Wage labor is labor that is performed in order to obtain an income. It is characterized by its connection to the wage, the payment that the worker receives for his activity. As labor, an activity appropriately directed toward the production of objects satisfying human needs, is a means for an external goal, it is for the wage laborer the means for his reproduction. [1] He performs labor because he receives money for it, which he uses to buy the necessities for living. By ceding his activity to another who gives him money for it, he ensures his existence. Wage labor is thus a social relationship into which the wage laborer steps to an owner of money who is interested in his labor. [2] The exchange between these two social characters is over money and labor in certain quantities whereby the labor is measured as an activity (process, movement) in time.
The sale of a quantity of labor for a quantity of money enables the wage laborer to procure the objects of his needs as a buyer on the market. With money wages he has in principle access to everything available that the society produces.
“… he is neither bound to particular objects, nor to a particular manner of satisfaction.” (Grundrisse, p.283)
But the quantitative fixity of his wages represents a delimitation of his reproduction. He can satisfy the needs of his own individuality only insofar as he can pay for the relevant objects. The qualitatively certain consumption that is meted out to the worker has its limit in the size of wages. In the form of wage labor there is therefore a barrier included for the reproduction of the characteristic for which it is their means. [3]
If the sale of labor at a certain price is a means for individual reproduction, which is based on the use that the buyer of labor draws from the exchange, then the wage laborer exposes himself to a comparison with other sellers of labor whose reproduction likewise depends on the sale of their activity.
“Thus a sellers’ competition takes place, pressing down the price of the offered commodity.” (Wage Labor and Capital)
In reverse, the competition between the buyers causes a rise in price that the bidders of labor obtain. The result of the interacting pressure of supply and demand is a respectively valid market price for the different types of labor. That determined, the reproduction of the wage laborer connects to the limiting size of wages from before the trend of competition. His specific restriction is a result of the pressure that the wage laborers generate among themselves as competitors, and appears to him as an expression of his individual ability, the way he proves himself in the competition. This exists in the first instance in your comparison as a salesman.
a)
As the employer-employee wage relationship is an exchange, an economic relationship into which the buyer and seller of labor enter only for their individual benefit, the legal form of a contract is required. The commitment of a declaration of intention given by both, the contracting partner surrendering labor for money in certain quantities, requires protection by the state. Because the identity of wills, the commonality of the special interests, disappears in regard to each side’s individual benefit from the contracted object – on account of the availability of competitors, no side is constrained to the service of specific individuals as counterparties -- the wage laborers (just like the capitalists) are dependent on the universal power of the state. By maintaining a legal situation, it guarantees the conditions under which they can reproduce themselves as wage laborers [4], which, in reverse, means that the wage laborers must contribute to the revenue of the state with their economic means.
The restrictions which arise for the wage laborer from the size of the wage appears in reproduction as a shortage of money that forces the wage laborer to do without as a buyer on the market. Debts and savings are the continuous forms of his poverty, if his continued existence is not made impossible at all: if he borrows money, he satisfies his needs at the expense of future sacrifices; if he saves, he limits his need satisfaction for future benefits.
a)
With the existence of the state, which guarantees in law the conditions for the reproduction of the individual through the sale of labor, this form of reproduction is recognized as legitimate by the universal power. If the wage laborer fails due to the process of competition, he has a right to the preservation of his existence in view of there being no other alternative for obtaining an income, and the state has the duty to concern itself with his subsistence. The public welfare service is the consequence of the poverty which bourgeois society forces upon part of its members because they are not able to reproduce themselves in the recognized form of securing an existence. The compensatory character of welfare services means that at the same time they are connected with all sorts of coercive measures that urge the wage laborer to manage his subsistence without the help of the state.
From the experience of lacking money, a constant tension in the worker’s life, arises the conventional equation of social differences with the “contrast” between poor and rich. A whole scale of efforts, reaching from gambling to inheritance hunting up to crime, proves that a consciousness exists containing the insight that one does not become rich from work, but, on the other hand, does not get to the bottom of the differences between poor and rich and also thinks gaining wealth as the only form in which the desolation of the worker’s existence can be overcome. All variants of this consciousness -- from dishwasher millionaire films to the proverb “better to be healthy…” live on an instrumental view of social relations in which it is a matter of getting by.[5]
In relation to the state, which tries to influence economic growth with its politico-economic program, this consciousness demands measures that may positively affect the reproduction conditions of the worker and prevent harmful changes in the standard of living set by the size of wages:
In the demand that the state should ensure a fairer distribution of wealth and thus social power among individuals lies the “harmless” prelude to the worker as fascist, just like revisionist.
The restriction of the worker’s reproduction given by the amount of wages must be overcome by increasing the sale of labor to bring in more wages. The quantitative fluctuations in the exchange of labor for money are an inherent consequence of the wage relation, the direct consequence of the fact that the quantity of money received sets barriers to the fulfillment of the purpose of reproducing the worker in accordance with his individual needs. [6]
But increasing the sale of labor, which should safeguard reproduction through wage labor, directly subjects the realization of this goal to a reduction. The time during which the workers as individuals is spent pursuing their special interests and satisfying their needs is shortened by the same means that are used for the sake of reproduction. The temporal expansion of labor should increase wages in order to ensure reproduction, but restricts it. In itself, the need to increase wage labor as a means of reproduction excludes the realization of this purpose.
The compulsion imposed on the individual wage laborer to extend labor increases the number of sellers on the labor market and increases the competitive pressure among the salesmen: the effect of competition, which reveals itself in a sinking market price for labor, is that the increased sale of labor, instead of securing the reproduction of the wage laborer, runs contrary to the purpose it serves. The strains of the worker -- on the basis of wage labor he works for his individual gain -- worsen the relationship between money and labor; the social relationship that he enters into with wage labor is contrary to the private gain he draws from it.
b)
The necessity for increasing labor time contradicts every limitation of the working day because the need for solvency, as a permanent requirement, hinders individual reproduction.
In reverse, competition counteracts the goal of assuring reproduction by worsening the relationship between money and wages. So that the prolongation of wage labor can function as a means for reproducing the wage laborer, the fixing of a normal working day is required, which cannot be set by the interacting pressure of supply and demand. In order to make the means “work” increasingly useable, the adjustment of for a specific duration wages is necessary so that going beyond this normal working day really includes an improvement of reproduction.
Insofar as the time in which the wage laborer increases his amount of work directly reduces his reproduction time and thus affects the quality of the needs that he can satisfy, a wage that considers the impediment to reproduction must be paid for the additional work. The overtime wage is the result of reflection on the extended labor time for the goal whose full guidance makes the extension necessary.
The fixing of a normal working day and the accompanying special remuneration for overtime are conditions for the individual use of labor as a source of income, which are required as universally valid regulations by the fluctuation of competition on the labor market. The collision between means and ends inherent in the wage labor relation is positioned under a forcible fixing of the conditions of competition by state authority against the competing agents because otherwise the purposes pursued in the competition would be defeated by the competition.
The time in which the worker satisfies his needs and follows his personal interests and inclinations, which always takes place in a separate sphere for his own activities, is shortened by the means of wage labor, which also negatively affects the organization of free time. A “compression” of his reproduction takes place: necessary consumption must be completed in as small an amount of time as possible if anything is to be left over for free individual activity. Saving time -- in the activities necessary for housekeeping or for commuting between workplace and residence, as well as for a residence in good condition – again costs money. The demand for the appropriate items, which come from wage labor, has the consequence that prices rise and again counteract their intention. The contradiction of wage labor is experienced as a constant threat to the “quality of life '' -- the destruction of the family as the area of the “personal”, completely falling prey to the working life of the woman, does the rest.
b)
Because ensuring a livelihood in the form of wage labor is one that is authorized, and at the same time however the aforementioned deficiencies in reproduction have consequences, the state in its actions must answer as the guarantor of the free exercise of individuality for which wage labor represents the approved means. Therefore, there are points in the state’s sociopolitical program that aim at coping with the difficulties that arise for the wage laborer from the tendency of labor to expand into the sphere of reproduction and make wage labor as a source of income conflict with its purpose. The state prevents the danger to an area of individual need satisfaction due to the absorption of wages by the necessities of merely continuing to exist by partly weakening the effects of competition by interventions into the housing market, partly by independently procuring living space outside the competition between landlords who -- landed property is likewise recognized as a source of subsistence here – make the price of housing prohibitively expensive for wage laborers. It provides for the cutback time and the financial restrictions on the private activities of the wage laborers by establishing a system of public mass communications, and counteracts the restrictions which raising children imposes on the wage laborers by family-policy measures reaching from tax exemptions and child benefits for school up to children’s programming in the publicly organized mass media. The latter permits the wage laborers a non-expensive option for information and thus the pursuit of their duties as citizens, and in addition creates arts sections for easy access to cultural benefits, which without state action would require revoking leisure time and money in forbidding amounts.
The quite material consequence of the increased efforts of the wage laborer -- the occasional increase of his income -- lets him arrive at an initial “explanation” for the poverty he finds himself and others in: for him, the differences are based on differences in the willingness to work. Laziness and diligence would be the reasons for how much one can afford. Turned around, a high income is thought to be an indicator of the outstanding abilities of the respective person.
The state, whose evaluation is derived from the negative consequences of wage labor for the worker’s “quality of life”, appears unsatisfactory in as much as it does not sufficiently take up its perceived duties. For the wage laborer it is helpful for coping with the contradictions of his reproduction, but not adequately, so that a strengthening of its sociopolitical level of influence on the worker’s existence is required: the demands apply to all its relevant activities (land reform, free admission, child care) and are the preferred subject of citizen initiatives, the form of oppositional politics which takes the authorization of demands as the occasion to look for contingencies to be implemented which are not already givens in the mechanism of democracy.
The consequence of the play of supply and demand on the labor market, the danger of being unable to sell labor, carries over into advocacy for the protection of jobs whenever the state’s economic objectives are concerned.
In the recognition of the qualifications of individuals as a basis for their "secure" existence -- this view is combined with demands for state action – lies the transition to fascist consciousness: the state is to eliminate those who are deficient in their own reproduction, interpreted as their “inadequacies”, as it should not tolerate laziness, deadbeats, etc. By not working they want to withdraw themselves from the compulsions of capitalistic reproduction (not those who draw revenue from not working), seem responsible for these restrictions by becoming a burden on the state and thus the general public.
The increase of labor that the wage laborer sells must take place in a way that does not prevent his reproduction by reduced free time and all the resulting deficiencies for the sphere of individual activity that follow from it. In place of the temporal expansion of labor must step its intensification within the given duration. The form of the relation -- a certain activity performed in a certain duration measured by a quantity of money which is paid for it -- develops into an immanent quality of the work itself. It is set in its discrete moments in relationship to time, given by its measured flow: work effort. The size of the wage arises as a result of the work output produced within a working hour and can be measured in the product (piece rate) or in the activity itself (time-motion). Depending on the type of labor, different wage systems result, usually combinations of time and piece-rate wages (premiums); cases in which the activity of the individual worker in the production process can not be assigned discrete products makes group piece rates necessary.
In these forms of measuring labor effort, the quality of labor appears as a mere prerequisite, no longer as a basis of the wage level. Indeed, it is still specific, appropriate activity that is demanded in the wage labor relation; but the payment is directly related to the speed of the activity, so that the same work obtains different wages only due to the tempos at which it is performed. The wage measures the activity of the individual wage laborer, but his individuality exists exclusively in the different degree to which he wears himself out relative to the other workers. In piece wages the immanent nature of the wage labor relation stands out, as we know from Capital: the wage laborer is paid for the wear and tear which he demands of himself in his work so that he functions in the production process as a representative of labor par excellence. (The hierarchy of vocations is based on the two criteria earnings and effort for which the different activities will compare.) As the purpose of his work is the wage, he must strive in the labor process to increase his usefulness to the buyer of his labor so that his wage rises and he can reproduce himself: he does this by destroying himself as an individual. In order to be able to satisfy and enjoy his needs, he must crucify himself.
The comparison between the competitive workers as salesmen of labor thus takes place not only on the market, but also in the production process. The speed up in work effort of the individual wage laborer increases the sellers of labor and permits the buyers to press down the price. “The workers not only compete with each other when offering themselves more cheaply than the others, but when one works for two.” (MEW 6/542) Superiority over his competitors, which the wage laborer attains for the sake of improving his own reproduction, is at the same time his loss. The increase in work effort over his competitor, which he only achieves because he wants to earn more, is played against him by the buyer of labor: his exertions, intended to improve his individual reproduction, not only wear him out, but also press down the price of his labor. “Given the piece rate, it is of course in the personal interest of the worker to work as intensely as possible, which makes a rise of the normal degree of intensity easier for the capitalists.” (MEW 23/577) The increased availability of labor -- whether it is carried out now as an extension of work time or as increased output on the part of the wage laborer – has the same consequence, it causes just the opposite of what the wage laborer wants to attain. Everything that he must undertake in order to protect his reproduction as an individual who is dependent on the sale of labor is deflected against him by the effect of competition. Each appointment in the ratio between work effort and wage – such as falls due with technical changes -- links to the tendency “while raising individual wages above the average, to lower this average itself.” (Capital I, Ch. 21)
a)
The workers’ pains to sustain his existence by increasing his own labor effort can only lead to an increase in income if the effect isn’t thwarted by his competitors, who aim to do the same thing. Unlike the case with the "normal working day", it is not possible for the state to set a fixed standard for work effort beyond which a wage laborer can go in order to increase his income, without his competitors pulling him back down to an already attained level. Given the way that output is measured in a particular labor process, it isn’t possible to establish a universal measure of stress and wear on the worker The fact that the obligation that the worker enters into in a wage contract has the tendency to destroy his health is assumed in law when it states that work effort is to be regulated so that “the obligor is protected against danger to life and health insofar as the nature of the service permits it” (§618) -- at the same time, however, this is also its approval. The Federal Constitutional Court reflects the same statement of the case in the phrase: “Employers and work councils are to incorporate the technical expertise of ergonomics in organizing working conditions suitable for humans.” However, a regulation of the relationship of wages and work effort is not formulated in law -- legal regulations can indicate at best the minimum wages for a certain period, thus “fixing” the other side of the relationship so that the “growth of money’s purchasing power” is as high as can be regulated. The impossibility of detaching the relationship of wages to labor effort for a specific working process completely surrenders their fluctuations to the circumstances of competition.
To this extent, the reproduction of the worker is also dependent on him individually proving himself in the special performance requirements that a job places on him. If he is not up to the results of competition in an activity, another must be open to him: The state protects the right of labor mobility and ensures its realization: legislation protecting against unlawful dismissal and the relevant regulations in the Federal Constitutional Court.
The relationship of labor and reproduction, as one of means and ends, is represented in the compulsion to improve labor effort as the wage laborer’s own resolution; the labor, which the free, completely distinctive characteristic of the individual lets serve as a means of reproduction, negates this purpose by sending the wage laborer home as a used up, destroyed individual. Reproduction means what is designated by the word’s definition: the restoration of a used-up person. The worker who goes to work for the capitalist in order to get wages with which to access enjoyments and free activity executes exactly the opposite purpose. In his work he serves as a means, an object, a use that the buyer extracts out of him, and his spare time serves to ensure that he remains in this function. His need satisfaction depends on proving his ability to work -- he is labor power. He has to arrange his sleep, his meals, his enjoyments in such a way that they permit him to work. [7] The expenses for food, living room furniture and television demonstrate the vicious circle into which he is brought by the attempt to secure an area of free activity by wage labor. What culture critics deplore as the abstinence of the masses in intellectual pursuits and vulgar materialists attribute to manipulation has its reason in the determination of his private sphere by the social conditions into which he is forced by wage labor. The damage to his physical constitution forces him to “recover” the sustenance necessary for his job in an appropriately equipped residence. Efforts in intellectual areas do not regenerate him, but demand his energy in a way detrimental to his work; “advanced professional training” is the shabby remainder of his intellectual development, completely related to the sphere that the freedom of his individuality is made available for. Labor, which pushes back the “realm of necessity” as a social yardstick, does not create a “realm of freedom” for the wage laborer. The social form of labor is the reason that the fascists wrote over the concentration camp gates in Dachau: Work brings freedom!
b)
The demands of the labor process have their limits in the physical and psychological attributes of the wage laborer. In the reproduction sphere, the reaching of this limit of the individual makes itself known as illness, i.e. the compulsion to restore the operability of the body, and as a lack of education, i.e., the need for education. The state has to create conditions for the reproduction of the wage laborers by constructing a health service and the mechanism of educational institutions. The concern of the workers for both their health and for the requirements of competition in accordance with the appropriation of knowledge (which they must acquire before they enter working life) represent restrictions on the free activity of the individuals in their free time; under capitalistic conditions the achievements of civilization -- disease control and education -- are national duties opposite the individual: the wage laborer must insure himself, i.e. save for the natural occurrence of his disability, and his children must go to schools that he finances with his taxes, just like hospitals.
The education organized by the state reflects indifference to their goal of mobility out of certain kinds of work that contain not the universality of abilities in the positive sense, but the negative result of wage labor, that an occupation must be avoided out because of its unsuitability as a means for reproduction. Creation of upward mobility thus in no way means that everyone who can be is trained, but that they have not been fixed with a job when they compete in the schools for the degree.
Health and intelligence are for the wage laborer the crucial means for his ability to compete, their presence or absence appears to him as the reason for the success or failure of his reproduction, which depends on what he achieves. With the conception of the fair wage this consciousness accepts the hierarchy of labor, and ascent within this hierarchy as the way to a better life.
He demands from the state preferential treatment for sociopolitical programs, partly from the necessity for self-preservation (hospitals etc.), partly from the desire for more justice in the realization of equal opportunities. Instead of criticizing competition, he positions himself positively towards it, wants its perfection in that he relates the conditions of competition that the state prepares for him to his individual advantage and wants to improve it.
This siding with the needs of competition and their enforcement in relation to state barriers is, on the one hand, understood as democratization, and even held by others as socialism (the examples extend from the Gotha program to today's revisionism). Holding to justice, the ideal of competition, reveals its craziness as soon as – out of the negative effects of competition -- individuals want the state to commit to fairness because actual performance differences are based on the pros and cons of the individuals: in the fascist idiom of competition fanaticism the sick person deserves (!) his fate, critics who are unwilling to strive deserve isolation and suppression, and the state does its duty when it promotes the healthy and efficient, eliminating decadence…
The agreement between revisionism and fascism consists of the fact that they make the state responsible for effects that they consider unfair, and expect remedies from its actions. Revisionists are under the illusion that, because the state creates the conditions for competition by redressing its shortcomings, equality is an ideal to be realized, not a compulsion. Fascists demand that the state not protect the results settled by competition, that it not only recognize the differences of individuals and their social influence, but make them the positive principle of its actions, favoring the strong.
Whichever variant of the violent maintenance of competition is decisive for the consciousness of the worker is taken up without much trouble by the supporters of the political parties: they are the wrong consciousness of the citizen raised to a state program.
The effort of the wage laborer to secure his living costs by selling his labor proves not to agree with this purpose. The measurement of his labor effort, which he is interested in because of his reproduction, is a means to his destruction – wage labor is therefore an affair whose immanent purpose does not coincide with the intention of those who perform it. Its reason has yet to be determined, the relation of wages and output demands the continuation of analysis up to the point at which its positive purpose shows up included in the prevention of the reproduction of the wage laborer. At the same time we are clear from the start about the result of this analysis on account of our knowledge of Capital, but we know that this result has to follow here, as in agitation, from the examination of wage labor -- as with Marx the reason for the insane form of a “price of labor” is presupposed for the derivation. The question that the negative result of our analysis of wage labor pushes us towards thus reads: what purpose underlies wage labor, the different forms for measuring the relationship of wages and labor performance?
Already the simplest form of performance measurement, the time wage, permits an answer by two strange phenomena:
A) The attempt of the workers to obtain more wages by an increase of their exertions, i.e. by lengthening their working day, does not pass above the effect of competition to the desired result. The formerly valid hourly rate proves to be a ratio that is variable to his disadvantage, and this effect can also be produced indirectly by the price movements of the commodities that he buys himself from his wages.
B) There are different wage brackets side by side, i.e. not each working hour is paid the same amount of money. With help from the manufacturing process one has a scale from the work unit groups set up, which vary as a result of the hourly wages corresponding to the exigencies that a worker fulfills. Such exigencies are, according to the REFA pattern [Reichsausschuß für Arbeitsstudien, Germany's oldest and largest organization of industrial engineering and work design; similar to scientific management, it “aims at increasing performance through process organization and work improvement” --trans.] :
I. Skill
A. predominantly non-muscle (training, experience)
B. predominantly muscle (manual skill)
II. Responsibility - for personal and material damages, namely regarding capital assets and products of the work routine/the work of others - and the safety of others
III. Work load
A. predominantly non-muscle
B. predominantly muscle
IV. Environmental influences:
Temperature, wetness, dirt, optical and acoustical stress, vibrations, acids, caustic solutions, gases.
In the effects of competition the worker discovers that the relation between wages and work effort is a relative one, depending on conditions that have nothing to do with his effort. The need of the buyer of his work determines how much he receives for one hour of work; he may perform the same amount of work year in and year out and nevertheless, due to changing conditions on the side of the buyer that he cannot influence, be remunerated differently. And if, in view of the danger of not being asked for any longer at all, he adapts himself to these conditions of the other side, then this happens at his expense. The argument of the employers is their calculation, and in it the worker figures as a cost factor that is purchased only if it is worthwhile for them. His service is not in the usefulness of his work product, but in the profit that the buyer of his labor extracts from it. Whether and how well he can reproduce himself with his wage labor is thus subject to a completely different criteria than his labor performance, and its measurement in wages, in its subjecting under this criterion, becomes the constant cover for the fact that the equation wages x effort is a fiction.
If the criteria of his effort as a function of earnings changes, then it is also no longer a mystery why this fiction exists: the measure of the ratio work effort = money regulates the remuneration of the worker in such a way that his effort helps the entrepreneur profit. The fact that the worker performs more for capital than he costs is the condition for him earning his living costs; and in the fluctuations of his pay he discovers that his attempt to satisfy these conditions by increasing his labor effort is answered with the lower evaluation of these efforts.
It is the same when successively differing hourly wages are not determined in parallel. If, on the one hand, the work is remunerated according to its length of time, and on the other hand, each hour of work is not paid the equivalent money, then there are several different criteria. In the different evaluations of the working hour, which last 60 minutes for everybody, the time wage reveals itself as a way of subsuming the special abilities and services of the industrial worker under the needs of the buyer. The worker finds in the division of labor organized production process certain activities as objective, usually fixed for trades to which they adjust themselves by education processes and vocational training periods. Once prepared for such an activity, their wage size already differs from that of other workers who are no less necessary for the functioning of the production process, provided that the applicable qualification is needed. If this is the case, no consideration of “skill” is taken and he commits himself to an activity in order to get a wage that his qualification is indifferent towards. Certainly, this possibility is open to all of them, by subjecting their character under the requirements of the workplace to ensure for the gain of the company by observing the effort of the other workers (= supervisor) or recklessness towards their health. The fact that “responsibility” ranks as a criterion of job evaluation reminds the wage laborer of the fact that the specific quality of his work lies solely in achieving the goal that capital pursues with the production process and has nothing to do with his individual skill -- turned around, the special achievement of the wage laborer exists in his adaptation, independent of any predetermined requirements. And that these requirements are detrimental to his wellbeing even if many of these mean the conditions for work which he may enforce against other workers and get paid for in return, he can see in the criteria “work load” and “environmental influences”. They make themselves wage-efficient and useful, always including both: comparing themselves to other workers, i.e. competing and accepting the degradation of their own situation as a consequence of each relative improvement. They all position themselves in relation to the normal performance which nobody among them decided.
Things are even more clear with the piece wage or piece-rate, where the wages of the worker are computed according to the number of production units supplied by him, for which a certain money rate is fixed (with time piecework a production time is given for a production unit and is repaid with a standard piece work rate):
A) A certain standard time supposes what is called a “normal performance”; this leads the workers who strain to raise their earnings by increasing their work effort, at the same time as a constant demand for work, to lower the demand for manpower. Competition in the production process causes a decrease of the normal time, and an increase of the normal performance.
b) The piece wage is differently demanding for the same production unit, the average performance differs in the production terms that he discovers. Instead of a measurement of his performance by its result an evaluation of his workplace takes place.
On its own, the appointment of a standard time refers to two quantities, which reveal that performance-incentive wages have a lot to do indeed with the performance of the worker, but little to do with a performance-determined remuneration. First of all, a wage level is assumed as normal earnings for the calculated money rate per unit (and/or the money factor per minute), which one accepts in the form of time wages, in order to divide it by the number of pieces produced. Secondly, the division presupposes an intensity in the observed work processes which is considered the standard capacity and is defined in a general wage agreement contract in pleasing clarity: “Standard capacity” is the performance that can be reached from each suitable employee after training and practice, at least without endangering their health and ability to work. Incidentally, whatever principles of labor study at the time are current shall apply for the determination of the normal performance. If preservation of health and ability to work signifies the limit for the appointment of the normal performance, surpassing this endangers the worker’s health and ability to work; on the other hand, the accelerating of competition, which he causes for the other workers (and in reverse), drives up the normal performance, forcing them to this endangerment. Thus incentive pay already manifests the purpose of wage labor in a more adequate form of payment than the time wage: the worker must be interested in turning his self-preservation into the means of an ever-growing effort. Only if he is sufficient in his efforts for the ever-extended requirements of the buyer is he able to receive his normal earnings – and he is still not able to secure his reproduction.
Of course, the fact that the appointment of the piece wage is decided by the degree of his effort in such a way that he has to perform as much work as possible for his living costs does not escape the worker, which is why he does not exhibit his optimum abilities to the regularly visiting REFA people (and he does not speak well of those who break the piece rate). This again does not escape the men with the stopwatch, which pushes them to find “objective” methods of job evaluation. The really existing worker is not observed and measured, but the material of analysis is formed by the observation of the work process; its dismemberment into abstract elements for an analytic job evaluation voids the problems of the individually evaluated worker. Activity times are assigned by the individual patterns of motion, supplemented by distribution and recovery times, in order to arrive at a standard performance time. In such a way, all potential interruptions are at the expense of the wage laborer, who for his part has the opportunity to prove that a human is not a machine just because he is treated like one. Since the proof draws its damage, he still tries nevertheless to be one and makes the limits of human effort clear to his buyer, touching the same to compassion.
If the goal of wage labor lies in demanding more from the worker for his reproduction than is good for the preservation of his ability to work, his payment is also not there to obtain it. He just ranks as a cost factor in a company which depends not on producing so many goods, but on the economical production of the same; thus it is also no wonder if the relief of his labor by changes in machinery -- which permits the output of a larger number of items per time – is accompanied by a new evaluation of his job: the study of ergonomics reveals his efficiency when he takes breaks from the working processes on occasion, making his earnings more difficult for the worker. The recipient of piece wages manufactures more product units in the same amount of time as before the technical innovation, but by no means are more wages received correspondingly. On the contrary, the evaluation of his job brings to light that fewer sequences of motion are necessary than before for the supply of the unit concerned, so the remuneration per piece has to sink. And even when the re-determined normal performance brings the same wages as before, the necessary increase over the normal performance now becomes more difficult – while for the other side the effort has become cheaper.
The goal of wage labor -- to hold the costs of the worker as low as possible, but to steadily increase his effort for the benefit of the buyer -- attains in group piece work the obsessive form of a collective interest, so that in the common work process the individual worker requires not only his individual benefit to intensify his performance. Their co-operation is in the process the gain of the buyer and this is entirely secondary to what expresses itself not as ordinary competition but as direct hostility against inefficient and/or effort-willing “colleagues”.
While the piece wage does not take into further consideration the characteristic of the work that is performed (it is always assumed with it that the wage laborer controls his handicraft and supplies the article so that he is useful – if it is not the case, the wage sinks (deductions)), knowing only differences in the intensity of the expenditure of the workforce, the premium wage seems to compensate the special skills of the worker. He receives
1. Goods premiums – by reduction of defects, reduction of the refinishing operations of portions of inferior qualities
2. Material yield premiums - for higher yields of valuable raw- and working-materials, for which one devises oneself extra premium capable “exploitation stuff,” produces a scale from them and specifies proportional premiums
3. Use premiums - for good utilization of machines
4. Savings bonuses - for saving on help and operating supplies, manufacturing material, lowering energy costs, lowering costs for the care and maintenance of the fixed assets
5. Date premiums - in case of hasty orders, by new preparation of models and tools.
In REFA the compensated efforts are here called “qualitative labor efforts,” also nearly conceived as “intelligence- and character-efforts,” and become rightly contrasted to the ordinary efforts; while in the piece wage the compulsion imposed on the wage laborer is solely on the intensity of his labor, here wages are promised for thoughtfulness towards the expenses of the buyer. The premium wage requires from the worker that he worries about that which he will give up for the sake of his reproduction in the incentive wage, that he does not drive the intensity too far – and certainly his health is not the source of doubt. The premium wage revokes the negative effects of performance wages on the benefit of the buyers and positions its criticism towards the indifference of the workers to the costs of the company.
Because of the tendencies included in wage labor that make the reproduction of the wage laborers impossible, they are thus forced to set themselves in resistance against the reversal of their means. “The laborer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labor, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labor. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class.” (Marx, Wage Labor and Capital) The adherence to wage labor as a means for reproduction occurs as a modification of degree in the relation between money and work effort, which the wage laborer forces upon the buyer of the work: Labor struggles.
The buyers of labor, who on their side are dependent on the wage laborers for the labor they need done, can procure an income of the sellers of labor that has been made without pressure on the determination of the price of labor, because the competition between the wage laborers, who on the other side are dependent on selling, makes it unconscious. In order to improve the relationship of work effort and wages, the wage laborers must unite and make the determination of the price of work the subject of negotiation with the capitalists, ones generally accepted according to their interests: unions. These “presuppose the insight that the rule of the bourgeoisie is based only on the competition of the workers under itself, i.e. on splintering the proletariat, on opposing the individual workers against each other” (MEW 2/436). In the union the workers draw the conclusion from the contradiction that they experience from the sale of their labor: the form of common action reflects the identity of all wage laborers, their sense of unity as a class; moreover it expresses that the peaceful relationship of buyers and sellers on the market includes a conflict based on the object that is transacted there, which it is a matter of expediting.
Within the purpose of the union -- the revaluation of the price of labor (which extends from appointing new minimum hourly wages to industrial safety regulations), thus the reversal of the restrictions lead to by the wage relation itself -- also lies the contradiction of the trade unions: they are unions directly based on the continuation of wage labor and they suspend the accompanying competition only to modify the terms and conditions of the equation of money and work effort. While in a strike an interruption of wage labor takes place in order to take it up again under new conditions, the labor union as a combination of workers steps next to the competition taking place. The contradiction that the temporary suspension of the wage relation occurs only for the sake of its perpetuation, and the restrictions of the reproduction by wage labor again produces the reason for labor struggles, has its continuous form in the simultaneous existence of competition and coalition. Labor unions, as permanent combinations that not only develop into unions selectively from circumstantial reasons in a struggle, are the institutionalization of labor struggles, a condition for maintaining reproduction by wage labor. They steadily emerged as representatives of the workers in relation to the interest of the capitalists in collective bargaining. For the entrepreneurs, their existence represents the continuous threat that wage labor will be interrupted if they do not deal with the demands of the labor unions. As this objective threat is the organ of the wage laborers for stabilizing their position towards the buyers of labor, its pressure does not depend any longer on the success of the union under the respective conditions. These make themselves effective though in the relation of the workers to their representatives, the varying demands of the individual wage laborers with regard to the new fixing of the price of labor forming the subject of internal-union debates. These are marked by the contradiction that the results of the negotiations must be generally accepted and not deviate from the interests of the workers because of the concurrent competition and their immanent differences with each other; what in the differences in willingness to fight during the realization of the threatened labor struggle as a strike attains the expression: competition stands against unity.
In the coexistence of competition and coalition lies the reason for the differences between the “union leadership” and the “rank and file”, which leftists usually explain as the corruption of the “bosses” who are distant from the production process, whenever the goals achieved are not sufficient for the demands of some workers. [8]
a)
As a condition for reproducing the wage laborers, the union is a right guaranteed by the state. In the Basic Law, Section 9, par.3 it says: “The right to form associations to safeguard and improve working and economic conditions shall be guaranteed to every individual and to every occupation or profession.” The objectives of the union fight, however, also have their limits in the goals of the state, which protects the general conditions of competition. This is why the freedom of association belongs to the fundamental rights; these are specifically forfeited in article 18 of the constitution, when the fight against the free democratic basic order is abused. Labor struggles in which right stands against right thus run up against state violence as soon as its effects endanger politico-economic goals: Restrictions on the right of association.
The shortcoming of the trade unions -- suspending competition only to continue the wage relation beside it -- shows up in the reproduction of the wage laborers as temporal and financial expenses for the functionality of these organizations. The defensive fight that serves to preserve their reproduction is again a restriction on their private sphere. To maintain wages, they must want to support the union in permanence. The conflict between their private interests and the need for membership in a union is reflected in the existence of the nominal membership on one side and officials on the other. The usefulness of the trade union for the individual worker, its objective purpose, is the reason for the comparison of the dues that the individual pays with what he gets from it thereby. In order to protect his interests, he sacrifices part of his reproduction as the price for services.
b)
The trade union is active not only in fixing the price of labor, but also regarding compensation for those shortages within the sphere of reproduction that follow from wage labor. It appears not only to act as an official contact with the capitalists, but also represents the interests of their members in relation to the state as a pressure group: the content of this activity is all those demands on the state that arise from the right to reproduction by means of wage labor and from the obstacles to the same (in each point see sections b). Therefore the program of the trade unions refers their demands to national social and economic policies that assume the state -- like it is different -- as the addressee for reform suggestions and accept its entire field of activity, including the binding character of all of its measures. Insofar as the trade unions represent working class interests, their claims collide with the state, which thinks to also fulfill this duty without taking into consideration the benefit of the workers. It tries to make clear to the trade unions the indirect benefits of its measures for the workers as well and points to the limits of their demands in the public interest. The fact that the trade unions are continually addressed for legitimization and a term of abuse on the part of the state agents comes from the dependence of the parties on the large number of those represented by the trade unions. In reverse, the influence of the trade unions on public discussions is based on this. The congruence of reformism and revisionism, which those of the former feel ashamed of, has its reason in a principle of revisionist politics, which is consistently interested in representation in the state and democratization.
The fact that union activities in regard to the state, like all other pressure groups, have their barrier in the objective necessities of the state becomes clear in the question of the political strike, which some radical democrats and revisionists would like to see codified. By means of a work stoppage becoming a political strike, a certain activity is searched for that impedes or constrains the state, which becomes equal to the assertion of a particular interest against via the state power and stands for the task of the state sovereign.
The fact that the union leadership takes the state’s point of view to legitimize compromises in the area of wage negotiations and makes allowances for the effects of the collective wage agreement on the total economic growth has its reason in the fact that the trade union is loyal and, if they do not encounter resistance within their organization, then this only means that the working class also takes the state’s point of view. This loyalty of the trade union is the condition for its continued existence as a democratic institution and the logical consequence of the contradiction that the union perpetuates what it fights against.
The necessity for combining into a trade union to preserve the wage laborer is expressed in the consciousness that the well being of the workers depends on their unity. This specifically trade-union consciousness directs hostility not only towards those who stick to their special interests during negotiations and strikes and want more than the majority, but especially against communists, who in their demands and slogans go beyond the immediate goal of the fight and split the (imaginary) unity: trade union activities make contradictory decisions and see in the addressee the state the means for the advance of the individual. Trade unionists become unity fanatics and democrats of the most disgusting coinage, they even welcome the sacrifices of the workers as their benefit because it is a means to unity and the preservation of democracy.
It is the same position of the trade union, in addition, which leads to hostility to the trade union among the workers: they make the unsuitability of union success for their individual reproduction (also their redundancy) the argument for not joining the union, and find its evidence in the effects of strikes on the workplace situation. They are partisans for a well-organized competition and see in the trade unions enemies (from outside) of the common weal, because a constant endangerment of normal conditions proceeds from them, whereby the trade union left supplies the proof. They demand that the state act against the trade union: the fascist worker’s consciousness connects also with this continuous form of contradiction between wage labor and capital at the negative consequences for the individual and holds the state as the authority that can create order and justice. [9]
In their unions the workers fight for their preservation without attacking the wage relation, the reason for their endangered reproduction. Trade-union consciousness is necessarily false consciousness; it is directed against the negative effects of wage labor without wanting to abolish wage labor. It aims at protecting the workers’ existence within conditions that constantly bring it into question. Hence, the emphasis on the need for working class coalitions that is found in Marx is therefore only a conditional praise of the workers who unite for wage struggles -- in Marx’s time it signified an advance of the working class when it discovered in the union a means to repel the attacks of capital. For all his acknowledgment and enthusiasm for this insight by the workers into their living conditions, he saw himself compelled to make the following warning:
“At the same time, and quite apart form the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’” (1865: Value, Price and Profit)
Today the conservative slogan of these organizations, which represent the interests of the workers without fighting the conditions that force the workers to fight, looks quite different. It is not just that the wage struggle is led with the illusion that a fair wage would solve the problems that the wage relation prepares for the workers – it no longer takes place! In its place stepped collective bargaining, a form of struggle that argues with the objection that the union, corresponding to the interests of the workers, asserts its influence by accommodating itself to the terms under which it is acknowledged. And the first of four principles of this collective bargaining policy strives for being permitted:
“l. Maintenance of collective bargaining autonomy. The trade unions can observe their responsibilities in the economy and society only if collective bargaining autonomy is ensured in its entirety.”
The mystery as to what "responsibility" the interest organization of the workers would like to observe is clarified in the second principle of the collective bargaining policy, even becomes active:
“2. Continuation of an active pay scale policy. The trade unions by concluding collective agreements work for the protection and improvement of the economic and social situation of the workers. The collective bargain policy should contribute to securing, among other things, full employment and constant economic growth, a fair income and property distribution and promote price stability.”
Whereas Marx criticized the unions for adopting the ideal of bourgeois haggling we must observe that the contemporary trade unions, in order to get around to practicing this ideal -- they justify the representation of the workers interests with the prosperity of the nation. They promise to pursue the concerns of a class under consideration for their opponents -- and find in the refusal of their concerns and proposals on the part of the state a cover for saying that they have not yet stopped fighting. A social and economic policy in favor of the employees contradicts capitalism, even when such unjustified demands on the state are calculated as a philanthropic arrangement and strive to adapt the unfortunately still essential wage conflict to the requirements of the economy.
The modern trade union now tries to rid itself of the suspicion of wanting old-fashioned class warfare by advocating for the workers only as citizens (a role that the proles have so far not rebuked), i.e. it takes a constructive position to all the tasks of the state:
“Our time requires, first of all, the democratic organization of social, cultural, political and (!) economic life, so that every person can use their gifts, develop their personality freely and decide responsibly.”
Certainly, all democrats could agree with such sayings, but they become careful. The Federation of German Trade Unions has taken the state’s point of view, but over and over again it tries to use this point of view one-sidedly. It pursues not only wage policy, but also economic policy:
“According to union ideas the present income and wealth distribution is unfair. There is a pressing need for all strata to participate in the creation of national wealth… The most important condition for a broader diversification of assets will be a higher proportion for workers in the national income, the elimination of tax privileges for high incomes and the special promotion of distribution of assets among the lower and middle income brackets … preservation of currency stability… fight against economic concentration … for democracy in the economy… There is a risk of an abuse of economic power…”
Here it is a matter of exerting influence on the guardian of justice, the state, which under the rubric of social politics marks out the following:
“The personality of the employee and his human dignity are also to be respected on the job. The worker may not be evaluated as a commodity. The work of one individual is also a personal achievement for the society.”
The radicalism of this struggle is shocking. It is also conducted in the field of “regional, infrastructural policy, urban planning and housing policy,” revolves around co-determination and needs an organizing of the union members, the young in particular. Our friend finds himself ready again and again to promote with his sociological fantasy this organizing of the worker into a democrat.
In these flourishes of union educational work this person wants to cultivate the ability to go “from one view to another … from the political to the psychological, from the investigation of an individual family to the evaluation of the national budget and to recognize structural connections between individual life histories, direct interests, desires, hopes and historical events.”
Thus a critical academic introduces the standpoint of sociology into worker education and one leaves him alone, even if he sometimes mentions the humanist Marx -- his sociological fantasy nevertheless brings such problems to light, as when blabs to the trade union youth:“Is the capitalistic enterprise actually rationally planned and organized in view to its actual purposes?”
Despite everything: our derivative of the trade unions is correct. The affirmative representation of the workers interests in developed capitalism must go hand in hand with their representation in the state -- although the task of protecting their interests does not have to.
Footnotes
[1] The purpose that the wage laborer pursues with the sale of his labor, reproduction, falls completely within the distinctiveness of his needs and interests -- that there are differences here is thus assumed.
[2] For him the purchase of labor is likewise a means to obtain an income, which is provided through the sale of the work products.
[3] This statement does not require the “derivation" of a limitlessness of needs or something like that. It concerns the relationship of the size of the wages and the objects of need that are bought with the wages, and is not disproved by the “case” that one is content. In addition, it can be noted that it is a contradiction to describe individuality as the purpose of wage labor and to assume a restriction of needs in the presence of an “enormous collection of commodities.”
[4] The development of the specifically economic content of the wage contract, which is the subject here, will show that instead of expressing a common interest of both sides, it represents a pure conflict and must burst the legal form of the identity of two wills. The collisions immanent to the employer-employee wage relation are regulated in labor law as codified in the constitution, as well as the civil code in general.
[5] Necessarily false consciousness of the contradictions of his existence is here given with wage labor to the extent that he is forced in practice to reflect on the social conditions as his means of reproduction.
[6] A variant of the increased sale of labor is the use of family members, who belong at first exclusively to the sphere of reproduction of wage labor in their activity, as wage laborers. While in the phase of the later imposition of capitalism normal child labor disappears as against the necessities of the capital relation, the woman is emancipated from the narrow-minded existence of a reproductive assistant to the man and even as a free wage-laborer; the contradiction of the employer-employee wage relation demands the dissolution of the domestic idyll, which was solely based on tasks dedicated to the individual in his specificity by members of the community.
[7] Leave of absence as a temporary interruption in the wage relation; foregoing earnings is the reaction to the experience that one no longer delivers the goods.
[8] The restriction on union actions by the state and the bourgeois attitude of the working class are another reason, also apart from the moral qualities of the bosses, for the willingness of the unions to compromise, which makes extra-union actions -- wildcat strikes – sometimes seem advisable to the workers.
[9] It goes without saying that the historical development of the labor unions, like the laws of competition for wage labor in general, shows the laws developed here in a different order. Thus the rights necessary for the workers that are derived in sections a) and b) could only be forced by collective action, thus by associations. These fights were thus one moment in the enforcement of the democratic state and have not waited for the contradictions in 1.1 to 3.2 to present themselves as they are represented here. However, we also describe not what happened when, but explain which contradictions are constitutive of the wage relation -- with which also the historical development is brought to its concept. Or more simply: the laws of this paper are those of wage labor, represented in their connections, not a re-narration of what the wage laborers or the working class has done after all.