Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

However, there is still one other way in which the surplus-value is increased, as I shall explain by what follows. Let us suppose the length of the working day to be twelve hours, and the time necessary for the production of the equivalent of the workman’s needs to be six hours. We can then represent the day as follows:

CB is consequently the time in which the surplus-value is produced. The aim of the capitalist, then, is to protract the period CB as much as possible, and this he can accomplish in two ways: first, that of which we have just spoken, the prolongation of AB; second, the shortening of AC in order that CB may be as long as possible, or in other words, the shortening of the time necessary for the production of the necessaries of life for the workman and his family. When the productivity of labor rises, the value of the commodities falls; and when the value of the commodities which the workman needs for his [[253]]support falls, the value of labor falls also. However, the increase of the productivity of labor is only possible through the improvement of the means of production and the methods of working, so that capitalism modifies its manner of production unceasingly. In general the capitalist does not take account of the fact that the more cheaply commodities are produced for sale, the more the value of labor falls, and, other things being equal, the more the surplus-value increases. The capitalist strives constantly to make improvements in his methods of production in order to surpass his competitors. Supposing that, by the employment of a new method of working, he succeeds in producing in half an hour an article up to that time generally made in an hour, he will then obtain an extra profit as long as his competitors do not employ this method. But as soon as the latter have improved their production in the same way, the time socially necessary falls from an hour to half an hour, and the extra profit of the man who first introduced the method ceases. The result that remains is this: the value of labor has decreased, and the relative surplus-value has consequently increased, in so far as the commodities whose value has declined are destined to provide for the needs of the workmen.

Before entering upon the consideration of some of the methods for shortening the necessary hours of labor, attention must be fixed upon the fact that, aside from this method, the capitalist tries above all to lower the price of labor below its value, while the workers, for their part, oppose this tendency and try to obtain the contrary; whence there results a new cause for an inexorable struggle between labor and capital, side by side with that over the length of the working-day.

Let us now examine the methods of abridging the labor-time necessary, beginning with coöperation. As we have seen above the capitalistic method of production begins when the capitalist has in his service a sufficiently large number of workmen. In the days of the guilds the master had also paid workers, but the surplus-value which he procured from them was not great, since their number was small, a fact which obliged him to work with them, since without this his income would have been too small. The true capitalist is he who is permitted by the amount of the surplus-value which he receives to live according to his rank, without working with his laborers, reserving to himself only the direction of affairs.

The difference, therefore, between capitalistic production and that at the time of the guilds is in the first place only quantitative, but there come in qualitative differences as well. In the first place the [[254]]differences in the individual capacities of the workmen disappear; the ability of one neutralizes the smaller ability of the other, so that the capitalist can count upon an average amount of labor. Next there is economy in the new arrangement; because a structure to hold twenty-five workmen working together costs less than twenty-five structures with one workman in each. Finally, and most important of all, by having a number of men working together, each doing his own share toward the common end, we bring about a systematic working together, that is to say, coöperation, which brings into being a new collective force greater than the sum of the individual forces. Not only does coöperation permit the accomplishment of work requiring a greater expenditure of energy, but it also raises the productivity of labor. The direction necessary for this joint labor falls to the capitalist as such. Submission of the workman to the capitalist is, then, an indispensable condition of the capitalistic method of production.

We come now to another method for increasing the relative amount of the surplus-value, the manufactory proper, a more developed form of coöperation, which became general between the middle of the sixteenth century and the end of the eighteenth. This comes from two causes. On the one side it is due to the combination of different trades, up to that point independent of each other. The manufacture of a carriage, for example, requires the work of a wheelwright, a harness-maker, a painter, etc., who all exercise their trades independently of each other. The capitalist unites them all in one trade, that of carriage-maker, in which the occupation of each becomes more limited, more specialized. The painter, for example, becomes especially a painter of carriages. On the other side the manufactory is due to the bringing together of workmen of the same trade into a single workshop, and to the division of labor made possible in this way. Thus, for instance, in the manufacture of pins, each pin is no longer made by a single workman but by several, each of whom does only a special part of the work.

It is clear that through the introduction of manufactory methods the productivity of labor has been enormously increased, so that the time necessary for the production of the necessaries of life for the workmen has become shorter, and the surplus-value correspondingly augmented. The part taken by the workman in the process of production is quite different from what it was in the time of the guilds. The different operations that he performed in making the complete product are now replaced by the monotonous and repeated production [[255]]of a single one of the parts. From this point dates the division of workmen into skilled and unskilled laborers. The latter are those whose work is such as to require little or no apprenticeship, and they are the cause of a new lowering of the price of labor.

We have still to take up the question of the introduction of machinery and of manufacturing on a large scale. Although at the period of the early manufactories the workman was obliged to perform a monotonous task, which in so far may be called “mechanical”, yet this task was performed, though with the aid of tools, by his own hands. But in the eighteenth century the machine was invented, that is to say, a mechanism which took the place both of the workman and of his tools. Machines were introduced because they saved hand-work, and consequently lowered the price of the product and relatively increased the surplus-value.

Each developed mechanism is composed of three parts: the motor, the transmission, and the operating part. It is to the development of this last that the economic revolution of the eighteenth century is due. However, there was needed a motive power greater and more regular than those then available. The steam-engine, invented by James Watt, provided for this need and, in its turn, led to new developments of operating machinery. The steam-engine was capable of running many operating machines at the same time, and thus the modern factory was established. In branches in which the product requires a series of different manipulations, a system of machines has been contrived of which one furnishes the material to the next without the intervention of hands, so that a system of automatic mechanism has been produced.