Course on Marx's Capital: Week 13
All bounds broken down In the last three sections of Chapter 10 of Capital, Volume 1, Karl Marx is concerned to show the unrestrained pressure for the “unnatural extension of the working day”. “Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility,” says Marx. In a notable aside in Section 5 on slavery, Marx remarks: “once trading in slaves is practiced, become reasons for racking to the uttermost the toil of the slave; for, when his place can at once be supplied from foreign preserves, the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment than its productiveness while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slave management, in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is that which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth.” Marx uses this remark on slavery to compare with capital, which he finds equally careless of life, and narrates how workers were terrorised into accepting these terrible conditions. In Section 6, Marx records: “After capital had taken centuries in extending the working-day to its normal maximum limit, and then beyond this to the limit of the natural day of 12 hours, [98] there followed on the birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of the 18th century, a violent encroachment like that of an avalanche in its intensity and extent. All bounds of morals and nature, age and sex, day and night, were broken down.” This is the Section that contains Marx’s account of the Chartists, some of whom he had befriended, and of their campaign for a Ten Hour Day. At the beginning of Section 7 Marx writes, in case we should forget: “The reader will bear in mind that the production of surplus-value, or the extraction of surplus-labour, is the specific end and aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production, quite apart from any changes in the mode of production, which may arise from the subordination of labour to capital.” This section, two pages long, summarises the chapter on The Working Day, while also mentioning the US agitation for the 8 Hour Day, and the support it got from the International Working Men’s Association (the First International) of which Marx had been the founding Secretary. The Working Day is a readable, prose chapter. Anyone can understand it. Image: Johnson and Johnson factory, USA, 1886 Please download this document and read it: Capital V1, Chapter 10, The Working Day, parts 5 to 7, in MS-Word file format Previous main Communist University posts: Channel [members] Course Archive Weeks Last Posted SADTU Pol Ed [441] Development, Rural and Urban 7/10 31 August 2010 CU Africa [230] Marx’s Capital, Volumes 1, 2 & 3 12/33 23 August 2010 CU [2811] Philosophy and Religion 10/10 30 August 2010 Courses completed in 2010 to date: SADTU Pol Ed Lenin’s The State & Revolution 6 June - July National Democratic Revolution 12 March - June Basics 10 January - March SADTU Pol Schools 3-Day School 3 days 2-4 June CU No Woman, No Revolution 10 March - June Basics 10 January – March Click here to visit Marxists Internet Archive -- Posted By DomzaNet to CUAfrica at 9/01/2010 12:18:00 PM -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
