of the 12 hours was 6s., the daily value of the labour-power 3s., the price of the labour-hour 3d., and the wage for one piece 1½d. In one piece half-an-hour's labour was absorbed. If the same working day now supplies, in consequence of the doubled productiveness of labour, 48 pieces instead of 24, and all other circumstances remain unchanged, then the piece-wage falls from 1½d. to ¾d., as every piece now only represents ¼, instead of ½ of a working hour. 24 by 1½d. = 3s., and in like manner 48 by ¾d. = 3s. In other words, piece-wage is lowered in the same proportion as the number of the pieces produced in the same time rises,[1] and therefore as the working time spent on the same piece falls. This change in piece-wage, so far purely nominal, leads to constant battles between capitalist and labour. Either because the capitalist uses it as a pretext for actually lowering the price of labour, or because increased productive power of labour is accompanied by an increased intensity of the same. Or because the labourer takes seriously the appearance of piece-wages, viz., that his product is paid for, and not his labour-power, and therefore revolts against a lowering of wages, unaccompanied by a lowering in the selling price of the commodity. "The operatives . . . . carefully watch the price of the raw material and the price of manufactured goods, and are thus enabled to form an accurate estimate of their master's profits."[2]
The capitalist rightly knocks on the head such pretensions as gross errors as to the nature of wage-labour.[3] He cries out against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of
- ↑ "The productive power of his spinning-machine is accurately measured, and the rate of pay for work done with it decreases with, though not as, the increase of its productive power." (Ure, l. c., p. 817.) This last apologetic phrase Ure himself again cancels. The lengthening of the mule causes some increase of labour, he admits. The labour does therefore not diminish in the same ratio as its productivity increases. Further: "By this increase the productive power of the machine will be augmented one-fifth. When this event happens the spinner will not be paid at the same rate for work done as he was before, but as that rate will not be diminished in the ratio of one-fifth, the improvement will augment his money earnings for any given number of hours' work," but "the foregoing statement requires a certain modification.… The spinner has to pay something additional for juvenile aid out of his additional sixpence, accompanied by displacing a portion of adults." (l. c. p. 821), which has in no way a tendency to raise wages.
- ↑ H. Fawcett: "The Economic Position of the British Labourer. Cambridge and London, 1865," p. 178.
- ↑ In the London Standard of October 26,1861, there is a report of proceedings
