in a different way and written in a different style than are the preceding chapters. It is light on theory and laden with historical detail. Yet it also invokes abstract categories not yet encountered. This is so because Marx here focuses on the history of class struggle over the length of the working day. I have commented before on the complex interweaving of logical and historical argumentation in Capital and for the most part argued that we are on safer ground with the logical argument. But here it is the historical narrative that counts—though it is not bereft of theoretical significance. We here encounter a deep theorization of the nature of time and temporality under capitalism at the same time as we more clearly see why a capitalist mode of production is necessarily constituted through and by class struggle.
Marx begins by reminding us that there is a world of difference between the labor theory of value and the value of labor-power. The labor theory of value deals with how socially necessary labor-time is congealed in commodities by the laborer. This is the standard of value represented by the money commodity and by money in general. The value of labor-power, on the other hand, is simply the value of that commodity sold in the market as labor-power. While this commodity is like other commodities in certain respects, it also has some special qualities because there here enters in a historical and moral element. A failure to distinguish between the value of labor-power and the labor theory of value can generate fundamental misunderstandings.
“We began with the assumption,” writes Marx, “that labour-power is bought and sold at its value” and that “its value, like that of all other commodities, is determined by the labour-time necessary to produce it” (340). This is equivalent to the labor-time taken to produce those commodities needed to reproduce the laborer at a given standard of living. Marx assumes that this value is fixed, even though we know (as does he) that it is perpetually changing, depending on the costs of commodities, the state of civilization and the state of class struggle.
As workers add value to commodities in the labor process, there arrives a point in the day when workers will have created the exact equivalent of the value of their own labor-power. Let us suppose, says Marx, that this occurs after six hours of laboring. Surplus-value arises because workers labor beyond the number of hours it takes to reproduce the value equivalent of their labor-power. How many extra hours do they work? That depends on the length of the working day. This length is not something that can be negotiated in the market as a form of commodity exchange in which equivalent exchanges for equivalent (as is the case with wages). It is not a fixed but a fluid quantity. It can vary from six hours to ten hours to twelve hours to fourteen hours, with an outer limit of twenty-four hours—which is impossible because of “the physical limits to labour-power,” and because “the worker needs time in which to satisfy his intellectual and social requirements … The length of the working day therefore fluctuates within boundaries both physical and social” (341).
Marx then sets up a fictitious discussion between a capitalist and a laborer. The capitalist, as purchaser of the labor-power, says he has the right to use it as long as he can. He is, after all, “only capital personified” (recall that Marx deals with roles, not persons). “His soul is the soul of capital,” and “capital has one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value.” Capital, Marx says, “is dead labour which, vampire-like”—and this is a chapter where we’ll get a lot of vampires and werewolves running around, a major departure from usual modes of political-economic theorizing—“lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” If the laborer calls time-out or takes time off, “he robs the capitalist … The capitalist therefore takes his stand on the law of commodity-exchange. Like all other buyers, he seeks to extract the maximum possible benefit from the use-value of his commodity” (342).
Workers, unlike machines and other forms of constant capital, answer back. They note that they own this property called labor-power and that their interest is to conserve its value for future use. The capitalist has no right to squeeze so much out of them in each day as to shorten their working life. This is, says the worker,
against our contract and the law of commodity exchange. I therefore demand a working day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place … I demand a normal working day because, like every other seller, I demand the value of my commodity. (343)
Notice, both workers and capitalists take their positions according to the laws of exchange. Marx is not, as you might expect from a revolutionary thinker, advocating abolition of the wages system, but has both the workers and the capitalists agree to abide by the laws of market exchange, equivalent for equivalent. The only issue concerns how much use-value (the capacity for congealing values in commodities) the laborer is going to give up to the capitalist. Marx makes this move because, as I have emphasized, a key objective in Capital is to deconstruct the utopian propositions of classical liberal political economy on their own terms. “The capitalist maintains his right as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible,” and
the worker maintains his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to a particular normal length. There is here therefore an antinomy, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights, force decides. Hence, in the history of capitalist production, the establishment of a norm for the working day presents itself as a struggle over the limits of that day, a struggle between collective capital, i.e. the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e. the working class. (344)
So finally, after 344 pages, we get to the idea of class struggle. Finally!
There are a number of issues that call for clarification here. The acceptance by both sides of a notion of “rights” is a statement of fact concerning the hegemony of bourgeois notions of rights. But Marx immediately indicates that the problem of the length of the working day cannot be solved by appeal to rights and the laws and legalities of exchange (this parallels his earlier attack on Proudhon’s concept of eternal justice). Issues of this kind can be resolved only through class struggle, in which “force” decides between “equal rights.” This finding has ramifications for understanding the politics of contemporary capitalism. In recent times, there has been a remarkable upsurge in “rights talk,” and a lot of political energy has been invested in the idea that the pursuit of individual human rights is a way (if not the way) to shape a more humane capitalist system. What Marx is signaling here is that there is no way that many of the important questions posed in rights terms can be resolved without being reformulated in class-struggle terms. Amnesty International, for example, deals well enough with political and civil rights but has a hard time extending its concerns to economic rights because there is no way that these can be resolved without taking a side, either that of capital or that of labor. So you can see Marx’s point. There is no way to adjudicate “fairly” between equal rights (both bearing the seal of the law of exchange). All you can do is to fight for your side of the argument. This chapter therefore ends on a very skeptical note about some “pompous catalogue of ‘the inalienable rights of man’,” as opposed to what can be achieved through class struggle (416).
“Force,” in this context, doesn’t necessarily mean physical force (though there have clearly been instances when this has been crucial). The main thrust of this chapter concerns political force, the capacity to mobilize and to build political alliances and institutions (such as trade unions) to influence a state apparatus that has the power to legislate a “normal” working day. In Marx’s account, there are moments of possibility that can be grasped or lost, depending on the contingencies of the political situation and the relations of force in play. The technique here is similar to that so superbly represented in Marx’s study in The Eighteenth Brumaire of how Louis Bonaparte came to power in France in the wake of the failed 1848 revolution in Paris. The materials in this chapter shed a special light on Marx’s way of jointly pursuing a theory of a capitalist mode of production on the one hand and a deep understanding of processes of historical transformation of actually existing capitalist social formations on the other. Class-struggle outcomes are not determined
