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German: Capital. Das Kapital, one of the major works of the 19th-century economist and philosopher Karl Marx (1818–83), in which he expounded his theory of the capitalist system, its dynamism, and its tendencies toward self-destruction. He described his purpose as to lay bare “the economic law of motion of modern society.”.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Chapter Ten: The Working-Day
- Section 1
- Section 2
- Section 3
- Section 4
- Section 5
- Section 6
- Section 7
Contents Section 1 - The Limits of the Working-Day Section 2 - The Greed for Surplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard Section 3 - Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation Section 4 - Day and Night Work. The Relay System Section 5 - The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Laws for the Extension of the Working-Day fr...
THE LIMITS OF THE WORKING-DAY
We started with the supposition that labour-poweris bought and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commodities,is determined by the working-time necessary to its production. If the productionof the average daily means of subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours,he must work, on the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour-power,or to reproduce the value received as the result of its sale. The necessarypart of his working-day amounts to 6 hours, and is, ther...
THE GREED FOR SURPLUS-LABOUR. MANUFACTURER AND BOYARD
Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherevera part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, thelabourer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary forhis own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the meansof subsistence for the owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian caloς cagaqoς [well-to-do man], Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus [Roman citizen], Norman baron, American slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard,...
BRANCHES OF ENGLISH INDUSTRY WITHOUT LEGAL LIMITS TO EXPLOITATION
We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extensionof the working-day, the were-wolf’s hunger for surplus-labour in a departmentwhere the monstrous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeoiseconomist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins,caused capital at last to be bound by the chainsof legal regulations. Now, let us cast a glance at certain branches ofproduction in which the exploitation of labour is either free from fettersto this day, or was so yester...
DAY AND NIGHT WORK. THE RELAY SYSTEM.
Constant capital, the means of production, consideredfrom the standpoint of the creation of surplus-value, only exist to absorblabour, and with every drop of labour a proportional quantity of surplus-labour.While they fail to do this, their mere existence causes a relative lossto the capitalist, for they represent during the time they lie fallow,a useless advance of capital. And this loss becomes positive and absoluteas soon as the intermission of their employment necessitates additionaloutla...
THE STRUGGLE FOR A NORMAL WORKING-DAY. COMPULSORY LAWS FOR THE EXTENSION OF THE WORKING-DAY FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 14TH TO THE END OF THE 17TH CENTURY
“What is a working-day? What is the length of timeduring which capital may consume the labour-power whose daily value itbuys? How far may the working-day be extended beyond the working-time necessaryfor the reproduction of labour-power itself?” It has been seen that tothese questions capital replies: the working-day contains the full 24 hours,with the deduction of the few hours of repose without which labour-powerabsolutely refuses its services again. Hence it is self-evident that thelabourer...
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL WORKING-DAY. COMPULSORY LIMITATION BY LAW OF THE WORKING-TIME. THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS, 1833 TO 1864
After capital had taken centuries in extending theworking-day to its normal maximum limit, and then beyond this to the limitof the natural day of 12 hours, there followedon the birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of the18th century, a violent encroachment like that of an avalanche in its intensityand extent. All bounds of morals and nature, age and sex, day and night,were broken down. Even the ideas of day and night, of rustic simplicityin the old statutes, became so conf...
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL WORKING-DAY. RE-ACTION OF THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS ON OTHER COUNTRIES
The reader will bear in mind that the production ofsurplus-value, or the extraction of surplus-labour, is the specific endand aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production, quite apart fromany changes in the mode of production, which may arise fromthe subordination of labour to capital. He will remember that as far aswe have at present gone only the independent labourer, and therefore onlythe labourer legally qualified to act for himself, enters as a vendor ofa commodity into a contrac...
Footnotes
1.“A day’s labour is vague, it may be longor short.” (“An Essay on Trade and Commerce, Containing Observations onTaxes, &c.” London. 1770, p. 73.) 2.This question is far more importantthan the celebrated question of Sir Robert Peel to the Birmingham Chamberof Commerce: What is a pound? A question that could only have been proposed,because Peel was as much in the dark as to the nature of money as the “littleshilling men” of Birmingham. 3.“It is the aim of the capitalist toobtain with his expen...
May 7, 2017 · Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867, by which time he had settled in London with his family, and was being financially supported by Friedrich Engels, the rich son of a cotton ...
It did not yet stand on that height of civilization where the "wealth of the nation" (i.e., the formation of capital, and the reckless exploitation and impoverishing of the mass of the people) figure as, the ultima Thule of all state-craft. In his history of Henry VII., Bacon says: "Inclosures at that time (1489) began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured ...
In Das Kapital (1867), Marx proposes that the motivating force of capitalism is in the exploitation of labor, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value.The owner of the means of production is able to claim the right to this surplus value because they are legally protected by the ruling regime through property rights and the legally established distribution of shares which are ...
- Karl Heinrich Marx
- 1867
Only vol. 1 appeared in Marx’s lifetime; the other two vols. were published postumously by Engels. Marx prided himself on having discovered the “laws” which governed the operation of the capitalist system, laws which would inevitably lead to its collapse. A German language version of Das Kapital is also available in HTML and facsimile PDF.
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The centre of gravity, in the synopsis, as well as in the reviews, lies in the theory of surplus-value, the corner-stone of Marx's economic doctrine. Engels summarized Marx's theory of surplus-value with special care, characterizing in detail the historical circumstances in which the relations of capital exploitation spread, the working class ...
