Hence we might pass by this normal working-day which is wholly unconnected with State protection, but we think it necessary to touch upon it. There still exists a confusion of ideas as to the maximum and “normal” working-days. The meaning of the latter is not formulated and fixed in a generally recognised manner. It is quite conceivable, nay even probable, if the Socialist fermentation among the labouring masses should increase rapidly, that the proposal of a maximum working-day, will take the form of the “normal working-day,” and that in the very worst and wildest development of the idea of normal working-time. This alone affords sufficient reason for our drawing a sharp distinction between the maximum working-day of protective legislation and the “normal working-day,” and above all for clearly defining the meaning of the latter.
This is no easy task for several reasons.
The determination of the meaning of “normal working-day” includes two points: what we mean by fixing a normal, and what we should regard as “socially normal,” i.e. just, fair, proportionate, and so on.
The normal working-day would be a State normalised working-day (as opposed to a restricted working-day) adopted for the purpose of preventing abnormal social and industrial conditions, and as far as possible restoring normal relations. This would be the widest meaning of normal working-day.
The maximum working-days of protective policy, and of wage policy, are, or aim at being, normal working-days in this widest sense. Both are working-days legally normalised for the purpose of obtaining by a development of protective policy, or of protective and wage policy combined, more normal conditions of work. But this does not make it advisable to adopt the alternative designation of normal working-day rather than of maximum working-day. There are several kinds of normal working-days in this wide sense, or at least we can conceive of several; even minimum working-days might be looked upon as normally regulated days. The term might designate the normal working-day demanded on political, social, or educational grounds, perhaps even the maximum working-day which would secure to the worker every day leisure for the non-industrial occupations above mentioned; moreover it might designate a minimum normal working-day—almost indispensable under a communistic government—which would compulsorily fix a daily minimum of labour, and thereby ensure production adequate to the normal requirements of the whole community; another normal working-day, in the widest sense of the term, would be such a maximum working-day under a communistic government, as should aim at preventing the diligent from working more and earning more than others, and thereby destroying equality. None of these normal working-days (in the widest sense) concern us now; the existing social order does not require for its just and fair regulation the introduction of such normal working-days, and the cura posterior of a socialism or communism which as yet possesses no practical programme is not a theoretically fruitful or practically important matter for discussion, at least not within the limits of this book. The normal working-day with which we need to concern ourselves here—and the term is still frequently used in this narrower sense, though not universally—is, as already indicated, that normal day which should serve as a general standard of a socially equitable—normal or more normal (compared to the old capitalist regulations)—valuation of the performances of labour, and of the products of labour, as a means of reducing the various individual performances of labour to proportional parts of a “socially normal” aggregate of the labour of the nation, and as a social measure of the cost of labour products, thereby serving as a means to a “socially normal” regulation of prices.
Rodbertus is the writer who has most clearly sketched for us the idea of such a normal working-day. We shall best understand what is meant by it, by listening to this great economic thinker. Rodbertus sought for a more normal regulation of wages, within the sphere of the existing social order, by the co-operation of capital and wage labour, giving to the wage labourer as to the employer his proportional share in the aggregate result of national production.
As a solution of this problem, he lays down a special normal time labour-day and normal work (amount of work) labour-day, by considering which two factors he proposes to arrive at a unit of normal labour which shall serve as a common basis of measurement.
In order to bring about the participation of all workers in the nett result of national production in proportion to their contribution to it—hence without keeping down the better workers to the level of the worst, and without endangering productivity—it is necessary, Rodbertus holds, to reduce to a common denominator the amounts of work performed by individual workers, which vary very considerably both in quantity and quality. By this means he thinks we shall be enabled to establish a fair relation between work and wages. The normal time labour-day is to furnish us with a simple measurement of the product of labour in different occupations or branches of industry; and the normal work labour-day is to give us a common measure of all the varying amounts of work performed in equal labour time by the individual workers.
He points out that astronomically equal working time does not mean, in different industries, an equal out-put of strength during an equal number of hours, nor an equal contribution to society. Therefore the different industrial working-times must be reduced to a mean social working time: the normal time labour-day. If this amounts to 10 hours, 6 hours work underground might equal 12 hours spinning or weaving work. Or, which would be the same, the normal time labour-day would be 6 hours in mining, and 12 hours in textile industries; the hour of mining work would be equal to 1-2/3 hours of normal time, the hour of textile work would be equal to 5/6 hour of normal time. The normal time labour-day would serve to determine periodically the proportionate relations which exist between the degrees of arduousness in labour of different kinds, with a view to bringing about a just distribution of the whole products of labour according to the normal proportional value of its out-put in each kind of employment, in each department of industry, such proportional value being determined by means of the normal time measure. Also it would lead to the fair award of individual wage, for if any one were to work only 3 instead of 6 hours in coal mining, or only 5 hours in weaving or spinning, he would only be credited with and paid for half a day of normal working time.