Machinery: Division of labour. 

Labour is simplified. Its cost of production is reduced. It becomes 
cheaper. The competition among the workers increases. 

Passing from one industry to another. On this see Dr. Bowring 
himself in relation to the hand-loom cotton weavers in the region of 
Dacca in India, in Parliament 1835. 

The new work into which the worker is flung, is worse than the 
former, more subordinate. Adult labour replaced by children’s, 
men’s by women’s, more skilled by less skilled. 

Either working hours increased or wages reduced. 

Competition among workers not only in that one sells himself 
more cheaply than another, but also in that one does the work of two. 

In general, the growth of the productive forces has the following 
consequences: 

a) The position of the worker relative to that of the capitalist 
worsens, and the value of the things enjoyed is relative. The 
enjoyments themselves are indeed nothing but social enjoyments, 
relations, connections. 

b) The worker becomes an increasingly one-sided productive 
force which produces as much as possible in as little time as possible. 
Skilled labour increasingly transformed into simple labour. 

c) Wages become more and more dependent on the world market 
and the position of the worker increasingly subject to chance. 

d) In productive capital the share of machinery and raw materials 
grows much faster than that of approvistonnement. The increase of 
productive capital is therefore not accompanied by a similar increase 
of the demand for labour. 


2 See this volume, pp. 428-34.— Ed. 


Wages 423 


Wages depend: 

a) on the mass of productive capital as a whole; 

E on the proportion of its constituents. 

he worker has no influence on either. 

(Were it not for the fluctuations of wages, the worker would take 
no interest at all in the development of civilisation; he would remain 
stationary.) 

In the competition of the workers with the machine it is to be 
noted that handworkers (e.g., hand-loom cotton weavers) suffer 
even more than machine workers directly employed in the factory. 

Every development of new productive forces is at the same time a 
weapon against the workers. All improvements in the means of 
communication, for example, facilitate the competition of workers in 
different localities and turn local competition into national, etc. 

The cheapening of all commodities, which however does not occur 
in the case of the most immediate means of subsistence, has as a 
result that the worker wears a collection of rags and his misery 
displays the colours of civilisation.