We know that those whose activity is subordinate in its exercise to a
capital which they have not--and these compose the working-class--are
compelled to sell their labor-power to some of the possessors of this
capital who form, on their side, the bourgeois[4] class.
What is sold by him who has to labor in order to live, and who has not
in his possession the means of labor, to the possessor of those means
is simply labor in the potential state, that is the muscular or
intellectual faculties that must be exerted in the production of
useful things. In fact, on the one hand, before these faculties are
brought into active exercise, labor does not exist and cannot be sold.
Now, the contract is made between the buyer and the seller before any
action takes place and has for its effective cause, so far as the
seller is concerned, the fact that the seller is so situated that he
can not by himself bring his capacity for labor into productive use.
On the other hand, as soon as the action (labor) begins, as soon as
labor manifests itself, it cannot be the property of the laborer, for
it consists in nothing but the incorporation of a thing which the
laborer has just alienated by sale--capacity to perform labor--with
other things which are not his--the means of production.
To sum up, when the labor does not exist, the laborer can not sell
that which he does not possess and which he has not the means of
realizing; when the labor does exist, it can not be sold by the
laborer to whom it does not belong. The only thing which the laborer
can sell is his labor-power, a power distinct from its function,
labor, just as the power of marching is distinct from a parade, just
as any machine is distinct from its operations.
What is paid under the form of wages by the possessor of the means of
labor, the purchaser of the labor-power to the possessor of that
power, cannot, therefore, be, and is not, the price of the labor
furnished, but is the price of the power made use of, a price that
supply and demand cause to oscillate about and especially below its
value determined, like the value of any other commodity, by the
labor-time socially necessary for its production, or in other words,
in this case by the sum which will normally enable the laborer to
maintain and perpetuate his labor-power under the conditions necessary
for the given kind and stage of production.
But, even when the laborer gets a value equal to the value of his
power, he furnishes a value greater than that which he receives. The
duration of labor required for a given wage, regularly exceeds the
time necessarily occupied by the laborer in adding to the value of the
means of production consumed, a value equal to that wage; and the
labor thus furnished over and above that which represents the
equivalent of what the laborer gets, constitutes _surplus-labor_.
SURPLUS-LABOR THEN IS UNPAID LABOR.
And here let us be clearly understood. When we speak of unpaid labor,
we are stating a simple fact, and do not at all intend to say that
capitalists, in the existing state of things, are personally guilty of
extracting from the laborers labor for which they do not pay them. We
are not of the number of those who think that "the causes of the ills
from which we suffer are to be found in men rather than institutions,"
as M. Glasson declared before the members of the Le Play School. We
say exactly the contrary; for us the evil is due to institutions
rather than to men and, in society as it is at present constituted,
things cannot possibly take place in any other or different fashion.
On the side of the laborer, the thing sold, as I have proved, cannot
be his labor. It is his labor-power. The sum paid cannot be the price
of his labor. It is the price of his labor-power, a price which, in
view of the number of applicants for work, can only very rarely be
equal to its value; but, even in this case, he furnishes a greater
value than he receives. If he does not, his remuneration is not,
strictly speaking, wages, for the furnishing of surplus-labor by the
worker is a condition _sine qua non_ of wages. When his compensation
is split up into wages and supplementary remuneration under the form
of profit-sharing or under any other form, the workingman does not
furnish less surplus-labor, less unpaid labor; quite the contrary, we
may say, for it is clear that this supplementary remuneration, for the
laborer, is a mere delusion, mere supplementary moon-shine. All that
the workingman can hope to achieve, under, I repeat, the existing
organization of society, is the curtailment of his surplus-labor, and
that is the explanation and justification of the struggle for the
reduction of the working-day, of the Eight Hours movement.
On the side of the capitalist, on account of the fierce war of
competition with low prices as weapons which rages throughout the
field of production, it is financial suicide for the employer to
extract from his work-people less unpaid labor than his competitors
do; and that is why it is necessary to strive to obtain the reduction
of the day by legal enactment. I add that so long as the employer, so
long as the capitalist keeps within the bounds of what may be called
the normal conditions of exploitation, he cannot reasonably be held
responsible for the economic structure which is so advantageous to
him, but which the best of intentions on the part of individuals would
be powerless to modify. On the other hand, if capitalists are
personally powerless to ameliorate the state of affairs, it would be
rash to rush to the conclusion that they are capitalists in the
interest of the workers. We must avoid exaggeration in either
direction.
Surplus-labor was not invented by the capitalists. Ever since human
societies issued from the state of primitive communism, surplus-labor
has always existed; and it is the method by which it is wrung from the
immediate producers, which differentiates the different economic forms
of society.
Before man was able to produce in excess of his needs, one portion of
society could not live upon the fruits of the toil of another portion.
How could a man work gratuitously for others when his entire time was
barely sufficient to procure him his own necessary means of
existence? When, in consequence of human progress, labor had acquired
such a degree of productiveness that an individual was enabled to
produce more than what was strictly necessary for his needs, it became
possible for some to subsist upon the toil of others and slavery could
be established.
That it was established by force is not doubtful; but it must be
confessed that its establishment promoted human evolution. So long as
the productiveness of labor, although sufficient to make surplus-labor
possible, was not sufficient to render participation in directly
useful labor compatible with other occupations or pursuits, the
toilsome drudgery and exploitation of some was the necessary condition
of the leisure of others, and, thereby, of the development of all.
For, if none had had leisure, no progress could have been made in the
sciences, the arts and all the branches of knowledge, the benefits of
which we all enjoy in some degree. And the fact that the thinkers of
antiquity and the greatest among them, Aristotle, excused slavery, is
a proof that the mode of thought is determined by the exigencies of
the economic organization of society. To reproach Aristotle, in
particular, because he did not regard slavery and property as it is
natural for us to regard them, is equivalent to reproaching him for
not having applied the processes of our modern production to ancient
industries.
Slavery did not appear to lack a rational foundation, and did not
begin to disappear until the external conditions were profoundly
transformed and thus rendered another kind of labor and of
surplus-labor more in harmony with the material requirements.
Following upon the economic environment in which slavery was the rule
there came then the economic environment in which serfdom
predominated, and the latter, in its turn, has been superseded by the
economic environment in which the wage-system has become the general
rule. Each of these environments has had or has its own habits and
modes of thought which may be in contradiction with ours, but which
are the natural consequences of the modes of life in vogue in their
respective eras.
An examination of the aspect of surplus-labor in these three
environments shows that it has the appearance of being all labor in
the first, a larger or smaller fraction of the whole labor in the
second, and apparently falls to zero in the third. In fact, in
slavery, during a part of the day, the slave only replaces the value
of what he consumes and so really works for himself; notwithstanding,
even then his labor appears to be labor for his owner. All his labor
has the appearance of surplus-labor, of labor for others. Under
serfdom or the _corvee_ system, the labor of the serf for himself and
his gratuitous labor for his feudal lord are perfectly distinct, the
one from the other; by the very way in which the labor is performed,
the serf distinguishes the time during which he works for his own
benefit from the time which he is compelled to devote to the
satisfaction of the wants of his lordly superiors. Under the
wage-system, the wage-form, which appears in the guise of direct
payment of labor, wipes out every visible line of demarcation between
paid labor and unpaid labor; when he receives his wages, the laborer
seems to get all the value due to his labor, so that all his labor
takes on the form or appearance of paid labor. While, under slavery,
the property-relation conceals the labor of the slave for himself,
under the wage-system the money-relation conceals the gratuitous labor
of the wage-worker for the capitalist. You will readily perceive the
practical importance of this disguised appearance of the real relation
between labor and capital. The latter is deemed to breed or expand by
its own virtue, and the former to receive its full remuneration.