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 The Working Day

(From "Capital")

(A German Jew, father of modern revolutionary Socialism, 1818-1883. Of his epoch-making work the scope of this collection permits but a brief passage, by way of illustration)

What is a working day? What is the length of time during which capital may consume the labor-power whose daily value it buys? How far may the working-day be extended beyond the working time necessary for the reproduction of labor-power itself? It has been seen that to these questions capital replies: the working day contains the full twenty-four hours, with the deduction of the few hours of repose without which labor-power absolutely refuses its services again. Hence it is self-evident that the laborer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labor-power; that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labor-time, to be devoted to the self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental activity, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a country of Sabbatarians!)—moonshine! But in its blind, unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labor, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorporating it where possible with the