May Day -- The capitalist workday, the socialist workday
http://links.org.au/node/374
By Michael A. Lebowitz
April 24, 2008 -- As May Day approaches, there are four things that
are worth remembering:
1. For workers, May Day does not celebrate a state holiday or gifts
from the state but commemorates the struggle of workers from below.
2. The initial focus of May Day was a struggle for the shorter workday.
3. The struggle for the shorter workday is not an isolated struggle
but is the struggle against capitalist exploitation.
4. The struggle against capitalist exploitation is an essential part
but not the /only/ part of the struggle against capitalism.
What I want to do today is to set out some ideas about the capitalist
workday and the socialist workday which I hope can be useful in the
current struggles in Venezuela and, more immediately, in today's
discussion.
The capitalist workday
What is the relation between the work the capitalist workday and
exploitation? When workers work for capital, they receive a wage which
allows them to purchase a certain amount of commodities. How /much /is
that wage? There is nothing automatic about the wage level. It is
determined by the struggles of workers against capital.
Those commodities which form the worker's wage contain a certain
quantity of labour, and those hours of labour on a daily basis are
often described as the ``necessary labour'' of the worker -- the hours
of labour necessary for workers to produce the commodities they
consume on a daily basis.
But, in capitalism workers do not just work their hours of necessary
labour. Because they have been compelled to sell their ability to work
to the capitalist in order to survive, the capitalist is in the
position to demand they work longer than this. And the difference
between their hours of necessary labour and the total work that
workers perform for capital is /surplus/ labour -- the ultimate source
of capital's profits. In other words, capitalist profits are based on
the difference between the workday and necessary labour; they are
based upon surplus labour, unpaid labour, exploitation.
So, the more the capitalist is able to drive up the workday, the
greater the exploitation and the greater the profit. Marx commented
that ``the capitalist is constantly tending to reduce wages to their
physical minimum and extend the working day to its physical maximum''.
How true. Marx continued, though, and noted ``while the working man
constantly presses in the opposite direction''. In other words, class
struggle: workers struggle to increase wages and to reduce the
workday; they struggle to reduce exploitation by capitalists.
Of course, your workday is more than just the time spent between
clocking in and clocking out. There is the time it takes you to get to
work, the time it takes to buy the food you need to survive, the time
to prepare that food -- all this is really necessary labour and part
of the worker's workday. But since this labour is free to the
capitalist, since it is not a cost for him, it is therefore /invisible
/to him. So, when the capitalists want to drive down necessary labour
by driving down wages (or by increasing productivity relative to
wages), it is not the labour he does not pay for that he wants to
reduce. Rather, he wants as much free labour is possible, as much
unpaid labour as possible.
It is not surprising that workers want to reduce their unpaid labour
for capital and to do so by struggling to reduce the capitalist
workday. But it is not only the unpaid labour in the workday that is a
burden for workers; it is also the /paid/ labour that they are
compelled to do for capital. In other words, the problem is not only
exploitation. It is the way that capitalist production deforms working
people. In the capitalist workplace, the worker works for the goals of
capital, under the control of capital and with an organisation of
production which is designed not to permit workers to develop their
capabilities but, rather, has the single goal of profits. ``All means
for the development of production'', Marx stressed about capitalism,
``distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him'' and
``alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour
process''. In other words, the process of capitalist production
cripples us as human beings. Life in the capitalist workplace is a
place where we are commanded from above, where we are mere tools that
capital manipulates in order to get profits.
That is why we want to reduce the capitalist workday. That is why we
cannot wait to escape. It is not only the exploitation, the unfairness
and the injustice in the distribution of income. Time away from
capitalist production appears as the only time in which we can be
ourselves, a time when our activity can be /free/ time, time for the
full development of the individual.
This is what it necessarily looks like within capitalism. But we have
to recognise that so many of our ideas within capitalism are infected.
The most obvious example is the phenomenon of consumerism -- we must
buy all those things! What we own defines us. The socialist answer,
though, is not that everyone should own the same things -- in other
words, equalisation of alienation; rather, the socialist idea is to
end the situation in which we are owned and defined by things.
The battle of ideas, which is central to the struggle for socialism,
is based on the alternative conception of socialism. Its focus is not
to reform this or that idea that has developed within capitalism but,
rather, to replace ideas from capitalism with conceptions appropriate
to socialism. So, is our idea of the workday within capitalism
infected? And, can we get any insights into the workday by thinking
about the workday within socialism?
The socialist workday
Firstly, what do we mean by socialism? The goal of socialists has
always been the creation of a society which would allow for the full
development of human potential. It was never seen as a society in
which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others
are /not/. That was Marx's point in stating clearly that the goal is
"an association, in which the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all." And this is clearly the
point, too, of Venezuela's Bolivarian constitution where it stresses
in article 20 that ``everyone has the right to the free development of
his or her own personality'' and in the explicit recognition in
article 299 that the goal of a human society must be that of
``ensuring overall human development''.
In contrast to capitalist society, where ``the worker exists to
satisfy the need'' of capital to expand, Marx envisioned a socialist
society where the wealth that workers have produced ``is there to
satisfy the worker's own need for development''. So, what is the
nature of the workday in a society oriented toward ensuring overall
human development?
Let us begin by talking about necessary labour -- quantitatively.
There is the labour which is contained in the products we consume
daily -- just like before. To this, however, we need to add the labour
that workers want to devote toward expanding production in the future.
In socialism, there are no capitalists who compel the performance of
surplus labour and invest a portion of the profits in the search for
future profits. Rather, workers themselves in their workplaces and
society decide if they want to devote time and effort to expanding
satisfaction of needs in the future. If they make this decision, then
this labour is not surplus to their needs; it forms part of what they
see as their necessary labour. Thus, the concept of necessary labour
changes here.
In a socialist society, further, we recognise explicitly that part of
our necessary labour is labour within the household. In other words we
acknowledge that our workday does not begin after we leave the
household but includes what we do within the household. Article 88 of
the Bolivarian constitution recognises the importance of this labour
when it notes that labour within the household is ``economic activity
that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth''.
The concept of necessary labour and our workday within a socialist
society also includes the labour which is required to self-govern our
communities. After all, if socialism is about the decisions we make
democratically in our communities, then the time we need to do this is
part of our necessary labour. Similarly, if socialism is about
creating the conditions in which we are all able to develop our
potential, then the process of education and of developing our
capabilities is also activity which is necessary.
When we think about the socialist workday, in short, we think about
the workday differently. Our view of the quantity of necessary labour,
for example, is not distorted by the capitalist perspective of
treating as necessary only that labour for which capital must pay.
That is the difference between the political economy of capital and
the political economy of the working class. From the perspective of
workers, we recognise as necessary labour all the labour that is
necessary for ``the worker's own need for development''.
But the difference is not only quantitative. In socialism, the workday
cannot be a day in which you receive orders from the top (even in
strategic industries). Rather, it is only through our own activity,
our practice and our protagonism that we can develop our capabilities.
Article 62 of Venezuela's constitution makes that point in its
declaration that participation by people is ``the necessary way of
achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both
individual and collective''. In other words, in every aspect of our
lives (the traditional workplace, the community, the household),
democratic decision making is a necessary characteristic of the
socialist workday; through workers' councils, communal councils,
student councils, family councils, we produce ourselves as new
socialist subjects.
Thus, when we look at the workday from the perspective of socialism,
we see that the simple demand for reducing the workday is a /demand
from within capitalism/. Its message is simple -- end this horror!
This is an ``infected'' conception of the workday. It starts from a
view of labour as so miserable that the only thing you can think of
doing is reducing and ending it.
When we think about building socialism, however, we recognise that the
demand is to /transform /the workday -- to recognise all parts of our
workday explicitly and to transform that day qualitatively. Rather
than only ``free time'' being time in which we can develop, from the
perspective of socialism it is essential to make the /whole/ day time
for building human capacities.
In short, there are two ways of looking at the demand for the reduced
workday: one way talks simply about a shorter work week and thus
longer weekend vacations; in contrast, a second way stresses the
reduction of the traditional workday in order to provide the time on a
daily basis for education for self-managing, for our work within the
household and our work within our communities. In other words, it is
the demand to /redefine and transform our workday/.
The first of these is simply a reform within capitalism. For
socialists, May Day should be the day to struggle for the /whole/
worker's day, to struggle for the /socialist/ workday.
[Michael A. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon
Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the author of /Beyond
Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class/ and /Build It
Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century/. This article was
presented as initiating remarks to the ``Roundtable Discussion on the
Reduction of the Workday'' held on April 24, 2008, at the Centro
International Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela. The event brought together
leaders from different union federations and currents, as well as a
representative from the women's movement, to discuss the importance of
the demand of the reduction of the workday in the lead up to May Day.
The event was organised by the program ``Human Development and
Transformatory Practise'' coordinated by Lebowitz, at the Centro
Internacional Miranda.
This article was first published in /Links -- International Journal of
Socialist Renewal/ <http://www.links.org.au>. If reprinting, please in
include the full name of the journal, with a working hyperlink to the
/Links/ site.]: http://links.org.au/node/374
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