Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/21

 whether time-wages or piece-wages? The capitalist takes the laborer into his workshop or factory, where all the articles required for the work can be found—raw materials, auxiliary materials (coal, dyestuffs, etc.), tools and machines. Here the worker begins to toil. His daily wages are, as above, 3 dollars, and it makes no difference whether he earns them as day-wages or piece-wages. We again assume that in twelve hours the worker adds by his labor a new value of 6 dollars to the value of the raw materials consumed, which new value the capitalist realizes by the sale of the finished piece of work. Out of this new value he pays the worker his 3 dollars, and the remaining 3 dollars he keeps himself. If, now, the laborer creates in twelve hours a value of 6 dollars, in six hours he creates a value of 3 dollars. Consequently, after working six hours for the capitalist the laborer has returned to him the equivalent of the 3 dollars received as wages. After six hours’ work both are quits, neither one owing a penny to the other.

“Hold on there!” now cries out the capitalist. “I have hired the laborer for a whole day, for twelve hours. But six hours are only half a day. So work along lively there until the other six hours are at an end—only then will we be even.” And, in fact, the laborer has to submit to the conditions of the contract upon which he entered of “his own free will,” and according to which he bound himself to work twelve whole hours for a product of labor which costs only six hours’ labor.

Similarly with piece-wages. Let us suppose that in twelve hours our worker makes twelve commodities. Each of these costs 2 dollars in raw material and wear and tear, and is sold for 2½ dollars. On our former assumption, the capitalist gives the laborer one-fourth of a dollar for each piece, which makes a total of 3