Constant & Variable Capital

 Money invested in MP (means of production)
 MP as embodiment of value invested
 MP in value terms
 “Constant” because value contribution to final product C’ is given by amount of past labor

 Money invested in LP (labor power)
 LP as embodiment of value invested
 LP in value terms
 “Variable” because the amount of new value contributed by living labor can vary

 Marx uses as misleading language:
 labor “preserves” value
 labor “creates” value
 labor “transfers” value
 All these are transitive verbs
 But the substance of value is work, or abstract labor

 Labor in this period performed such that labor in previous time
(which created MP)
 Actually contributes to the value of C’
 “Preserves” the value created in the earlier period, or “transfers” it from the past to the present, from the MP to the C’

 Substance of value = abstract labor
 Labor which is accomplished in accord with the rules of capital
 i.e., produces a product which is sold, and on which a profit is realized,
 “creates” value; indeed it IS value

Repairing Constant & Variable Capital
 Marx considered labor that repairs a machine as part of the labor that produces a functioning machine, thus part of C
 We can apply the analysis to repair of LP
 housework repairs LP, physically, psychologically
 but what is impact on value of LP?

Housework & Value of LP
LP - M - C(
MS
)...P(2)...LP*. LP - M - C(
MS
)
M - LP M - LP
...P(1)... C’ - M’. . . . P . . .
M - MP M - MP
P(2) influences LP*
 more repair work can reduce value K must lay out
 less need for eating out
 less need for shrinks or prostitutes, etc.

The Rate of Surplus Value

 Surplus value (S) = excess beyond V
 Old labor = C
 New Labor = V + S
 S = that part of the labor workers do which goes beyond what is needed for their reproduction and is appropriated by
K
 V = all the labor that produces MS
 S = all the labor that produces MP

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


Capitalist preoccupation:
Rate of profit = S/(C + V) =


= ratio of net revenue to investment

= rate of return on investment
 The above is in value terms
 In money terms there are many ways to measure the rate of return on investment

 Workers preoccupation:
 Rate of Surplus Value, Rate of
Exploitation: S/V
 S/V is ratio between two parts of V + S or the new value
 S/V is ratio of workers labor given over to capital to that which they do for themselves

 Nassau Senior = economist and apologist for business against Factory Acts
 Argued if working day was reduced one hour, all profit would be wiped out
 Marx shows fallacy of argument: how
Senior ignores material structure of working day and constant using up of C
 Marx shows drop from 9.5% to 8.5%, not
0

 Andrew Ure, in his Philosohy of
Manufactures warned against reducing work for children
 He argued they would be corrupted by idleness
 Nice expression of fundamental capitalist belief that work is salvation of individual and social life

The Working Day





Chapter 10 on Working “Day” because that was common measure in Marx’s era
Today, we think more in terms of the working
“week”, or working “year”
These measures defined:
 by periods of waged work
 by periods free of waged work (weekend, vacations)
In all cases we hold “intensity” constant

 Length of working day (week, year) is variable
 A . . . . B . . . . C
 A - C total length of working day
 A - B = V
 B - C = S
 So, capitalists try to maximize B - C

 Limit of A - C = physical limits of workers
 Lower Limit of A - B = minimal requirement of LP
 Upper Limit of A - B = A -C? No, ave. B-
C
 Limit of B - C (S) function of :
 total time of work
 time which must be given over to LP

 Marx: “Between equal rights force decides . Hence it is that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day, presents itself as the result of a struggle , a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists and collective labor, i.e., the working class.”

 Capitalists try to lengthen working time
 Workers try to shorten working time
 During rise of capitalism (Prim.Accum) the capitalists succeeded in extending working day (see sec 5)
 Later, workers suceeded in stopping expansion and then in reducing working time (see sec 6) --at least until recently

 Marx’s analysis focuses on waged day
 We must extend that analysis to unwaged working day, e.g., struggle over time in
 housework (women fight for less)
 schoolwork (kids fight for less)
 unemployment (workers search less)
 leisure (real or re-creation of labor power?)

 Marx: “Capital did not invent surplus labor”
 also in slavery, feudalism, etc.
 Ques: So what did it invent?
 Ans: Endlessness of work


Work determined by use-values (limited)
Work determined by value/  (unlimited)
 K = life organized around work
(endlessly)

 Objection to usual definition of S: S today is MP tomorrow which produces C(MS) so S is just V with a time-lag
 Sec 2 shows understanding of S is dynamic
 In capitalism S ≠ f(V) but V = f(S), i.e., necessary labor time is subordinated to surplus labor time
 Post-capitalist society would reverse this

 Capitalist try to maximize work: get workers to start early and end late, minimize breaks: time clocks
 Workers’ try to start late and end early, maximize breaks
 Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times
 never buy a car made on Monday or Friday
 playing on job: rod-blowing, surfing internet
 Struggle over “leisure” time, school, etc.

 Industries with no legal limits show essense of capitalism: what it does when it has the power to do so
 Horror stories of overwork under deadly conditions (women, children, Karoshi )
 Farmworkers, sweat shops everywhere today
 The Jungle provides vivid illustration of these things in US stockyards in 1906



 Marx: e.g., chalk in bread
 Today: wood cellulose in bread
 The Jungle: rotten meat, rats in sausage
 Today’s toxic foods:
 30% chicken w/ salmonella
 e-coli in hamburgers
 pesticides in fruit and vegetables

 Protests of poor quality consumer goods
 The Jungle led to regulation of meat packing industry
 Whisle - blowing by workers in industry


“Consumer movement”, Naderites, check up on and fight for quality of MS
Resistance to de-regulation to increase 

 Marx: In the factory
 Extension: in unwaged work

 Machines need no rest, high start up costs
 Fit workers to endless rhythm of machines to maximize capacity utilization and minimize costs (for business)
 Night work raises costs to workers:
 bad for health, violates biological rhythms
 screws up social life
 gender, age hierarchies

 Since LP = f(life), work of producing can go on continuously
 e.g., mothers



 night & early morning meals, washing evening homework supervision morning truant officer work no retirement
 e.g., students who work at all hours


 at home in libraries especially graduate students

 Methodology of Sections 5 & 6
 classes as subjects
 language of personification, e.g., capital attacks
 antagonism & class struggle produce patterns
 sections trace historical patterns of struggle, back and forth with one side or the other having the initiative
 Sec 5 (capital’s initiative) Sec 6 (workers’)

Length of working day t1 t2 t3
1. capitalist initiative: expand, expand, expand
2. workers resist, but in general, they lose t4

 “The establishment of the normal working day is the result of centuries of struggle between the capitalist and the worker . . .Centuries are required before the ‘free’ worker owing to the greater development of the capitalist mode of production, makes a voluntary agreement, i.e., is compelled by social conditions to sell the whole of his active life, his very capacity for labour, in return for the price of his customary means of subsistence, to sell his birthright for a mess of potage.”

 Gauchos: subordinated interaction with market to autonomous needs
 Freed slaves in Jamaica: “content themselves with producing only what is strictly necessary” [i.e., MS]
 Jack London’s Johnny
 Upton Sinclair’s Jurgis

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The W.C. successes in reducing the working day (described in Sec 6) led to K attempts to convert “free” time to work time
Method: structuring the time to guarantee that what was done in it would contribute to the recreation of life as labor power
Homework, looking for jobs, job-related study, etc

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

Such efforts to colonize free time led, inevitably, to workers’ struggles to defend their free time as such
Refusal of homework, not looking for work, refusing to take work home in evenings, etc.
Collectively: struggle for free spaces for free time, parks, natural areas, social centers

Sec. 6: Struggle for Limitation of hours



Spontaneous resistance: absenteeism, sit-downs on payday, etc
Collective resistance:

 strikes for reduction of hours efforts to pass laws, e.g., Factory Acts in UK, hours and wages legislation in the US
Capital resisted fiercely
 reduced hours would raise costs
 reduced hours undercut work civilization

 Before capitalist on offensive, increaseing hours
 Finally, workers on offensive, cutting them t4 t3 t2 t1
 US: 1880s (75-80hrs/wk), 1940 (40hrs/wk)

 International circulation of struggle
 England to France to US


Weakness of some workers means weakness of all e.g., US: slavery undercut struggles of waged workers
 e.g., weakness of Mexican workers undercuts strength of US workers today

 Migration, immigration carries experience of struggle from place to place
 e.g., sailors, transported workers, political exiles (Owen Saro-Wiwa, Nigeria - US)
 Organized efforts
 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Internationals
 multinational unions, anti-NAFTA coalition
 EZLN “Intercontinental Network of
Struggles”

 Popular Music repeatedly manifests antiwork sentiments:
 E.Costello, “Welcome to the Working Week”
 Bangles, “Manic Monday”
 Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays”
 D.Parton, “9 to 5”
 Clash, The Magnificent Seven
 Kinks, Soap Opera (concept album)