measure of the labor absorbed” by it (297). This holds true whether the worker is producing something (i.e., a weaver making yarn) or is extracting natural resources (i.e., a miner digging for coal).

The capitalist increases or “valorizes” the value during the labor process in order to create surplus value (300). For example, Marx explains that a capitalist running a weaving workshop would provide the means for the worker to weave for 12 hours, not just six (301). Capitalists create surplus value by purchasing commodities that help produce new commodities in turn, although it is still labor power that drives this value. Marx compares this “valorization process” to “an animated monster which begins to ‘work’” (302). He argues this is true for both weavers and more specialized workers like jewelers. 

Marx continues his discussion of how “the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour” adds to the value of a product (309). He gives the example of an invention allowing a weaver to make a product from cotton in six hours rather than the 36 hours it took before. Ultimately, for Marx, surplus value is created through the relationship between labor power and the means of production. Tools and raw materials, the value of which does not change during production, are called “constant capital” by Marx (317). In contrast, there is “variable capital” (317), which comes from labor power and can be changed through circumstances, such as the means of production available.

Marx suggests that surplus value can be understood mathematically through the formula C = c + v, with “C” as surplus value, “c” as constant capital, and “v” as variable capital (320). Then, he elaborates on that formula, arguing that “v” is the only variable that can change because constant value is transformed into labor power through valorization. Marx admits that this seems to “contain contradictions,” but “this is only because they express a contradiction immanent in capitalist production” (322-23).

Next, Marx explains further the origin of surplus value. First, Marx defines “necessary labour-time” (325). In it, a worker “produces only the value of his labour-power” (324). This amount is equal to how much the worker would produce for their own needs and if they were working independently. After that, the worker produces “surplus-value” (325). Marx explains that surplus value is what is left of the amount that a commodity could be exchanged for after labor power, raw materials, and the expense from the cost of, and wear to, tools and machinery.

Marx uses the example of 20 pounds of yarn produced after 12 hours of labor and valued at 30 shillings (329). However, Marx argues that the entire amount of yarn does not hold the constant value, which would be the cotton used to make the yarn or the spindle worn away in the process. Thus, when the capitalist sells the yarn, the price they receive is more than what is needed to be compensated for the raw materials and the wear to any tools. The remainder of the price does not, Marx argues, reflect the actual labor power put into the product: “It is just as if the cotton had converted itself into yarn without any help, it is just as if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit” (330).

Next, Marx discusses a famous case involving an English economist, Nassau W. Senior, who represented factory owners in their opposition to the Factory Act of 1833. Senior had argued that the law limiting how long factory workers had to work would hurt profits for manufacturers. In fact, he suggested that the lost hour on shifts due to the law would destroy all profits. Marx counters that it would make no difference since, if workers worked shorter hours, then the amount of raw materials consumed and wear and tear to machines would decrease as well. Further, Marx mocks the idea that reducing a worker’s shift from 11.5 hours to 10 hours would cost the manufacturer all their profit. Calculating using his own concepts of constant and variable capital, Marx concludes that the manufacturers would still make a profit even with shifts of 5.75 to 4.75 hours (336).

Marx defines the product representing surplus value as “surplus product.” In Marx’s view, surplus value is the “determining purpose of capitalist production” (338). Therefore, Marx argues, the entire working day of any worker working toward the profit of an employer is dedicated to surplus value.

In this chapter, Marx begins with a hypothetical. A worker takes six hours to produce enough to support themselves. Marx considers different working days of seven, nine, and 12 hours. He concludes that the number of hours in a working day must be a “variable quantity” because it depends on the amount of labor power the worker must give (341). However, any working day must be limited by a number of factors. These include the physical needs, such as rest and food, and “intellectual and social requirements” (341). This conflicts with the needs of the capitalist: “If the worker consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist” (342). Marx then imagines a worker speaking up against the capitalist, demanding reasonable working hours because they “demand the value of my commodity” (343). For Marx, the fight over limits on the working day is a key battleground between workers and capitalists.

Marx argues that surplus labor predates his current era of capitalist productions. He compares work in English factories with other historic forms of labor. In modern factory work, surplus labor and necessary labor are “mingled together” (346). Marx contrasts this to feudal labor in Wallachia (part of modern-day Romania), where time spent working for the boyar (feudal lord) and on one’s own fields are sharply distinguished. Even so, Marx concludes that this still means the worker spends time on surplus labor for the benefit of another. The only important difference for Marx is that the boyar tries to add days to the peasant’s corvée (term of service), while the capitalist tries to add hours to the working day.

Historically, Marx traces the origin of Wallachia’s corvée system to communal fields once shared between peasants that were taken over by boyars and the Church. Based on his calculations, Marx argues that the corvée system, at least not taking into account abuses by the boyars, generates less surplus value than even factory labor in England (348).

Marx describes the Factory Laws in England as laws designed to “curb capital’s drive towards a limitless draining away of labour-power by forcibly limiting the working day on the authority of the state, but a state ruled by capitalist and landlord” (348). The laws are designed to prevent people from becoming completely exhausted. Even with such laws, workers are strictly monitored over their time. Looking at records left by factory managers, Marx notes how they blame the workers for “snatching a few minutes” (352).

Here, Marx details circumstances where capitalists make workers work without regulations or laws protecting them. The first case is lace manufacturers in England, who have children of nine or ten years of age work from about three o’clock in the morning until 11 at night. Next are potteries, where child workers work 15-hour shifts and develop lung diseases like pneumonia, reducing their lifespan. A third case is workers who manufacture matches. The workers, who are often children, are exposed to dangerous phosphorous and get sick with tetanus.

In the fourth case, Marx cites a description of how workers manufacturing wallpaper work without breaks from six in the morning to 10 at night. Fifth, Marx describes bakers of bread, who work through the night in scathing hot conditions. However, in Ireland, bakers were able to organize for the right not to have to work shifts longer than 12 hours. Similarly, agricultural laborers in Scotland protested to have their hours reduced. Next, Marx describes how the overwork experienced by railway workers had caused fatal accidents. Also, he describes the case of Mary Anne Walkley, a 20-year-old woman who died from overwork in a poorly ventilated room at a dress manufactory. 

Marx notes that in factories in England and elsewhere, workers are given either the day shift or the night shirt as part of a “24-hour process of production” (367). Factory workers include children as young as six as well as both women and men. Night shifts are especially detrimental to the physical and mental health of workers, something Marx illustrates through citing testimonies from workers and journalists in England.

Marx argues that the drive for surplus value is what causes capitalists to extend the workday, robbing workers of sleep, food, and fresh air and sunlight. It is not necessary for the “normal maintenance of labour-power” and instead represents “the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory and painful it may be” (376). Like an enslaver or a person who buys a horse, Marx writes that capitalists are willing to exhaust a worker to ill health or death because that worker can be easily replaced. If willing workers cannot be found locally, they can be found in other countries.

Marx argues the current situation in England was the result of a struggle between workers and capitalists that spanned from the 14th century to the present day. Even in the 14th century, when Marx views capital as being “in its embryonic state, its state of becoming” (382), a law, the Statute of Labourers, required workers to put in a set number of hours and fixed their wages. Further laws in the 15th and 16th centuries regulated the length of shifts and breaks. By the 18th century, there was a campaign against workers’ “obstinacy” (385). This campaign led to the workhouse, nicknamed the “House of Terror,” and later to factories where day-long shifts became the norm.

By the 18th century, there was what Marx describes as “an avalanche of violent and unmeasured encroachments” (390). Workers soon began to resist the long shifts demanded by factory and workhouse owners. The resistance of workers led to legislation. First, the Factory Act of 1833 mandated that the working day must begin at 5:30 am and end at 8:30 pm, prevented young workers from having to work night shifts, mandated a meal break, and gave slightly shorter shifts to child and young adult workers. A later law, the Factory Act of 1844, finally extended similar rights to all adult workers, limiting their work shifts to 12 hours. Marx describes how capitalists reacted to this and further legislation by rallying political support against the laws, seeking loopholes in the law, breaking up shifts between workers in a “system of relays” (394), and beginning to bring down wages.

Marx summarizes the significance of these historical struggles in a number of ways. First, he explains that “boundless and ruthless extension of the working day” only began with industrial production (411). Factory production changed not only the method of production but also the “social relations” (411), making it easier for capitalists to exploit their workers.

Second, a more humane working day is only achieved through workers struggling against the interests of the “capitalist class” (412). Since industrialization began in England, this struggle is most seen in events in that country. English workers have had to “put their heads together and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier by which they can be prevented from selling themselves and their families into slavery and death by voluntary contract with capital” (416).

Marx proposes that the mass (amount) and the rate of surplus value can be mathematically determined. His formula is:

S= (s/v)*VP*(a'/a)*n

The variables are S = net surplus value, s = surplus value provided by a worker on an average shift, v = variable capital provided by a worker’s labor power, V = sum total of the worker’s variable capital, P = the value produced by the worker’s labor power, a’ = surplus labor, a = necessary labor, and n = number of workers employed (418).

From this, Marx lays out three laws governing rate and mass (amount) of surplus value. According to the first law, there is always a steady supply of workers, who can eventually replace current workers if the amount of labor power declines through illness and death. The second law dictates that the length of the day imposes a strict limit. Capitalists get around this limitation by increasing shifts whenever there is a decrease in the workers available. With the third law, the mass of surplus value depends on the variable capital (i.e., wages, number of workers). The third law “clearly contradicts all experience based on immediate appearances” (421), however. By this, Marx refers to the fact that different industrial industries tend to still generate the same amount of profit.

From this analysis, Marx comes to the conclusion that “capitalist production presupposes the increase of wealth” (423). In previous times, with the guild system of the Middle Ages, the masters of guilds were not true capitalists because they were legally limited in how many workers they could employ. Unlike the guild masters, a capitalist in Marx’s time does not “participate directly” in the production of commodities (423). Instead, they are dedicated entirely to managing the labor of others and the sale of commodities.

Marx also concludes that by his own time of industrial production, the capitalist “acquired command over labour […] in other words the worker himself” (424). Capitalists use this power to force the working class to do more work than needed. This new system is not “directly compulsory” (425), yet it is highly exploitative.