VIII.
Shorter Hours of Labor.
In Lesson VII we discussed a general increase in wages, and how and why they would benefit the working class. We discovered that a general increase in wages would ultimately result in a fall in the average rate of profit, but would not affect prices in general.
But now that we have seen the desirability of higher wages, how may we secure them?
It is true that the working class, as a class, has never been sufficiently well organized to demand a universally higher price for its labor-power—a larger portion of the value of its product from the capitalist class.
It is equally true that when they shall have become sufficiently organized and class conscious to do so, they will not stop with asking higher wages, but will abolish the whole wage system itself.
But Capital makes continual war upon the workers. It reduces wages to the bare cost of living and lowers the standard of living whenever and wherever possible. It prolongs the hours of labor as far as the physical endurance of the workers themselves will allow. And the workers find themselves forced constantly to fight in order to hold the little they already have. So that, on every side, we see little groups of workers in conflict with their employers, fighting to maintain working conditions, or to improve them where they become unendurable.
It is obvious that men or women working from ten to sixteen hours daily will have little strength or leisure for study, or activity in revolutionary work. It is also patent that wages are bound to be higher where men toil eight hours a day than where they work sixteen hours. It requires two shifts of men, working eight hours daily, to run a machine that one man runs sixteen hours.
It is not only necessary, but it is a highly desirable matter, that we continue to resist and to advance and attack in our daily struggle with the capitalists. For it is through present defeats and victories that we learn our strength and our weaknesses. We learn to fight by fighting. New tactics are often evolved in struggles that seem to be total failures. And class solidarity becomes a living thing, a resistless weapon, when we are fighting and acting more or less as a class.
Even group struggles—the isolated wars waged by craft unions against their employers—bear fruitful lessons in class solidarity. For craft wars are becoming more uniformly failures, and they show the vital need for revolutionary industrial unionism.
But craft union struggles have not always failed in that which they set out to accomplish, although victories are becoming increasingly difficult and impossible with the advance of productive machinery that abolishes the need of skilled laborers. Skilled workers have often been able to form skilled labor monopolies, or unions, where their particular skill has been in demand, and have forced their employers to give them shorter hours, higher wages or better working conditions. But these victories have been due to a monopoly of a particular kind of skill, and not at all to any class consciousness on the part of the workers.
Just at present workers all over the world in the countries where gold is the recognized standard of value are demanding, and generally securing, higher wages. This is owing to the decreasing value of gold, which exchanges for fewer commodities than formerly, and which has consequently caused a rise in prices, and an increase in the cost of living.
These workers are gaining higher wages from the employing capitalists because it costs more to "keep" them, just as the man owning a horse has to pay a bigger bill when the price of "feed" goes up, if he wants to keep the horse. They are not gaining higher wages through class conscious efforts, although every struggle is a breeder of class consciousness, even though it be only in a negative way.
Modern machinery is eliminating the need of skilled labor and unskilled labor with ever increasing speed. Skilled workers are thrown into the ranks of the unskilled and unskilled workers are thrown into the ranks of the unemployed. And gradually all workers are being more and more forced to compete with each other for jobs upon a common level. Nothing can stop the progress of the automatic machine, the most wonderful invention of man through all ages—the machine that will one day free mankind from ceaseless anxiety and degrading toil!
But struggle we must—today and tomorrow. And the fight will grow keener with the passing years.
Men and women are being hurled into the ranks of the unemployed by thousands and by hundreds of thousands. We must reduce the number of jobless workers.
We must organize along industrial lines to shorten the hours of labor. If an eight-hour day were inaugurated, it would mean the additional employment of millions of men and women in America tomorrow. It would insure us leisure for study and recreation—for work of organization and education, and it would mean higher wages in America generally. For the fewer men there are competing for jobs, the higher the wage they are able to demand.
To repeat: Modern machinery is throwing more and more men and women into the Army of the Unemployed. Shorter hours will employ more men and women, and will maintain and even increase wages, to say nothing of the tremendous development of the fighting spirit, the solidarity and class consciousness of the workers.
Flood the nations with your ballots, workingmen and women of the world. Elect your shop mates, your companions of the mines, your mill hand friends, to every possible office. Put yourselves or coworkers into every government position as possible to render your court decisions, to hold in readiness your army; to control your arsenals and to protect you with your constabulary, to make your laws and to serve your fellow workers, whenever and wherever and however possible.
And organize industrially. With your government at your backs, ready to ward off Capitalism, ready at all times to throw itself into battle for you, you can gather the workers of the world into your industrial organization and sign the death warrant of Wage Slavery!
QUESTIONS.
Which is the most benefit to the working class, a rise in wages or shorter hours? What is the greatest hindrance to the workers securing higher wages? Or better conditions of any kind?
What would be the effect of a general shortening of the hours of labor in one nation? Do shorter hours tend to increase or decrease wages? Why?
If the general workday were suddenly to be lengthened three hours a day, what would be the effect upon unemployment? Would this tend to reduce or increase wages? Explain why shorter hours tend to increase wages.
When you seek a job you meet your boss as the seller of a commodity. What is the commodity? What determines the price (or wages) you will get for your labor power? What determines the value of this commodity?
What determines the price of any commodity? What determines the VALUE of a commodity? Do supply and demand affect the value of a commodity? Do they affect the PRICE of a commodity?
Suppose it takes ten men twenty hours to make 100 pairs of shoes in one factory and ten men one hundred hours to make 100 pairs of shoes in another factory. What would determine the value of a pair of shoes? The labor contained in the shoes produced in the first mentioned factory or in the second factory? Or the AVERAGE labor time necessary to produce a pair of shoes?
The working class generally receives the value of its labor power. But it does not receive the value of its PRODUCT. Explain the difference between these two.
Where do the profits come from? What is surplus value? Who appropriates it? Can an employer of labor pay his workmen the value of their labor power and sell their product at its value, and still make a profit? Would it ever be possible for him to pay the laborers MORE than the value of their labor power and to sell their products at LESS than their value, and still make a profit? Explain why this would be possible.
Are the workers any better off where the cost of living is low than where the cost of living is high? Are they able to save any more in the countries of low prices? Do low prices benefit the working class? Do we find wages high or low where the cost of living is high? Where the cost of living is low? Does a low cost of living benefit the capitalists? Why?
Do your butcher and your baker and your landlord exploit you? Suppose all three classes of men were suddently able to double prices in America, would you pay the additional bills or WOULD THE EMPLOYING CAPITALISTS pay them? Would wages rise? Suppose wages did NOT rise, would you then be getting the value of your labor power? If you failed to get higher wages, would this mean that the landlord and butcher and baker exploit you, or would it mean that you had to have more wages, if you were to continue to receive the value of your labor power?
What is the great aim of Socialism?