bought from the labourer was, not the function of his labour-power, living labour, but labour already realised in the product, and as if the price of this labour was determined, not as with time-wages, by the fraction, daily value of labour-powerworking-day of a given number of hours, but by the capacity for work of the producer.[1]
The confidence that trusts in this appearance ought to receive a first severe shock from the fact that both forms of wages exist side by side, simultaneously, in the same branches of industry; e.g., “the compositors of London, as a general rule, work by the piece, time-work being the exception, while those in the country work by the day, the exception being work by the piece. The shipwrights of the port of London work by the job or piece, while those of all other parts work by the day.”[2]
In the same saddlery shops of London, often for the same work, piece-wages are paid to the French, time-wages to the English. In the regular factories in which throughout piece-wages predominate, particular kinds of work are unsuitable to this form of wage, and are therefore paid by time.[3] But it is moreover self-evident that the difference of form in the payment of wages alters in no way their essential nature,
- ↑ “The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the working man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day Jahourer depending upon the will of the capitalist and the co-operative artisan, who in the not distant future promises to combine the artizan and the capitalist in his own person. Piece-workers are in fact their own masters’ even whilst working upon the capital of the employer.” (John Watts: “Trade Societies and Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies.” Manchester, 1865, p. 52, 53.) I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all long-ago-rotten, apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in Owenism and published in 1842 another pamphlet: “Facts and Fictions of Political Economists,” in which among other things he declares that “property is robbery.” That is long ago.
- ↑ T. J. Dunning: “Trade’s Unions and Strikes,” Lond, 1860. p. 22.
- ↑ How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage favours the masters’ cheating: “A factory employs 400 people, the half of which work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The other 200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money for their overtime.… The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day is equal to one person’s work for 50 hours, or 5⁄6 of one person’s labour in a week, and is a positive gain to the employer.” (“Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1860,” p. 9.) “Overworking to a very considerable extent still prevails; and, in most instances, with that security against detection and punishment which the law itself affords. I have in many former reports shown … the injury to workpeople who are not employed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages.” Leonard Horner in “Reports of Insp. of Fact.” 20th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9.)
