Lurker > WingsOfGood

The establishment of a normal working-day is the result of centuries of struggle between capitalist and labourer.

The history of this struggle shows two opposed tendencies. Compare, e.g., the English factory legislation of our time with the English labour Statutes from the 14th century to well into the middle of the 18th. [83] Whilst the modern Factory Acts compulsorily shortened the working-day, the earlier statutes tried to lengthen it by compulsion.

Of course the pretensions of capital in embryo when, beginning to grow, it secures the right of absorbing a quantum sufficit[sufficient quantity] of surplus-labour, not merely by the force of economic relations, but by the help of the State appear very modest when put face to face with the concessions that, growling and struggling, it has to make in its adult condition.

It takes centuries ere the free labourer, thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees, i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his active life, his very capacity for work, for the price of the necessaries of life, his birth-right for a mess of pottage.

Hence it is natural that the lengthening of the working-day, which capital, from the middle of the 14th to the end of the 17th century, tries to impose by State-measures on adult labourers, approximately coincides with the shortening of the working-day which, in the second half of the 19th century, has here and there been effected by the State to prevent the coining of childrens blood into capital.

That which to-day, e.g., in the State of Massachusetts, until recently the freest State of the North-American Republic, has been proclaimed as the statutory limit of the labour of children under 12, was in England, even in the middle of the 17th century, the normal working-day of able-bodied artisans, robust labourers, athletic blacksmiths. [84]

You know what happens to me if I steal 9 million dollars from my employer? I go to jail.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm

there's way too much text on the page to be reasonably posted to gamefaqs

What is a working-day? What is the length of time during which capital may consume the labour-power whose daily value it buys? How far may the working-day be extended beyond the working-time necessary for the reproduction of labour-power itself? It has been seen that to these questions capital replies: the working-day contains the full 24 hours, with the deduction of the few hours of repose without which labour-power absolutely refuses its services again. Hence it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labour-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!) [72] moonshine!

But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, 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 process of production itself, so that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery.

It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working-day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers period of repose.

Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourers life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.

there's a whole chapter of Marx's Capital, with like 7 or 8 different parts, that talks about the history of the "working day" at length

Surprise Mechanics
Surprise Transfers
Surprise Keeping

Either WingsOfGood has a subscription to WSJ and read the whole thing (the plot thickens!), or he only read the first 2 paragraphs that are available to a non-subscriber and thinks the article as a whole supports his worldview.

So it's the latter case, lol.

Lol

These landowners are idle, and I might, therefore, be expected to praise them.

Unfortunately, their idleness is rendered possible only by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work.

The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example.

ow, that hurt real bad

So the hotel kept the tips for themselves and not give it to their employees?

Paywall

Thanks a lot, Biden.

FDIC gonna get a workout

So if they don't catch them then it doesn't work?

Gtfo. They also wouldn't have done s***

lol ok

Spoken like someone who doesn't deal with criminals in their daily life. Must be nice.

You would defend this barbaric practice wouldn't you?

Why do they even have so much power, who thought that was a good idea

I hate the contact with a total stranger. Saying "bless you" is just invasive to me.

It's just another stupid superstitious thing people do then pretend it makes sense.