From Marxists Internet Archive
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Twenty-One: Piece-Wages
Wages by the piece are nothing else than a converted form of wages by time,
just as wages by time are a converted form of the value or price of labour-power.
In piece-wages it seems at first sight as if the use-value bought from the
labourer was, not the function of his labour-power, living labour, but labour
already realized in the product, and as if the price of this labour was
determined, not as with time-wages, by the fraction
| daily value of labour-power |
| the working day of a given number of hours |
but by the capacity for work of producer. [1]
The confidence that trusts in this appearance ought to receive a first severe
shock from the fact that both forms of wages exist side by side, simultaneously,
in the same branches of industry; e.g.,
“the compositors of London, as a general rule, work by the
piece, time-work being the exception, while those in the country work by the
day, the exception being work by the piece. The shipwrights of the port of
London work by the job or piece, while those of all other parts work by the
day.” [2]
In the same saddlery shops of London, often for the same work, piece-wages
are paid to the French, time-wages to the English. In the regular factories in
which throughout piece-wages predominate, particular kinds of work are
unsuitable to this form of wage, and are therefore paid by time. [3]
But it is, moreover, self-evident that the difference of form in the payment of
wages alters in no way their essential nature, although the one form may be more
favorable to the development of capitalist production than the other.
Let the ordinary working-day contain 12 hours of which 6 are paid, 6 unpaid.
Let its value-product be 6 shillings, that of one hour’s labour therefore 6d.
Let us suppose that, as the result of experience, a labourer who works with the
average amount of intensity and skill, who, therefore, gives in fact only the
time socially necessary to the production of an article, supplies in 12 hours 24
pieces, either distinct products or measurable parts of a continuous whole. Then
the value of these 24 pieces, after. subtraction of the portion of constant
capital contained in them, is 6 shillings, and the value of a single piece 3d.
The labourer receives 1 ½d. per piece, and thus earns in 12 hours 3 shillings.
Just as, with time-wages, it does not matter whether we assume that the labourer
works 6 hours for himself and 6 hours for the capitalist, or half of every hour
for himself, and the other half for the capitalist, so here it does not matter
whether we say that each individual piece is half paid, and half unpaid for, or
that the price of 12 pieces is the equivalent only of the value of the labour-power,
whilst in the other 12 pieces surplus-value is incorporated.
The form of piece-wages is just as irrational as that of time-wages. Whilst
in our example two pieces of a commodity, after subtraction of the value of the
means of production consumed in them, are worth 6d. as being the product of one
hour, the labourer receives for them a price of 3d. Piece-wages do not, in fact,
distinctly express any relation of value. It is not, therefore, a question of
measuring the value of the piece by the working-time incorporated in it, but on
the contrary, of measuring the working-time the labourer has expended by the
number of pieces he has produced. In time-wages, the labour is measured by its
immediate duration; in piece-wages, by the quantity of products in which the
labour has embodied itself during a given time. [4]
The price of labour time itself is finally determined by the equation: value of
a day’s labour = daily value of labour-power. Piece-wage is, therefore, only a
modified form of time-wage.
Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic peculiarities of
piece-wages.
The quality of the labour is here controlled by the work itself, which must
be of average perfection if the piece-price is to be paid in full. Piece-wages
become, from this point of view, the most fruitful source of reductions of wages
and capitalistic cheating.
They furnish to the capitalist an exact measure for the intensity of labour.
Only the working-time which is embodied in a quantum of commodities determined
beforehand, and experimentally fixed, counts as socially necessary working-time,
and is paid as such. In the larger workshops of the London tailors, therefore, a
certain piece of work, a waistcoat, e.g., is called an hour, or half an hour,
the hour at 6d. By practice it is known how much is the average product of one
hour. With new fashions, repairs, &c., a contest arises between master and
labourer as to whether a particular piece of work is one hour, and so on, until
here also experience decides. Similarly in the London furniture workshops,
&c. If the labourer does not possess the average capacity, if he cannot in
consequence supply a certain minimum of work per day, he is dismissed. [5]
Since the quality and intensity of the work are here controlled by the form
of wage itself, superintendence of labour becomes in great part superfluous.
Piece-wages therefore lay the foundation of the modern “domestic labour,”
described above, as well as of a hierarchically organized system of exploitation
and oppression. The latter has two fundamental forms. On the one hand,
piece-wages facilitate the interposition of parasites between the capitalist and
the wage-labourer, the “sub-letting of labour.” The gain of these middlemen
comes entirely from the difference between the labour-price which the capitalist
pays, and the part of that price which they actually allow to reach the labourer.
[6] In England this system is
characteristically called the “sweating system.” On the other hand,
piece-wage allows the capitalist to make a contract for so much per piece with
the head labourer-in manufactures with the chief of some group, in mines with
the extractor of the coal, in the factory with the actual machine-worker — at
a price for which the head labourer himself undertakes the enlisting and payment
of his assistant work people. The exploitation of the labourer by capital is
here effected through the exploitation of the labourer by the labourer. [7]
Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of the labourer to
strain his labour-power as intensely as possible; this enables the capitalist to
raise more easily the normal degree of intensity of labour. [8]
It is moreover now the personal interest of the labourer to lengthen the
working-day, since with it his daily or weekly wages rise. [9]
This gradually brings on a reaction like that already described in time-wages,
without reckoning that the prolongation of the working-day, even if the piece
wage remains constant, includes of necessity a fall in the price of the labour.
In time-wages, with few exceptions, the same wage holds for the same kind of
work, whilst in piece-wages, though the price of the working time is measured by
a certain quantity of product, the day’s or week’s wage will vary with the
individual differences of the labourers, of whom one supplies in a given time
the minimum of product only, another the average, a third more than the average.
With regard to actual receipts there is, therefore, great variety according to
the different skill, strength, energy, staying-power, &c., of the individual
labourers. [10] Of course this does
not alter the general relations between capital and wage-labour. First, the
individual differences balance one another in the workshop as a whole, which
thus supplies in a given working-time the average product, and the total wages
paid will be the average wages of that particular branch of industry. Second,
the proportion between wages and surplus-value remains unaltered, since the mass
of surplus labour supplied by each particular labourer corresponds with the wage
received by him. But the wider scope that piece-wage gives to individuality
tends to develop on the one hand that individuality, and with it the sense of
liberty, independence, and self-control of the labourers, and on the other,
their competition one with another. Piece-work
has, therefore, a tendency, while raising individual wages above the average, to
lower this average itself. But where a particular rate of piece-wage has for a
long time been fixed by tradition, and its lowering, therefore, presented
especial difficulties, the masters, in such exceptional cases, sometimes had
recourse to its compulsory transformation into time-wages. Hence, e.g., in 1860
a great strike among the ribbon-weavers of Coventry. [11]
Piece-wage is finally one of the chief supports of the hour-system described in
the preceding chapter. [12]
From what has been shown so far, it follows that piece-wage is the form of
wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production. Although by no
means new — it figures side by side with time-wages officially in the French
and English labour statutes of the 14th century — it only conquers a larger
field for action during the period of manufacture, properly so-called. In the
stormy youth of modern industry, especially from 1797 to 1815, it served as a
lever for the lengthening of the working-day, and the lowering of wages. Very
important materials for the fluctuation of wages during that period are to be
found in the Blue books: “Report and Evidence from the Select Committee on
Petitions respecting the Corn Laws” (Parliamentary Session of 1813-14), and
“Report from the Lords’ Committee, on the State of the Growth, Commerce, and
Consumption of Grain, and all Laws relating thereto” (Session of 1814-15). Here
we find documentary evidence of the constant lowering of the price of labour
from the beginning of the anti-Jacobin War. In the weaving industry, e.g.,
piece-wages had fallen so low that, in spite of the very great lengthening of
the working-day, the daily wages were then lower than before.
“The real earnings of the cotton weaver are now far less
than they were; his superiority over the common labourer, which at first was
very great, has now almost entirely ceased. Indeed... the difference in the
wages of skillful and common labour is far less now than at any former
period.” [13]
How little the increased intensity and extension of labour through
piece-wages benefited the agricultural proletariat, the following passage
borrowed from a work on the side of the landlords and farmers shows:
“By far the greater part of agricultural operations is done
by people who are hired for the day or on piece-work. Their
weekly wages are about 12s., and although it may be assumed that a man earns on
piece-work under the greater stimulus to labour, 1s. or perhaps 2s. more than on
weekly wages, yet it is found, on calculating his total income, that his loss of
employment, during the year, outweighs this gain...Further, it will generally be
found that the wages of these men bear a certain proportion to the price of the
necessary means of subsistence, so that a man with two children is able to bring
up his family without recourse to parish relief.” [14]
Malthus at that time remarked with reference to the facts published by
Parliament:
“I confess that I see, with misgiving, the great extension
of the practice of piece-wage. Really hard work during 12 or 14 hours of the
day, or for any longer time, is too much for any human being.” [15]
In the workshops under the Factory Acts, piece-wages become the general rule,
because capital can there only increase the efficacy of the working-day by
intensifying labour. [16]
With the changing productiveness of labour the same quantum of product
represents a varying working-time. Therefore, piece-wage also varies, for it is
the money expression of a determined working-time. In our example above, 24
pieces were produced in 12 hours, whilst the value of the product 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 ½d. 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 1 ½d. to 3/4d.,
as every piece now only represents 1/4, instead of ½ of a working-hour. 24 by 1½d.
= 3s., and in like manner 48 by 3/4d. = 3s. In other words, piece-wage is
lowered in the same proportion as the number of the pieces produced in the same
time rises, [17] 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.” [18]
The capitalist rightly knocks on the head such pretensions as gross errors as
to the nature of wage-labour. [19]
He cries out against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of
industry, and declares roundly that the productiveness of labour does not
concern the labourer at all. [20]
Footnotes
1.
“The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the
working-man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day-labourer
depending upon the will of the capitalist and the co-operative artisan, who in
the not distant future promises to combine the artisan and the capitalist in his
own person. Piece-workers are in fact their own masters, even whilst working
upon the capital of the employer.” (John Watts: “Trade Societies and
Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies.” Manchester, 1865, pp. 52, 53.)
I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all long-ago-rotten,
apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in Owenism and
published in 1842 another pamphlet: “Facts and Fictions of Political
Economists,” in which among other things he declares that “property is
robbery.” That was long ago.
2.
T. J. Dunning: “Trades’ Unions and Strikes,” Lond., 1860, p. 22.
3.
How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage
favors the masters’ cheating: “A factory employs 400 people, the half of
which work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The
other 200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no
more money for their over-time.... The work of these 200 people for half an hour
a day is equal to one person’s work for 50 hours, or 5/6’s of one person’s
labour in a week, and is a positive gain to the employer.” (“Reports of
Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1860,” p. 9.) “Over-working to a very
considerable extent still prevails; and, in most instances, with that security
against detection and punishment which the law itself affords. I have in many
former reports shown ... the injury to workpeople who are not employed on
piece-work, but receive weekly wages.” (Leonard Horner in “Reports of Insp.
of Fact.,” 30th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9.)
4.
“Wages can be measured in two ways: either by the duration of the labour, or
by its product.” (“Abrégé é1émentaire des principes de l’économie
politique.” Paris, 1796, p. 32.) The author of this anonymous work: G. Garnier.
5.
“So much weight of cotton is delivered to him” (the spinner), “and he has
to return by a certain time, in lieu of it, a given weight of twist or yarn, of
a certain degree of fineness, and he is paid so much per pound for all that he
so returns. If his work is defective in quality, the penalty falls on him, if
less in quantity than the minimum fixed for a given time, he is dismissed and an
abler operative procured.” (Ure, l.c., p. 317.)
6.
“It is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take its
share of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches
the workwoman is miserably disproportioned.” (“Child. Emp. Comm. II
Report,” p. 1xx., n. 424.)
7.
Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: “It would be a great improvement to the
system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the
contract, each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested
in over-working his fellows for his own benefit.” (l.c., p. 53.) On the
vileness of this system, cf. “Child. Emp. Comm., Rep. III.,” p. 66, n. 22,
p. 11, n. 124, p. xi, n. 13, 53, 59, &c.
8.
This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, e.g., in the
Engineering Trade of London, a customary trick is “the selecting of a man who
possesses superior physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several
workmen, and paying him an additional rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with
the understanding that he is to exert himself to the utmost to induce the
others, who are only paid the ordinary wages, to keep up to him ... without any
comment this will go far to explain many of the complaints of stinting the
action, superior skill, and working-power, made by the employers against the
men” (in Trades-Unions. Dunning, l.c., pp. 22, 23). As the author is himself a
labourer and secretary of a Trades’ Union, this might be taken for
exaggeration. But the reader may compare the “highly respectable”
“Cyclopedia of Agriculture” of J. C. Morton, Art., the article “Labourer,”
where this method is recommended to the farmers as an approved one.
9.
“All those who are paid by piece-work ... profit by the transgression of the
legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work over-time
is especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers.” (“Rept.
of Insp. of Fact., 30th April, 1858,” p. 9.) “This system” (piece-work),
“so advantageous to the employer ... tends directly to encourage the young
potter greatly to over-work himself during the four or five years during which
he is employed in the piece-work system, but at low wages.... This is ...
another great cause to which the bad constitutions of the potters are to be
attributed.” (“Child. Empl. Comm. 1. Rept.,” p. xiii.)
10.
“Where the work in any trade is paid for by the piece at so much per job ...
wages may very materially differ in amount.... But in work by the day there is
generally an uniform rate ... recognized by both employer and employed as the
standard of wages for the general run of workmen in the trade.” (Dunning,
l.c., p. 17.)
11.
“The work of the journeyman-artisans will be ruled by the day or by the piece.
These master-artisans know about how much work a journeyman-artisan can do per
day in each craft, and often pay them in proportion to the work wich they do;
the journey men, therefore, work as much as they can, in their own interest,
without any further inspection.” (Cantillon, “Essai sur la Nature du
Commerce en général,” Amst. Ed., 1756, pp. 185 and 202. The first edition
appeared in 1755.) Cantillon, from whom Quesnay, Sir James Steuart & A.
Smith have largely drawn, already here represents piece-wage as simply a
modified form of time-wage. The French edition of Cantillon professes in its
title to be a translation from the English, but the English edition: “The
Analysis of Trade, Commerce, &c.,” by Philip Cantillon, late of the city
of London, Merchant, is not only of later date (1759), but proves by its
contents that it is a later and revised edition: e.g., in the French edition,
Hume is not yet mentioned, whilst in the English, on the other hand, Petty
hardly figures any longer. The English edition is theoretically less important,
but it contains numerous details referring specifically to English commerce,
bullion trade, &c., that are wanting in the French text. The words on the
title-page of the English edition, according to which the work is “taken
chiefly from the manuscript of a very ingenious gentleman, deceased, and
adapted, &c.,” seem, therefore, a pure fiction, very customary at that
time.
12.
“How often have we seen, in some workshops, many more workers recruited than
the work actually called for? On many occasions, workers are recruited in
anticipation of future work, which may never materialize. Because they are paid
by piece-wages, it is said that no risk is incurred, since any loss of time will
be charged against the unemployed.” (H. Gregoir: “Les Typographes devant le
Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles,” Brusseles, 1865, p. 9.)
13.
“Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain,” London, 1815.
14.
“A Defense of the Landowners and Farmers of Great Britain,” 1814, pp. 4, 5.
15.
Malthus, “Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,” Lond., 1815.
16.
“Those who are paid by piece-work ... constitute probably four-fifths of the
workers in the factories.” “Report of Insp. of Fact.,” 30th April, 1858.
17.
“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. 317.) 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. 321), which has in no
way a tendency to raise wages.
18.
H. Fawcett: “The Economic Position of the British labourer.” Cambridge and
London, 1865, p. 178.
19.
In the “London Standard” of October 26, 1861, there is a report of
proceedings of the firm of John Bright & Co., before the Rochdale
magistrates “to prosecute for intimidation the agents of the Carpet Weavers
Trades’ Union. Bright’s partners had introduced new machinery which would
turn out 240 yards of carpet in the time and with the labour (!) previously
required to produce 160 yards. The workmen had no claim whatever to share in the
profits made by the investment of their employer’s capital in mechanical
improvements. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright proposed to lower the rate of pay from
1½d. per yard to 1d., leaving the earnings of the men exactly the same as
before for the same labour. But there was a nominal reduction, of which the
operatives, it is asserted, had not fair warning beforehand.”
20.
“Trades’ Unions, in their desire to maintain wages, endeavor to share in the
benefits of improved machinery.” (Quelle horreur!) “... the demanding higher
wages, because labour is abbreviated, is in other words the endeavor to
establish a duty on mechanical improvements.” (“On Combination of Trades,”
new ed., London, 1834, p. 42.)
Transcribed by Bill McDorman
Html Markup by Stephen Baird (1999)
|
