Das Kapital Ch. 21: When Your Boss Pays by the

Summary

Marx's first claim is that piece-wages are only time-wages in disguise. His proof begins with a puzzle. Both forms live side by side: London compositors work by the piece and country compositors by the day, and in the same London saddlery shops the French are paid by the piece and the English by time. Then he runs the numbers. A twelve-hour day yields six shillings of new value and twenty-four pieces, so a piece is worth threepence. The labourer is paid a penny halfpenny for each, three shillings in all. Half of every piece is paid and half is not, exactly as in time-wages. The form simply measures the labour by pieces made instead of hours spent.

That disguise suits the capitalist. The work itself now polices quality, because only work of average standard is paid in full, and the piece gives him an exact measure of intensity. In London tailors' workshops a waistcoat is called an hour, or half an hour, at sixpence an hour, and every new fashion starts a quarrel over what counts as an hour. A man who cannot reach the minimum is dismissed. Supervision becomes needless, and middlemen move in. They sub-let the work and live on the gap between what the capitalist pays and what reaches the worker. England calls it the sweating system. Or a head labourer hires and pays his own helpers, so that capital exploits the labourer through the labourer.

Paid by output, the worker has his own reasons to strain and to lengthen his day. Individual earnings rise above the average, but competition between workers drags the average down. Piece-wage is old, but from 1797 to 1815 it became a lever for longer days and lower pay, and cotton weavers on longer days were taking home less. Even Malthus said he looked on it with misgiving. Under the Factory Acts it spread, because capital could then raise output only by driving harder. When the day doubles from twenty-four to forty-eight pieces, the rate falls from a penny halfpenny to three farthings. The workers, who watch the price of raw material and of goods and so work out their master's profit, protest. The capitalist replies that they are taxing the advance of industry, and that the productiveness of labour does not concern the labourer at all.

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Why This Matters

Testing a Per-Task Rate

Pay by the piece feels like being your own boss, until the rate per piece quietly drops. Marx gives a worker who makes twenty-four pieces in a twelve-hour day at 1½d each, three shillings in all, and when the same day yields forty-eight pieces the rate falls to ¾d, so the three shillings stay exactly where they were.

Before you take any job paid per task, work out what a day at your usual pace would earn, then work out what the rate becomes if you get twice as fast.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: The piece-worker who exploits himself

Piece-wages are only a converted form of time-wages, and the form most in harmony with capital. The owner's taking is effected here through the 'exploitation of the labourer by the labourer'. The psyche is a mind that has taken the owner's interest inside, and drives itself by the job.

Continue this thoughtThe Stub That Pays the Unpaid

Coming Up in Chapter 22

Marx now sets the wages of different nations side by side. Before any comparison, he says, each country's day-wage must be reduced to the same working day. Then comes a surprise from the Factory Commission of 1833: in England, wages are virtually lower to the capitalist, though higher to the operative, than on the Continent.

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Chapter 21

When Your Boss Pays by the Job

PIECE-WAGES Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-One 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…

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When Your Boss Pays by the Job

Summary

Why This Matters