Voice From The Back: Down the sink (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down the sink

Angela O’Hagen, the campaign and communications manager of Oxfam in Scotland was so incensed by the plight of the poor in Mali and the Dominican Republic that she wrote to the Herald (26 June) about it. “Encouraged by Europe’s Common Agriculture Policy, Europe’s farmers are producing mountains of milk that no-one has the appetite for. Instead of pouring the milk down the sink, we dump our left-overs on the developing world undermining local dairy farmers in the likes of Dominican Republic and Mali who cannot compete against our artificially cheaper milk.” No, your eyes don’t deceive you, here is a spokesperson for Oxfam regretting that milk isn’t poured down the sink! Truly, capitalism is a mad house.

Hobson’s Choice

“Digby Jones, the Director-General of the CBI, yesterday argued for businesses to keep an opt-out on the European Working Time Directive that restricts the working week to an average of 48 hours . . . Mr Jones said, “This is about choice. People should have the right to say ‘no’ to long hours and the directive rightly gives them that protection. But they don’t want unions and politicians telling them when they can work, or for how long.” Times (26 June) Why would anyone want to work more than 48 hours? Could it be because they need the overtime pay? Could it be because they don’t want to be overlooked for promotion or, more likely, to be sacked?

It’s not funny

Bernard Manning is a stand-up comedian who has been accused of being a “foul-mouthed racist bigot”, but, as a report in This Week (28 June) of his trip to India shows, he is not stupid. “It was effin’ awful . . . You’re either wealthy in India or you’ve got eff all. The hotel was absolutely wonderful, and people were living high on the hog, beautiful meals, swimming pools, but you get out the front door and . . . effin’ poverty. There’s no in-between. You’ve got women queuing up for water and they’ve got an atom bomb! The last effin’ thing they need in India is an atom bomb! They want reservoirs and plenty of water coming through the tap. Effin’ upset me I can tell you.”

A voice from America

In the New York Times Magazine (6 July) there is a photograph of a woman wearing a flimsy looking plastic bag on her head. Underneath her photograph are the words of Darline Stephens of Anniston, Alabama. “ I live about 5 or 10 miles from chemical weapons. We’re over there searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but we have them here in our hometown. I didn’t know this stuff was at the Army Depot all these years. I just heard last year. It takes seven years to burn the chemicals to get rid of it all. We didn’t really believe they were going to burn something that could kill us until they told us to get our masks. My family lives payday to payday, so we sure can’t say, ‘Let’s quit our jobs and move.’ I wish we could. The government does some ignorant things – they just give us a plastic mask? If you could send our boys to war with real masks, I don’t understand why we can’t have the same masks. Everyone in the rescue squad and fire department has high-dollar masks. I just don’t understand why they think some people’s lives are worth more than ours. My son and I are Christians, so we’re saved. He knows where he’s going if he dies.”

Mind the gap

“Almost half the world’s population, or three billion people, live on little more than £1 a day and the gap between the world’s poorest 20 percent and its richest 20 percent has more than doubled since 1960, the International Labour organisation said.” Times (7 July) So where does that leave the notion that the market system would lead to prosperity for all?

Worse than Thatcher

The Labour MP Michael Meacher, formerly the environment minister, revealed in the Guardian (15 July) that the gap in income between the bottom 20 percent and the top 20 percent has increased under Labour. “The share of the bottom fifth has slipped back to 6 percent while the share of the top fifth has moved up to 46 percent. Therefore, the rich now have a bigger share of the nation’s post-tax income than at any time under Mrs Thatcher.”

Cooking the Books: Was Marx really a reformist? (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

A controversy has broken out between two reformist groups about reforms. It started with an article by Dylan Riley in the New Left Review in April which criticised ‘neo-Kautskyites’ for advocating a green new deal; this, argued Riley, would come up against ‘the structural logic of capital’ and so wouldn’t work as intended (tinyurl.com/4wy2hc75). Accepting the tag neo-Kautskyite, Seth Ackerman replied in Jacobin magazine to try to show that Marx himself believed that reforms could overcome the ‘structural logic of capital’ and so were worth struggling for (tinyurl.com/5whj5u8p).

Ackerman’s case was based on Marx’s support for the 1847 Factory Act which limited the working day for women and children to 10 hours. This had been opposed, not just by most factory owners but by tame economists one of whom notoriously argued that profits were made in the last hour of a day’s work and that cutting hours would ruin businesses. Marx refuted this by showing that every minute a worker worked was divided into paid and unpaid labour and so the Ten Hour Bill would not result in a total loss of profits (see section 3 of chapter 9 of volume I of Capital). It was also in the longer-term interest of the capitalist class as a whole, as over-working workers threatened their fitness as profit-producers of future generations of workers. In other words, it was not against the ‘structural logic of capital.’

Nevertheless, in his Inaugural Address to the founding congress of the International Working Mens’ Association in 1864 Marx did describe (which Ackerman quotes) the passing of the Ten Hour Bill as the first time that ‘the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class’.

Marx’s strategy at the time was to get a workers’ movement going, even just on a trade union basis, in the expectation that it would later develop into a conscious movement for socialism. So, this was a rhetorical flourish to show that working class struggle, even within capitalism, was not useless. In the event, Marx’s strategy didn’t work. Working class political parties did emerge but turned out to be more interested in obtaining reforms under capitalism than in campaigning for socialism.

In arguing that this meant ‘that Marx knew that the struggle for reforms was part of the struggle for socialism’, Ackerman reads too much into Marx’s rhetoric for the occasion and ignores his insistence in the same speech on the need for the workers to win control of political power (‘revolution’) before anything could be done to end their exploitation. Marx did support certain reforms that benefitted workers, and the Factory Acts did do this, but he never saw campaigns for them (‘reform’) as part of the struggle for socialism, only to try to get a better deal under capitalism.

Ackerman went on to argue that there is no ‘structural logic of capital’ that prevents reforms working but chose an easy interpretation of this logic to refute — that reforms will fail due to ‘the falling rate of profit’. That is not our position. Ours is that capitalism is a profit-driven system and that any reform that impinges on profit or profit-making won’t work as envisaged; the only reforms that are accepted are those that don’t go against this ‘structural logic’, including health services and universal education (which help create and maintain a reasonably educated and fit working class to operate modern industry).

The real argument on reforms is not about the reforms themselves but against reformism, the policy of advocating reforms in the belief that this will somehow help the struggle for socialism. It doesn’t and it can’t and it encourages illusions that divert from the struggle for socialism.

Voice From The Back: The Price Of Oil (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Price Of Oil

Away back in September 2003 two workers were suffocated to death in a huge gas leak on Shell’s Brent Bravo oil platform in the North Sea. “Bill Campbell, a former senior manager with the oil giants, says vital maintenance work was ignored and lies told to allow platforms to carry on producing oil at all times” (Daily Record, 14 June). The company were fined £900,000 for safety breaches. An amount that is completely derisory when compared with their billions in profits every year. Bill Campbell who worked in the North Sea for 25 years went on BBC Scotland TV to denounce the company, but they did not send a spokesperson to deny the charges. They were probably too busy counting their profits to consider the deaths of two expendable workers.

Lazy Workers?

“Avoiding work is a full-time job and seems to be getting harder, at least in America where Workaholics Anonymous now has self-help branches in 35 cities. New figures suggest that employees are working three hours a week more than their parents did, the equivalent to nearly four extra weeks a year” (Times, 21 June). Socialists used to be told that socialism was impractical because the working class were too lazy. That argument certainly doesn’t apply here.

A Tale Of Three Virgins

Three sisters in Inverness featured in a bizarre insurance policy. They insured themselves against having a virgin birth. The insurance company only cancelled the policy because of religious pressure. “The Catholic Church was not happy about what we have been doing” (The Herald, 23 June). What was their objection we wonder? They don’t believe in virgin births? They could not accept the notion that the next Jesus might be a Jock? A second coming could lead to mass unemployment in the Vatican?.

Science And Profits

Sir Ian Chalmers writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine states that the scientific record of clinical trials is being distorted by drug companies in order to protect sales. “Patients’ lives are being put at risk because drug companies cannot be trusted to publish unbiased clinical research, according to a leading scientist” (Times, 29 June). We are dealing with capitalism, we are dealing with a multibillion dollar industry, why shouldn’t we have distortion? After all that is how capitalism operates.

Not Newsworthy?

Every evening editors of The Sun, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail have to make a decision about what to splash on their front pages the next day. Shall it be Pop Star Sniffs Cocaine, Soap Star Visits Brothel or maybe Politician’s Gay Secret? The senior policy officer for Water Aid, Henry Northover is hardly likely to make the tabloid’s headlines with the following. “Imagine 20 Jumbo jets filled with children – that’s the number who die every day owing to lack of clean water and sanitation” (Observer, 2 July). We are trying to imagine 20 Jumbo jets full of children crashing every day, and frankly it makes us ill, but of course it is not newsworthy in this mad society.

For The Good Times

The end of the World Cup has left many social observers scratching their heads in disbelief. No violence, no hooliganism and no mindless madness? Can this be the working class that the Daily Mail are always warning us about? Tens of thousands of working men and women from all over the world, enjoying each others’ company, laughing, joking, dancing and who knows what else. It would almost makes you believe that world socialism is possible, unless you read the Daily Mail of course.

And The Bad Times

Because of the proliferation of TV channels advertisers are concerned about their “lack of penetration”into profit-making areas. Even worse is the advent of VCR recorders, where people watch shows and delete the ads. The answers for these hucksters is to sponsor sports events. Unlike soaps, that workers can look at later, sports events are watched. While they occur. This explains why the TV rights for NFL (American football) is $3.7 billion, the World Cup $1.1 billion and why you had to watch those silly Budwieser ads. Worse is to follow. “Images like a giant Coca-Cola bottle emerging from the centre circle, can be projected onto the pitch” (Observer, 9 July). Perhaps they could arrange a penalty shoot between Pepsi and Coca Cola? Capitalism distorts everything, even our leisure time . . .

The Shorter Working Day. (1926)

From the January 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Its Economic Causes and Social Results. 

During the last hundred years there has been in this country a marked and more or less continuous tendency for hours of work to become fewer. The causes are many and various and the two which receive most attention—trade union organisation and legal restriction—are by no means the only ones of importance. The part played by the technical developments of industry is frequently forgotten as are also the motives which have induced the ruling class to pass their laws limiting hours of employment. As power has throughout the period remained in the hands of members of the employing class, it is plain that no action really damaging to their class interests would be taken by them in the House of Commons; and similarly as controllers of industry they have been well able to adapt themselves to the slightly modified conditions resulting from the existence of Trade Unions as a permanent factor, without loss of profits in the long run.

Shorter hours are, of course, of benefit to the working class, but they have not—in capitalist society—proved an unmixed blessing. Generally speaking, reductions in hours have not been allowed to mean a corresponding reduction in output. The workers have been able and have been compelled to work harder during the smaller number of hours. Not infrequently they have been induced to produce more in the shorter than in the longer working day. They have exchanged exhaustion in seven hours for exhaustion in eight or nine hours and profits have not suffered. Certain outstanding figures like Cadbury and Ford have demonstrated that a six or even five hour day can be made not only a business proposition but more profitable still, but it must be remembered that their methods are dependent on the actual processes of the industries in question as well as on many outside factors not directly controllable by the individual employer. Where the social and educational level and the level of wages are abnormally low, as in Bombay, long hours and degraded conditions are still the rule. Big profits are, from the owners’ point of view, a sufficient justification and a reason for leaving “well” alone. Immigrant labourers still work their twelve hours a day for seven days a week in the oil and steel industries of America and produce profits which are fabulous. A falling off in the supply of cheap labour, a change in the methods of production making it cheaper to use delicate machinery needing skilled and educated workers; these and many other factors may lead to a new organisation based on a shorter working day in these industries. If and when that occurs we can be certain that, as has happened so often in the past, the employers will make a virtue of necessity and parade “philanthropy” as the motive. Up to the thirties of last century it was the practice in most of the coal areas for women to be employed carrying coal in baskets up to the surface. Occasional protests went unheard until the invention of a wire cable made it for the first time cheaper to haul the coal mechanically. The employment of women was then forbidden by Parliament amidst a flood of mutual congratulations among the mine proprietors. What a happy world this is for property owners when benevolence can be exercised not only at no cost, but in combination with increased receipts of good hard cash !

It is difficult for a ruling class not to view other folks’ welfare through the rose-tinted spectacles of their own prosperity. We need not be surprised then to find the spokesmen of our masters filled with comfort at the thought of what they believe to be a continued progress in the conditions of our lives. We need not, however, accept unquestioningly their optimistic views or the subject of our hours of work and our holidays.

In spite of changes for the better which admittedly have been made, two important facts need to be weighed on the other side of the scale. The first is that what has been given with one hand has often been taken away with the other, and the second is that at no time, early or late in the history of modern capitalist society, will our conditions compare with those of the more leisurely system out of which capitalism grew.

For the workers factory production meant the evil of frantic and unceasing labour for long hours such as would have seemed intolerable to an independent craftsman accustomed to choose his own times for work and rest. The new moneyed class, intoxicated by the wonderful opportunities of amassing fortunes, usually had no inclination themselves to make their money the means to a life of leisure and culture. To their evangelical conception money-making was man’s first duty and the earthly life not a place for play. How much less, then, were they disposed to let the need of the workers for rest and recreation stand between them and their profits.

In spite, therefore, of more recent tendencies, we are, generally speaking, worse off than before the advent of industrial capitalism ; and the more highly developed countries are worse off than the more backward ones.

London, we find, has fewer statutory holidays than any other city in the world— 6 against 10 in New York and 12 in Australia and Germany. (“Bank and Public Holidays.” Guaranty Trust Coy.) The really marked difference shows itself, as we would expect, in a comparison with those countries (mainly Catholic) which have been less influenced by industrialism. When and where the Catholic Church and the Feudal organisation to which it was so well adapted, survived the attacks of capitalism, the numerous Church holidays have retained their traditional hold. Thus Poland, in spite of reductions in 1924, still has 34 holidays, as does also Greece. Jugoslavia, more backward still, has no fewer than 40 public holidays each year. With the 52 Sundays the fortunate workers have approximated one day off in four. As these countries come increasingly into the sphere of factory production for the world’s markets, the capitalist class will find so much leisure for the workers incompatible with factory “discipline” and the fulfilment of contracts. More and more sacrifices will be called for in order that profits may not suffer. “Bolshevik” Russia’s progress from semi-feudalism to Capitalism has been marked by the same abolition of the holidays formerly kept in accordance with the customs of the Church.

What the workers enjoyed in the Middle Ages can be seen from the following.

Mr. G. Townsend Warner says of the 15th and 16th centuries (“Tillage, Trade and Invention,” p. 71):—

“Besides Sundays, all Saints’ days and feasts of the Church, were days on which work was forbidden, and on the eve of these holidays only half-a-day’s work was done. Very likely the working man’s year was not more than 280 days; perhaps even less.”

As for hours of work he says (p. 113) :—

“Dinner was at one, and few did any work after it; but all, whether artisan or merchant, shopkeeper or Government official, began early, often at 5 or 6 in the morning . . . .”

Thorold Rogers (“Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” p. 542) gives the average working day in the 15th and 16th centuries as “one of 8 hours’ work,” and points out that the worker who in 1881 was “demanding an eight hours’ day in the building trades is simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked four or five centuries ago.” It is worth noting that according to Mr. Leone Levi, whose opinion Rogers quotes (p. 543) : ” the average amount of hours in the building trade . . . was 55″ in 1867. Such is progress!

Conditions in Germany would appear to have been even better than those in this country.

Belfort Bax, in summing up the social status of the worker about the year 1500. says :—

“In some cases the workman had weekly gratuities under the name of “bathing money,” and in this connection it may be noticed that a holiday for the purpose of bathing once a fortnight, once a week, or even oftener, as the case might be, was stipulated for by the Guilds, and generally recognised as a legitimate demand” (German Society at the close of the Middle Ages, page 212).

It is interesting to know what took place before capitalism came into being, but this is as nothing compared with the opportunities of leisure that capitalist development has now made possible. Capitalism, while robbing the workers of the leisure they had, has created powers of production which, if properly utilised, would enable us to work less than half the time we do now. The census of production is our evidence for this assertion, in disclosing how many fit persons are either engaged in useless or wasteful occupations only necessary under this system, or are, like so many of the members of the propertied class, entirely idle.

The five million persons belonging to the master class produce nothing. If these contributed workers in the same ratio as rest of the population, there would be another 2,000,000 workers available for production.

The number of men removed from useful labour by the coercive forces are roughly : the army, 250,000; the navy and air force, 130,000; police and prison’ staffs, 70,000; while there are more than 60,000 clergymen chasing the shadow instead of wrestling with the substance.

These groups of people frittering away their energies either from choice or compulsion, total over 2½ millions in addition to the unemployed.

But this is not all. According to the census returns for 1921, 81,347 commercial travellers were scouring the country in England and Wales alone, with no better object than to snatch trade from rivals; and 539,686 male and 426,475 female clerks and typists were toiling, to a great extent uselessly, in business offices. The streets teem with canvassers^ and agents and door-to-door distributors. A dozen bakers’ carts chase each other over the same ground ; a dozen butchers’ carts and milk carts do the same.

Over 1½ million persons (excluding clerks) are employed in Commerce, Finance and Insurance.

These millions who neither toil nor spin, are waited upon by thousands upon thousands of servants and flunkeys, who add nothing to the national wealth. The railways call for numerous booking-clerks to serve out tickets, and collectors to punch them and collect them. The ‘buses and trams are overrun with spying inspectors.

The number of people in England and Wales engaged in 1921 in the building and allied trades; mining and quarrying; metal, engineering and shipbuilding; textile, tailoring, boot and shoe trades, food, drink and tobacco; electrical apparatus making and fitting, etc. ; wood and furniture trades; and agriculture, was only 7,615,198—and these figures included all persons over 12, and employers as well as the unemployed.

Nearly the whole of the wealth of the country is produced by the people engaged in these trades, whose numbers equalled about half the male population of the country between the ages of 16 and 60, at the time the figures were taken. So, after balancing the wealth producers in other trades, and those engaged in transport, against the unemployed and employers in these, it seems reasonable to claim that the whole of the nation’s wealth can be produced by the male population between 16 and 60 years of age working half the time they do now.

Another striking illustration of the productive powers of the working class is offered by the experience of the war. In 1917 and 1918, no less than four million fit men were in the forces. Only 1,600,000 additional women workers were employed in industry, yet it was possible to maintain the supply of essential goods and services, and at the same time produce in colossal quantities the weapons of destruction for British and Allied armies. Our “productive powers actually increased.” (“Triumph of Nationalisation,” p. 137.)

These powers of production exist and could rapidly be improved upon but for capitalist private ownership. Great possibilities of leisure are out of your reach only from this same cause. They will come within your reach only after the winning of Socialism, and to this end we invite your help and co-operation in spreading the knowledge of Socialist Principles.

Edgar Hardcastle

Work as it is, as it could be (2008)

From the February 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work is a “four-letter word” today under capitalism, but our view of it might change in a society where it is solely a means of improving the quality of our lives. 

“That would never work!”

A typical response, I imagine, to the description of a socialist society, where people work because they want to, on a voluntary basis. Such a society would not work, we are told, because no one in it would do any work.

However, that view of work as, well, work—rather than something enjoyable—tells us more about today’s society, where our motivation to work is primarily the need to pay rent and put food on the table. Immersed as we are in this reality, it is not surprising that it shapes our view of labour in general (past, present and future), so the idea of a society based on labour performed willingly, without any form of coercion, seems ludicrous to most people.

Given that typical outlook, it is not easy to convince someone of the necessity and feasibility of a fundamentally new mode of labour by simply elaborating the description of work in the future (which can never be an exact blueprint). No matter how appealing that future society might appear, compared to present-day reality, it will probably still seem to be a figment of the imagination.

A better approach, I think, is to start with the present, looking at the work-related problems we face and considering their root cause. On that basis it should become clearer that socialism is not an idle dream but the real solution to undeniably real problems, and that the workplace problems we experience today can also be solved by, or will cease to exist in, that new form of society.

Work problems

Most of us have first-hand experience of bad jobs, so there is no need to present concrete examples here. But if we consider why a particular job is unpleasant it generally comes down to one or a combination of the following factors: long hours, low pay, high intensity, monotony, and (for lack of a more precise category) the boss. We know all of this—perhaps too well—but here I want to consider the reason why these problems occur.

That answer is not hard to find if we reflect, just for a moment, on the essential nature of capitalism as a society where production is a means of generating profit for a minority ruling class that owns and controls the means of production. It is no exaggeration to say that those two closely intertwined facts (i.e., the profit motive and class ownership) are at the root of most of the problems we face at the workplace.

The hunger for profit is insatiable; no capitalist will settle for a five percent profit if there is a chance to get six. This is not merely a question of individual greed, but the systematic pressures of competition that capitalists ignore at the risk of ceasing to be capitalists. This drives them—not unwillingly—to squeeze as much surplus value out of workers as possible, whether by prolonging the working day, lowering wages, or increasing the intensity of labour. All of this goes without saying, I think, and the direct connection to workplace problems is equally clear.

But even setting aside the impact of profit chasing on the labour process, we are still left with the fundamentally undemocratic workplace. Those who own or control the means of production call the shots (and pocket the profits), whether we are dealing with a small company, a corporation, or a state-owned enterprise. The workers, meanwhile, have no choice but to work in the manner assigned to them. No matter how enjoyable the work itself might be, this lack of control over the labour process (not to mention over hiring and firing decisions) contributes to the dissatisfaction we experience at our jobs.

Idle hands?

Considering the fact that the labour process is a means of generating profit for a minority class that directs that process, it is no wonder that a certain gloom hangs over workers on their morning commute. Those looking down on them from the comfort of the executive boardroom might take it as proof of the inherent laziness of people—or at least of other people. This idea of a slovenly human nature is ironically (or perhaps naturally) most prevalent among the “leisure class,” who look to the pressure of competition to whip the lazy workers into shape.

It should be obvious, though, that people are far from being lazy by nature. Nearly everyone, except the most demoralized or pampered, is eager to find worthwhile work. And if we cannot find enjoyment or self-fulfilment in the jobs we do to earn a living, we will try to find those qualities in the activities we pursue in our “free” time.

One reason we may underestimate the desire to work is that those leisure time activities come under the category of “hobbies,” even though they do not always differ in substance from types of labour performed for wages. What tends to make a hobby enjoyable and fulfilling is precisely the qualities so often lacking in the jobs done to earn a living. Instead of being a way to benefit others, performed under their direction, a hobby is an activity pursued for its own sake that can be a means of self-development and self-fulfilment.

The same thirst for and enjoyment of meaningful labour can also be seen in our attitude towards the jobs we must do to earn a living. Despite all of the drawbacks that stem from the profit motive, as sketched above, our jobs can still be a source of satisfaction and self-development and we can find ourselves engrossed in the work itself without always thinking about the end of the working day or the upcoming paycheck. Indeed, unless we had this capacity to enjoy work—and to seize on those worthwhile aspects of our jobs—the bosses (who complain about “lazy workers”) would be very hard-pressed to obtain any work, and hence profits, from their employees.

A social change

The aversion to work that is not uncommon today is certainly not due to inherent human laziness or the general nature of labour itself; it stems rather from the problems arising from its function as a means of profit making for a minority capitalist class. So as long as the current social system remains in place, we will be stuck with the problem of long working hours, tedium, and high intensity.

The solution to those workplace problems, along with a whole string of other problems, is thus a fundamental social change that establishes a new form of society, where production is no longer subjected to the logic and tyranny of capital. That is an unprecedented change, certainly, which still seems impossible to most people today, but socialists are convinced that it is both possible and urgently necessary.

I should note, though, that the creation of a fundamentally new society will not take us into the realm of science fiction, as human beings will still be obliged to carry out labour in order to produce the material wealth that makes our continued existence possible. Socialism will not free us from the need for productive activity, but rather alter the form and purpose of that activity. Simply put, production in a socialist society will become a means of satisfying the various needs of the members of society as decided democratically by those members themselves

Work transformed

The fundamental reorientation of society following a socialist revolution will obviously have an enormous effect on the labour process and the personal experience of work.

The first change that seems likely, for a number of reasons, is a major reduction in the length of the working day. This will be possible, first of all, because production will only be intended to satisfy the needs of society’s members, as determined by them, so there would be little incentive to continue working beyond that point, thereby piling up unwanted goods and squandering natural resources. Unlike today, any increase in the productivity of labour, so that more goods can be produced using less labour-time, could immediately shorten the length of work for individuals. And there would not be the terrible waste of labour we see today under a system where goods are produced for a fickle market, rather than to directly satisfy needs, and may thus rot on store shelves or in warehouses if not purchased (particularly at the outset of an economic downturn).

Another reason that the working day may become the working morning or afternoon is that the relative size of the pool of adults willing and able to perform the productive labour, which produces the wealth of society, will increase with the addition of the unemployed and those engaged under the current system in unproductive labour (e.g., bankers, lawyers, salesmen, etc.). The entire financial sector, for instance, will no longer have a reason for existence in a society where products are not bought and sold on the market. Other unproductive individuals include gamblers, prostitutes and criminals, as well as the entire capitalist class. In a socialist society, all of these people can contribute to the production of the material wealth that is the fundamental basis of human life.

The shorter working day is only a quantitative change, of course, but it would bring about an immediate improvement in the quality of our lives, as we can easily imagine. Even if we consider our jobs today, a significant reduction in the working day (provided the intensity of labour remains unchanged) would make most jobs, at the very least, far more bearable, and allow us to engage in other activities we find more agreeable.

More significant, however, is the qualitative change in the labour process and in our attitude towards work once labour has solely become a means of improving our lives and production decisions are made democratically by the members of society themselves, who collectively control the means of production and have free access to the goods that are produced. Marx describes this new society as an “association of free individuals, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single labour force” (Capital, vol. 1). In this socialist society, the production process would become transparent; individuals could easily grasp the connection between the labour they and others perform and improvements in their own and other people’s lives. This is a qualitative change not only from the perspective of the labour process of society as a whole, but also in terms of the attitude that each individual would likely have towards work.

Another important qualitative change in the labour process and our view of it stems from the fact that each individual within the “association” or community will be actively involved in making the important decisions regarding production. Those decisions would be made by them democratically, according to the simple criterion of improving the quality of their own lives. That tangible democracy contrasts sharply with the utter lack of influence workers today have on the decisions regarding production and the labour process, which are nominally made by capitalists and politicians but in fact dictated by the impulses of capital. In socialism, the members of the society will be able to decide on the plans for production (and other aspects of life) and then work together to realize them, without sacrificing their own needs for the sake of profitability.

In the process of collectively making those decisions one can imagine all sorts of issues that might be debated. Certainly there is the question of what to produce and in what quantity. But in addition to such matters, close attention will also be paid to what might be called the qualitative or even aesthetic aspects of the labour process, reflecting the fact that the entire society is now oriented towards improving the level of human life. This means that there would be an effort to make the experience of work itself is as enjoyable and fulfilling as possible. All of the decisions would also have to take into consideration the resources available, both in the present and future, so that a short-term gain in the quality of life does not lead to disaster for latter generations. These are some examples of the big questions that might be considered, but there would be countless others, covering every imaginable aspect and consequence of the labour process.

So, to finally return to the initial question about voluntary work, will people actually work on a voluntary basis in a socialist society? Or would they only take advantage of the free access to goods and not participate in the work to produce those goods?

My answer, of course, is that the vast majority of people would be willing, and perhaps eager, to work in a society where the benefits of their own labour, both to themselves and the community at large, are clear and where they themselves make all of the decisions regarding production. There may be a few individuals who choose to do nothing, or at least nothing that adds to the wealth of society, but I imagine they will be looked on with pity, rather than any sort of anger, just as we might view a person today who has no vital interest in life. It seems safe to say that most will voluntarily work as a way to both develop themselves and improve their own lives through the fruits of that labour.

Michael Schauerte

The daily class struggle (2021)

From the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rough life expectancy of a person in Britain will be about 28,800 days. Those days are the only ones we will ever have, we never get refunds, we never get leftovers, at best we can increase our allotment of days: with a bit of help from medical science. For someone who works full-time, assuming a full career from 18 to 65 working five days a week, they will give over 12,220 of those days to their employers.

That’s just at the raw level of days. Of course, not every second of each of those days is given over: but usually, the best hours are, the active alert able to perform hours. Eight hours of each of those days is given over to sleep (preparing for another day of work), another couple of hours each day are typically spent travelling to and from work, leaving the rest for eating, relaxing or meeting up with friends and family. But all the other activities are conditioned by being able to turn up to work the next day.

So, here we have the idea of the class struggle. When we give our time over to our employer, we give it to them to achieve the ends they desire. In a capitalist society that means producing commodities: good and services, which they can sell with a view to making a profit. The longer we work for them, the more they can use us, the more we do for them, the more goods and services they can sell for more profit. Thus, they will want as many days from us as they can get.

But, here’s the thing, the struggle isn’t just over days as such, it is about the very definition of ‘day’: what amounts to a day’s work? The number of hours we spend working for them increases how much they can get us to do for them. The fewer hours we work for them, the more time we have for ourselves, for our friends, families and communities.

But it’s not just the length of the day: it can also be about the intensity: working harder during the hours we give over also increases the amount of work and profits we produce for the day buyers. The harder we work at work, the less we can do in our own time, the more it becomes a time for recovery to return to work. Employment contracts are written in the language of abstracted absolute hours, but the reality is that it is what we are capable of doing – or being made to do in a day – that defines what happens to us and our employers.

Just look, for example, at the recent struggle over unionising Amazon warehouse workers. The accusation was that they were worked to such a strict regime that the staff there had to micturate into bottles because they weren’t allowed adequate comfort breaks. The intensity of the class struggle is played in the bodily functions of the workers. Amazon leads the way in the scientific study of efficiency, making sure that every ounce of effort they obtain from their employees is usefully turned to their profit. Making sure that not a second of the day’s work is wasted.

The class struggle, between the people who sell their days and the people who buy them is a struggle to define what happens to the very time we have on Earth. No amount of a rock spinning gets to define that.

Let’s make this a little more concrete. There are roughly 31 million people who are in employment in the UK. Not all of these people are full time – for instance about 3 million are ‘underemployed’ and would like more hours. That might seem strange, but given that our society makes selling your days a condition of getting access to the goods and services you need to live (and that we have to buy from the people who are buying all the days), people want to sell their days. To put that is perspective, about 9 million would like fewer hours (but preferably with the same pay).

(Just as an aside, the 31 million in employment doesn’t encompass the whole of the working class, their relatives who depend upon their sale of days are just as caught up in this system of robbery: we are looking at the vast majority of society being enmeshed in this dispute over days and what to do with days).

But let’s go back to that 31 million. Each of them will sell about 12,000 days of their lives to an employer. 31 million multiplied by 12 thousand leads to a number with more zeroes than it’s worth the breath to say: do the sums yourself, if you want to use a portion of your life on such a thing.

Think about what could be done with that number of days: our ancestors built marvels like Stonehenge with nothing more than deer antlers and lots of days of work: the benefit of all those days’ labour goes not to us, the workers, but to the owners of the world. They need us. Without our days of effort, nothing would get done; but the rewards for all that hard work goes to them, not us.

And, just to be clear, this isn’t about them under-paying us for those days or settling a fair price for them. The very fact that we sell our lives means that the priorities, the decisions about what to make and do with our time is taken away from us, and it is the priorities of the buyers that decide what goes on in the world.

Pik Smeet

Blogger's Note:

The text of this article originated out of a talk given at a SPGB Discord Meeting on the subject of May Day.

Red Snapper: Sound bites and unsound nibbles (2005)

The Red Snapper column from the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“The Acehnese had betrayed Allah. They were not true to their faith…Allah always looks after his faithful followers…If they don’t become true Muslims they will be struck down.”

Salman al-Farizi, commander of the radical Islamist group Laskar Mujahadin, on the cause of the  tsunami. Guardian, Jan 8th

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“The sum required to establish an early warning system now looks pitifully small compared to the cost in terms of the tens of thousands of lives lost and the billions of dollars in damage caused.”

Professor Calestous Juma, of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, US. UN Millennium Project’s report chief author, on tsunami wave. BBC News Online Technology, Jan 6th.

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“It would be one of the biggest breakthroughs mankind has ever experienced if we pooled our wealth in order to look after the poorer people of the world. Sadly, I don’t think it will happen.”

J G Ballard, novelist, Independent, Jan 4th

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“If I go for a walk through large parts of the South-east, I am liable to be lynched”

Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Transport. Independent, Jan 3rd

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“A poison has entered the system. And it is beginning to harm us all.”

The Daily Mail on the Blair/Brown rift. Jan 7th

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“Politics is one of the few professions that you can enter without any training whatsoever and suddenly become an expert.”

Allen Carr, anti-smoking ‘expert’, Independent, Jan 5th

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“I was told in my last ‘appraisal’ that I wouldn’t be getting a promotion or pay rise until I proved to the company that I was “worth it”. I was told further that could mean “working through lunchtimes or staying an extra couple of hours in the evenings”. I get raised eyebrows if I leave on-time or am the first to go home, and have chosen to ignore the pointed looks as I leave for my lunch hours.”

Reader’s comment re. article on unpaid overtime, BBC Online Magazine, Jan 7th

These Foolish Things: The Age of Leisure (1996)

The Scavenger column from the May 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Age of Leisure

"The holiday home was buzzing with the sounds of the modem cottage industry— faxing, computing, phoning . . .

Technology, once hailed as the liberator of the work force, has become an insidious thief that steals scarce holiday time. Laptops, phones and faxes are readily transportable, available at hotels, airports and on some planes. Holidays can all too easily turn into the virtual reality' of a day at work.

Rob Donnelly of the Confederation of British Industry, says: “More people in management roles are seriously eroding their free time. There’s a cult of irreplaceability that says, ‘As long as I keep my place. I’ll have a job”’ 

Mail on Sunday, 4 February.

Competition will cost £320 million

“Government plans to introduce full competition into the electricity market from April 1998 suffered a setback last night after warnings that an expensive new system for trading power was unlikely to be ready in time.

The committee governing the electricity pool—the wholesale electricity market—warned that a new £250 million computerised trading arrangement would need to be phased in and said it remained unclear how this initial price tag plus the annual running costs of £70 million would be met.”

Guardian, 21 December 1995.

On the scrap heap

The research will confirm “the significantly raised mortality of the unemployed in comparison to all men of working age,” according to tire 1996 edition of Social Trends—the bible of official social statistics . . . In 1990, analysis of an Office of Population Censuses and Surveys study which is tracking a sample of more than 500,000 people drawn from the 1971 census, showed death rates were 37 percent higher than average among men seeking work during the period 1971-81. 

Guardian, 25 January.

If you can pay

“Doctor John Stanford is about to realise a dream. It began in a swamp in Africa and it could result in a medical breakthrough that would rank alongside Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin . . . Skin tests carried out in Nepal, India and Burma revealed that somehow the harmless mycobacterium vaccae worked to stop the terrible tissue destruction effects of TB . . . The company in which John and Cynthia Stanford, Professor Rook, UCL and Eric Boyle retain a major share holding now has a capital value of £70 million ... if [the team at UCL] is right, a lot of people will make a lot of money. But, far more importantly, the world could be freed of the terrible threat of TB. . . “ 

Lorraine Fraser, Mail on Sunday, 25 February’.

“City delights at good round of job cuts”

"It is one of those paradoxes. While most ordinary people get upset at job losses, the highly paid young men and women in the City'—assuming they aren’t the ones being downsized—love them. Job cuts, they argue, enable companies to become more competitive, streamlined, “leaner”, helping improve profitability and dividends. On the wider front, they are also good for the economy as they also help keep down wage inflation. It was for this reason that yesterday’s move by United Utilities, to trim its workforce by a further 1,700, was so welcome in the Square Mile. The shares shot up 14p to 611p, after Wednesday’s 19p jump, as analysts smacked their lips in expectation of chunky dividend increases. One, who wisely asked not to be identified, summed it up this way: ‘The cost reductions are greater than expected, and that’s very good news, really exciting’” 

Guardian, 29 March.

The Scavenger

50 Years Ago: Shorter Hours In 1909 (1959)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his address to the Economic Science and Statistics section of the British Association Professor Chapman said:

  "These changes" (i.e., in the character of the world’s work) "all tended to specialisation, to concentration, both in working and leisure, and to constant demands for the curtailment of the working hours of the day.
   "In the course of long investigations he had found no instance in which an abbreviation of hours had resulted in a proportionate curtailment of output. There was, indeed, every reason to suppose that the production in the shorter hours seldom fell short of the production in the longer hours, and in some cases the product or its value had actually been augmented after a short interval. He (Professor Chapman) sought also to show that the value of leisure would inevitably rise with progress and that the working day would become less in the future."

From Socialist Standard, October 1909, quoted from Daily News, 27 Aug., 1909.

Editorial: The Fallacies of the "Minority Movement." (1925)

Editorial from the March 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The very people who always shout "Be with the masses" and "Form a Mass Party" are now busy pushing forward a body called "The National Minority Movement." The utter stupidity of the title should strike even the doubly-dense Communists who are promoting it.

The aims of the "movement” are in no sense revolutionary. A minimum wage of £4 per week and a 44-hour week is their modest slogan, and if carried out by the capitalists generally would create no real alteration in the system.

With the present cost of living and the growing intensity of labour demanded by employers, these "Minority” aims are just a stabilising of capitalist conditions. Demands like these have been adopted by capitalists who have increased their profits by so doing.

General practice has shown that Minimum Wage Laws and Trade Boards act generally to make the minimum wage the maximum. Our "four pound a week revolutionists" would be compelled to fight against their own aims as carried out by employers, just as miners were compelled to strike against the much-fought-for Eight Hour Law when it was put into action.

Forty-four hours a week is another ridiculous demand for a movement supposed to be militant. Modern highly-developed exploitation can skin the workers quite well at 44 hours, as is shown by employers like Ford and Leverhulme who boast of their rising profits from reduced hours of employees. In fact the exhausting effect of modern industrial methods and machinery is such that the employers are often compelled to shorten hours to avoid having reduced output from tired workers. The miners have long since found this out, and a 44-hour week for them is as reactionary a proposal as a Tory could invent. The miners have made continual protests against the League of Nations' 8-hour statute being adopted.

Another demand is Nationalisation of Mines, Minerals, Banks, Land and Railways without compensation, and with workers' control. With all the lessons of the effects of Government ownership upon the workers, these Communists are still busy with such anti-Socialist proposals. Workers' control without worker ownership is an empty thing in practice. "Those who own control," and unless the workers are in possession of the State power, and therefore the ruling class, their so-called control could never be made effective. When the workers are in possession of the State machine and are revolutionary, the time for nationalisation would be gone, for then common ownership would be in order and possible.

They further demand "An Adequate Housing Scheme” without telling the workers that such a thing is impossible under Capitalism, for even if houses are plentiful, sufficient and regular wages are not. The fact that plenty of rooms were available before the war did not make it any easier for poverty-stricken workers to rent them. The capitalists will give the workers barracks, huts and iron boxes to live in when it suits their purpose.

A curious demand is the "Repudiation of the Dawes Report." Seeing that the party most of these minority men belong to is the Labour Party, it is rather sad that they have to demand the repudiation of the Report adopted by their own Party when in office : A very curious demand to make in view of the action of the leader of the Minority Movement during the General Election. Mr. Cook, the Secretary of the Miners, then came to the support of the Labour Party who were defending their action in carrying out the Dawes Report. Practically all of the Communists in the Minority Movement were then busy supporting the Labour Party which had adopted the infamous Dawes plan they are now demanding the repeal of.

In general, all the items on the “charter” of this Minority Movement are worthless. The fact that they call themselves a Minority Movement damns them from the start, for on the economic field numbers count when a contest is on for obtaining some advance. Not minorities, but majorities, are then required, and a minority movement left to fight for some demand is doomed. The mass of the workers must be united in support of a national advance before we can expect them to obtain it.

The nature of the demands we have shown above to be capitalist in their nature, and they can all be carried out without making any radical change for the better in workers’ conditions.

These demands take no account of the vastly accelerating rate of exploitation in modern industry. They ignore the increasing power of capitalists combined in federations and rings to defeat the efforts of labour on the economic field and their growing financial strength to conquer the puny purses of working men in times of strikes and lock-outs.

Such demands in terms of a set rate of wages and length of working day are reactionary in face of the ever-growing need of workers to struggle  on the economic field for increase of wages and shortening of working day.

The political proposals of this movement could only be carried out if those in control of government passed the demands into law. To appeal therefore to capitalists and their Labour agents to pass certain legislation is to support the present system and those who rule it. It is to ask the workers to prolong capitalism by voting for those politicians who have a programme of properly selected reforms. The Minority schemers thus ignore the class nature of modern society and its resulting class rule in the interests of the class who rule capitalism—the employers.

The Communists largely run this “movement” with its conferences of “delegates” who are supposed to represent large numbers. What is the real nature of the Communists’ efforts in it? Are they arousing the workers to a knowledge of Socialism and spreading an understanding of the social revolution and its necessity? The answer is “No.” The Communists are spreading reform programmes like nationalisation, etc., and advocating support of the reactionary Labour Party. They are carrying out the 21 points and theses of Moscow in getting the jobs in trade unions and similar bodies. In other words they are trying to capture the jobs, but they do not attempt to win the workers’ minds for Socialism. That is too long and too unremunerative a job. It is easier to plank down some demands which are suitable to Capitalist rule and get support for that and become prominent in such an agitation. Then it is easy to get adopted as a Labour candidate.

Displacing a trade-union leader and putting in his place a so-called advanced man is a matter which in itself achieves small results. The lesson of Cramp and Hodges and dozens of other “forward” men should show that. The fundamental thing is to displace the ignorance of the rank and file and then their growing knowledge will express itself in their choice of and control of officers. Otherwise with an ignorant membership the same game of betrayal can be played by the new “leader” they choose as played by the previous one.

The replacing of one official by Robert Williams, the Communist, did not make any difference on “Black Friday” or on the workers’ support of the leaders who smashed the alliance on that classic occasion.

The Socialist policy is one of spreading revolutionary ideas amongst the workers, organised and unorganised, in order that capitalism shall be abolished and Socialism established. That is the work of a mass movement, not a Minority Movement.

Marx and trade unions (1983)

From the February 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s assessment that the English trade unionists involved in setting up the International Working Men's Association were “real powers" was to be proved correct by the subsequent careers of some of them. Robert Appelgarth, for instance, played a very prominent role in presenting the evidence of the trade unions to the Royal Commission which had been set up to investigate them in 1867 and whose Report in 1869 paved the way for a further liberalisation of the law governing their activities. Howell, as Secretary of the TUC’s Parliamentary Committee from 1871-5, was the first General Secretary of the Trades Unions Congress, whose first congress had been held in Manchester, in June 1868. Thus Marx was dealing with some of the top British trade unionists of his day. Since in politics they were Liberals it may seem strange that Marx, as a revolutionary communist, should have been prepared to work with them. But, for him, what was important was not their politics but the fact that they were leading trade unionists, solidly implanted in the working class movement.

In other words. Marx’s participation in the IWMA was a resumption of the same strategy derived, through Engels, from the Chartist experience of the early 1840s which had motivated his earlier collaboration with Ernest Jones. Because he believed that out of the economic organisations of the working class would eventually evolve a conscious political movement for socialism, he was not too concerned about the political ideas of the trade union leaders he had agreed to work with. The development of the working class movement itself would, Marx believed somewhat over-optimistically, sooner or later put this right. The important thing at this stage for Marx was to set this movement in motion, to encourage independent working class trade union and political activity. When this did not happen, as became evident within a number of years. Marx severely criticised the union leaders for having sold out to the capitalist class and the Liberal Party.

In fact until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 the activity of the IWMA was mainly of a trade union nature. Not all the members of the IWMA, particularly not the French workers, were convinced of the utility of trade unions and strikes and to Marx fell the task of providing a theoretical justification of trade unionism. Marx proved to be a worthy successor to Hodkingson and other earlier pro-working class writers, in whose tradition he must indeed have been regarded by the English trade unionists whose practice he was showing to be sound from an economic point of view (despite what the economic orthodoxy of the day claimed) and who called him "Dr. Marx" out of respect for his economic and historical knowledge. This is not to suggest that English trade unionists were incapable of themselves providing economic justifications for their activities. The Secretary of the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders. Thomas Dunning (1799-1873), had written a book, published in 1860, Trades Unions and Strikes: Their Philosophy and Intention, which impressed both Marx and the leading British economist of the time, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Marx referred to it several times in his footnotes in Capital and, more extensively, in some notes which he did not in the end include in Volume 1 of Capital. In these notes he took up Dunning's argument that the economic logic of trade unions was to ensure that the laws of supply and demand were “fairly” applied or, translated into Marx’s economic categories, to ensure that the workers were paid the value of their labour power, defined as the value of

the means of subsistence that is customarily held to be essential in a given state of society to enable the worker to exert his labour-power with the necessary degree of health, strength, vitality, etc and to perpetuate him self by producing replacements for himself.

Without trade unions, workers would tend to be paid less than this value:

. . . the value of labour-power constitutes the conscious and explicit foundation of the trade unions, whose importance for the English working class can scarcely be overestimated. The trade unions aim at nothing less than to prevent the reduction of wages below that level that is traditionally maintained in the various branches of industry. That is to say, they wish to prevent the price of labour-power from falling below its value.

“Abolition of the wages system”

Marx presented a particularly well-argued case for trade unionism in a reply to John Weston, an old Owenite and a member of the General Council of the IWMA. which took up two successive meetings of the Council in June 1865. [1] Weston had argued that trade union action to raise wages was pointless, even harmful, as wage increases only led to price increases or to wage cuts for other workers. Marx showed how Weston’s arguments were unsound: the level of wages did not affect the level of prices; the effect of a general increase in wages would be, after a readjustment of demand, a decrease in the rate of profit. Marx did, however, recognise that trade union action, including strikes, was basically only defensive and that if workers were not going to go on fighting a permanent rearguard action they should begin thinking in terms of abolishing the wages system altogether:

I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their every-day conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any large movement. At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these every-day struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in those unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword. ‘Abolition of the wages system!’

Marx ended his talk by proposing a resolution. which the General Council adopted, the third clause of which declared:

Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.

The trade union question was also discussed at the first Congress of the IWMA in Geneva in September 1866. Marx drafted the “Instructions” for the General Council’s own delegation. The sixth section, headed “Trade Unions: Their Past. Present and Future", gives a very clear idea of Marx's hopes for the future evolution and role of the spontaneous economic organisations of the working class that trade unions were:

. . . unconsciously to themselves, the trade unions were forming centres of organization of the working class, as the medieval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the trade unions are required for the guerrilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organized agencies for superseding the very system of wage labour and capital rule.

This characterisation of the trade unions as being the equivalent for the working class of what the medieval towns had been for the bourgeoisie Marx had already made on previous occasions, in the Poverty of Philosophy and in the series of articles in the New York Daily Tribune 1853-4 in which he referred to as his “history of strikes". It is almost a syndicalist vision of the emancipation of the working class, except that Marx envisaged the trade unions playing a political role, converting themselves into, as it were, a mass political party of the working class, rather than remaining industrial organisations relying exclusively on industrial action to try to overthrow capitalism.

Marx’s participation in the British trade union movement was however not just confined to theorising. As we have said, until 1870 the IWMA was mainly concerned with trade union matters and has been accurately described as being during this period “an international trade union liaison committee". [2] When a strike occurred in Britain and the employer imported blackleg labour from the Continent, the IWMA intervened, often successfully, with leaflets and speakers in the appropriate language, to persuade the continental workers not to break the strike. Similarly, when a strike occurred in Britain or on the Continent, the IWMA publicised it and raised funds from workers and trade unions in other countries to help the strikers and their families. Marx, as a member of the General Council, played his part in such activities, drafting for instance a leaflet addressed to German tailors concerning a strike.

Marx put the finishing touches to Capital, which was first published in German in Hamburg in September 1867, at a time when he was actively involved in the mainly trade union-type activities of the IWMA. This no doubt helped to give Capital a very pronounced pro-working class character. Marx only mentioned the trade unions in passing (since he planned to deal with the question in a separate volume, which never appeared, to be devoted to "Wage Labour"), but he did devote considerable space to another working class struggle: that to achieve a legally-enforceable maximum working day. As with trade unions. Marx was not content simply to describe and support this struggle. He also showed how the demand for a legal “normal working day" was justified even from a capitalist economic point of view.

There had been opposition to this demand also within the IWMA, once again from the French workers who, influenced by the ideas of Proudhon, had doubts about appealing to the capitalist state to protect the working class. In the "Instructions" he drafted for the General Council delegation to the 1866 Geneva congress of the IWMA Marx met this criticism head on. with regard to the legal limitation of child labour. The "more enlightened part of the working class", he wrote

know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.

Mere Marx appears, not so much as an early-day syndicalist, but as a reformist arguing that the condition of the working class could be improved under capitalism through the action of the existing state.

Class struggle over hours

But he was no more a reformist than he was a syndicalist. He did indeed believe that state intervention to limit the working day could bring about a real improvement in the condition of the working class and in Capital did not hesitate to say so:

  On the whole the working population, subject to the Factory Act, has greatly improved physically. All medical testimony agrees on this point, and personal observation at different times has convinced me of it (Chapter X “The Working Day", Section 6. footnote).
  To guard against false conclusions front the text, I ought here to remark that the English cotton industry, since it was placed under the Factory Act of 1850 with its regulations of labour-time, etc., must be regarded as the model industry of England. The English cotton operative is in every respect better off than his Continental counterpart in misery (Chapter X, Section 5. footnote).

This is a far cry from the absolute impoverishment of the working class under capitalism which some have read into Marx! Marx also had the highest regard for the government officials who enforced the Factory Acts in a strict and conscientious way, saying of one, Leonard Horner (1785- 1864) that "he rendered undying service to the English working-class” (Chapter IX. “The Rate of Surplus-Value”. Section 3, footnote).

It is important to understand why Marx thought that it was possible for factory legislation to improve working class conditions. It was not because state intervention generally — reformist political action, if you like — could bring about an improvement in working class living standards, but because, in this particular case, in the absence of state intervention, wages were being driven down below the value of the workers’ labour power. The parallel with trade union action was clear, and deliberate. Factory legislation was another way of ensuring that workers were paid the full value of the commodity they had to sell, their ability to work. If they had to work too long hours the workers were not being paid, in the words of the slogan Marx denounced as conservative, "a fair day’s wage for a fair day's work”.

Marx, basing himself on a leaflet produced by the building workers strike committee during the strike and lock-out of 1859-60, summarises the workers’ case for a shorter working day as follows:

You pay me for one day’s labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working-day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place . . . I demand the normal working-day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity (Chapter X, "The Working Day", Section 1).

Since the capitalist employer is not prepared to accept this argument, insisting on his right to make maximum use of the commodity he has purchased, the struggle for a “normal” working day becomes a class struggle:

. . .  in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class (ibid.).

Marx describes the course of this struggle in detail, from the first attempt at legal limitation initiated by Robert Owen in 1802 through the Acts of 1833 to the 1850 Act. in Section 6 of Chapter X of Capital entitled “The Struggle for the Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Limitation by Law of the Working-Time. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864”. There is therefore no need for us to repeat that history here, but it must be emphasised that this was a purely defensive struggle:

  The history of the regulation of the working-day in certain branches of production, and the struggle still going on in others in regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that the isolated labourer, the labourer as ’free’ vendor of his labour-power, when capitalist production has once attained a certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance (Chapter X. Section 7).
  For 'protection’ against ‘the serpent of their agonies’, the labourers must put their heads together, and. as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death (ibid.).

This explains why state intervention in this domain was capable of bringing about a once-for-all improvement in conditions, but incapable of bringing about a continual improvement. Like trade union action, once it has improved conditions by raising workers’ wages to the value of their labour power, its role became purely defensive: to ensure that wages were not driven down below their value, in this case by over-work as a result of too long a working day. So factory legislation was subject to the same limitations as trade union action: it could only play a rearguard, defensive role against the encroachments of capital.

In fact, here too the working class had to run fast just to stay still. The capitalist employer sought to compensate for the shorter hours imposed on him by the law by making his workers work more intensively (harder and faster); which meant that the workers would eventually have to demand a further shortening of the working day to avoid being over-worked and so underpaid:

There cannot be the slightest doubt that the tendency that urges capital, so soon as a prolongation of the hours of labour is once for all forbidden, to compensate itself, by a systematic heightening of the intensity of labour, and to convert every improvement in machinery into a more perfect means of exhausting the workman, must soon lead to a state of things in which a reduction of the hours of labour will again be inevitable (Chapter XV, "Machinery and Modern Industry", Section 3c).

Marx added, in a footnote, that "the agitation for a working-day of 8 hours has now [1867] begun in Lancashire among the factory operatives”. The Geneva Congress of the IWMA in 1866 had in fact already adopted the demand for an 8-hour day, following the example of the American trade unions.

Marx also explained, in the Preface to Capital, the space he had devoted to the Factory Acts by referring to the political, as well as economic, lesson they had for the continental ruling classes. The present epoch, he wrote, was that of the rise of the working class:

In England the process of social disintegration is palpable. When it has reached a certain point, it must re-act on the Continent. There it will take a form more brutal or more humane, according to the degree of development of the working-class itself. Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most important interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances to the free development of the working-class. For this reason, as well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume to the history, the details, and the results of English factory legislation.

In other words, the change-over to socialism would be less violent to the extent that the working class was better treated. In fact, Marx believed that, with the extension of the franchise as well, a peaceful capture of political power by the working class in England had become a distinct possibility.

But there was one argument in favour of a shorter working day and week which Marx did not use, even though it was as widespread in his day as it is now: that it would help reduce unemployment. Marx’s knowledge of the economies of capitalism led him to point out that the effect was more likely to be the opposite. A shorter working day, by increasing labour costs, would encourage the introduction of labour-saving machinery. As he told a meeting of the General Council of the IWMA in August 1868, which was discussing the question, the case for a shorter working day should be based, not so much on economic arguments, but simply on the need for workers as human beings to be healthy and to have more free time; so that they would be fit and educated enough to be able to carry through the advance in civilisation that the change-over from capitalism to communism would represent.

Marx thus provided a theoretical justification for what the working class movement in Britain was actually doing — trade union action to defend wages and demanding a legal maximum working day. This was in accordance with the role he and Engels had assigned to communist theoreticians in the Communist Manifesto:

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists . . . merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from an historical movement going on under our very eyes.

In this sense, a large part of Capital, Marx’s major work, can be said to be a theoretical reflection of the activity of the working class of his day in Britain.

Adam Buick

FOOTNOTES

[1.] First published in 1898 by his daughter, Eleanor, and Aveling under the title Value, Price and Profit, which is the title under which it became a textbook for those calling themselves Marxists in the British working class movement. Its original title was Wages, Price and Profit, by which it is known in other countries and which is also used in some later English editions.

[2.] Collins and Abranisky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement, p.84.