PRODUCTIVITY, INTENSITY OF LABOR
In a previous post, I argued:
The working class supports technological progress as of general
benefit to humanity. All we ask is that the benefits of increasing
productivity accrue to the working people. Let the hours of weekly
labor be reduced with no reduction in weekly take-home pay.
Then Jerry Levy responded:
>"All we ask ...."
> The line that "all we ask" above could have been written by Walter
>Reuther. It rests on the principle of labor-management cooperation
>and is willing to trade-off struggles over the effects of technical
>change for increases in wages and/or reductions in working hours.
>This is part and parcel of what some have called the "Fordist model."
Trotsky says: "Against unemployment, 'structural' as well as
'conjunctural,' the time is ripe to advance, along with the slogan of
public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade
unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the
unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On
this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all
existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working
week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the
same as it was under the old working week." (From: _The Death
Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International_.)
This was the idea I was trying to express in an abbreviated form.
In my view, this proposal suggests the necessity of a revolutionary
struggle against capitalist exploitation, not a reformist adaptation
to the aims of the exploiters.
In my previous posting, I argued,
But increasing the intensity of labor increases absolute, not relative,
surplus value.
Jerry came back:
>First: explain the [faulty] logic for the above.
>Second: produce textual support for this claim. That is, cite passages
>where Marx explicitly said that "increasing the intensity of labor
>increases absolute, not relative, surplus value."
At any given level of productive technology, the amount of daily
labor performed by the worker can be defined both extensively and
intensively. If the capitalist wants to increase the amount of labor
performed in a day, he can either increase the length of the working
day, or increase its intensivity at the same number of working hours.
Either way he increases the absolute surplus value.
In _Results of the Immediate Process of Production_, appendix
to _Capital_, Vol. I, Vintage edition, p. 1021, he discusses absolute
surplus value as characteristic of the formal subsumption of labor
under capital. He says,
"On the contrary, the fact is that capital subsumes the labor process
as it finds it, that is to say, it takes over an existing labor process,
developed by different and more archaic modes of production. ...
The work may become more intensive, its duration may be extended,
it may become more continuous or orderly under the eye of the
interested capitalist, but in themselves these changes do not affect
the character of the actual labor process, the actual mode of working.
This stands in striking contrast to the development of a specifically
capitalist mode of production (large-scale industry, etc.); the latter
not only transforms the situations of the various agents of production,
it also revolutionizes their actual mode of labor and the real nature
of the labor process as a whole." (Marx links the creation of relative
surplus value to the revolution in productive technology and methods.)
Another example, from _Theories of Surplus Value_, Vol. III, p.
307 of the 1971 Moscow edition. Here Marx is explaining how it might
be possible to apply more capital per worker:
"First. If the productive power of labor remains the same, then this
is only possible if the worker prolongs his working time absolutely,
i.e., for example, if he works 15 hours instead of 12 hours, or if he
works more intensively and performs 15 hours' labor in 12 hours, does
5 hours' labor in 4 hours or 1 hour's labor in 4/5 of an hour."
Notice that here, both the extensive and intensive increase of labor
fall under the category of absolute increase of working time.
Jim Miller
Seattle
