Friedrich Engels 
A Fair Day's Wages for a Fair Day's Work 


The Labour Standard. 
Nr. 1, 7. Mai 1881 


A Fair Day's Wages for a Fair Day's Work. 


This has now been the motto of the English working-class movement for the 
last fifty years. It did good service in the time of the rising Trades Unions 
after the repeal of the infamous Combination Laws in 1824; it did still better 
service in the time of the glorious Chartist movement, when the English 
workmen marched at the head of the European working class. But times are 
moving on, and a good many things which were desirable and necessary fifty, 
and even thirty years ago, are now antiquated and would be completely out 
of place. Does the old, time-honoured watchword too belong to them? 

A fair day's wages for a fair day's work? But what is a fair day's wages, 
and what is a fair day's work? How are they determined by the laws under 
which modern society exists and develops itself? For an answer to this we 
must not apply to the science of morals or of law and equity, nor to any 
sentimental feeling of humanity, justice, or even charity. What is morally 
fair, what is even fair in law, may be far from being socially fair. Social 
fairness or unfairness is decided by one science alone—the science which 
deals with the material facts of production and exchange, the science of 
political economy. 

Now what does political economy call a fair day's wages and a fair day's 
work. Simply the rate of wages and the length and intensity of a day's work 
which are determined by competition of employer and employed in the open 
market. And what are they, when thus determined? 

A fair day's wages, under normal conditions, is the sum required to procure 
to the labourer the means of existence necessary, according to the standard 
of life of his station and country, to keep himself in working order and to 
propagate his race. The actual rate of wages, with the fluctuations of trade, 
may be sometimes above, sometimes below this rate; but, under fair con- 
ditions, that rate ought to be the average of all oscillations. 

A fair day's work is that length of working day and that intensity of actual 


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The Labour Standard. London. Nr. 1, 7. Mai 1881. Titelseite. 


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A Fair Day's Wages for a Fair Day's Work 


work which expends one day's full working power of the workman without 
encroaching upon his capacity for the same amount of work for the next and 
following days. 

The transaction, then, may be thus described—the workman gives to the 
Capitalist his full day's working power; that is, so much of it as he can give 
without rendering impossible the continuous repetition of the transaction. 
In exchange he receives just as much, and no more, of the necessaries of 
life as is required to keep up the repetition of the same bargain every day. 
The workman gives as much, the capitalist gives as little, as the nature of 
the bargain will admit. This is a very peculiar sort of fairness. 

But let us look a little deeper into the matter. As, according to political 
economists, wages and working days are fixed by competition, fairness 
seems to require that both sides should have the same fair start on equal 
terms. But that is not the case. The Capitalist, if he cannot agree with the 
Labourer, can afford to wait, and live upon his capital. The workman cannot. 
He has but wages to live upon, and must therefore take work when, where, 
and at what terms he can get it. The workman has no fair start. He is fear- 
fully handicapped by hunger. Yet, according to the political economy of 
the Capitalist class, that is the very pink of fairness. 

But this is a mere trifle. The application of mechanical power and machin- 
ery to new trades, and the extension and improvements of machinery in 
trades already subjected to it, keep turning out of work more and more 
"hands;" and they do so at a far quicker rate than that at which these super- 
seded "hands" can be absorbed by, and find employment in, the manufac- 
tures of the country. These superseded "hands" form a real industrial army 
of reserve for the use of Capital. If trade is bad they may starve, beg, steal, 
or go to the workhouse; if trade is good they are ready at hand to expand 
production; and until the very last man, woman, or child of this army of 
reserve shall have found work—which happens in times of frantic over- 
production alone—until then will its competition keep down wages, and by 
its existence alone strengthen the power of Capital in its struggle with 
Labour. In the race with Capital, Labour is not only handicapped, it has to 
drag a cannon-ball riveted to its foot. Yet that is fair according to Capitalist 
political economy. 

But let us inquire out of what fund does Capital pay these very fair wages? 
Out of capital, of course. But capital produces no value. Labour is, besides 
the earth, the only source of wealth; capital itself is nothing butthe stored-up 
produce of labour. So that the wages of Labour are paid out of labour, and 
the working man is paid out of his own produce. According to whatwe may 
call common fairness, the wages of the labourer ought to consist in the 
produce of his labour. But that would not be fair according to political 


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economy. On the contrary, the produce of the workman's labour goes to the 
Capitalist, and the workman gets out of it no more than the bare necessaries 
of life. And thus the end of this uncommonly "fair" race of competition is 
that the produce of the labour of those who do work, gets unavoidably 
accumulated in the hands of those that do not work, and becomes in their 
hands the most powerful means to enslave the very men who produced it. 

A fair day's wages for a fair day's work! A good deal might be said about 
the fair day's work too, the fairness of which is perfectly on a par with that 
of the wages. But that we must leave for another occasion. From what has 
been stated it is pretty clear that the old watchword has lived its day, and 
will hardly hold water nowadays. The fairness of political economy, such 
as it truly lays down the laws which rule actual society, that fairness is all 
on one side—on that of Capital. Let, then, the old motto be buried for ever 
and replaced by another: 

Possession of the means of work—raw material, factories, 


machinery—by the working people themselves. 


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Friedrich Engels 
The Wages System 


The Labour Standard. 
Nr.3, 21.Mai 1881 


The Wages System. 


In a previous article we examined the time-honoured motto, "A fair day's 
wages for a fair day's work," and came to the conclusion that the fairest day's 
wages under present social conditions is necessarily tantamountto the very 
unfairest division of the workman's produce, the greater portion of that 
produce going into the capitalist's pocket, and the workman having to put 
up with just as much as will enable him to keep himself in working order 
and to propagate his race. 

This is a law of political economy, or, in other words, a law of the present 
economical organisation of society, which is more powerful than all the 
Common and Statute Law of England put together, the Court of Chancery 
included. While society is divided into two opposing classes—on the one 
hand, the capitalists, monopolisers of the whole of the means of production, 
land, raw materials, machinery; onthe other hand, labourers, working people 
deprived of all property in the means of production, owners of nothing but 
their own working power; while this social organisation exists the law of 
wages will remain all-powerful, and will every day afresh rivet the chains 
by which the working man is made the slave of his own produce—monopo- 
lised by the capitalist. 

The Trades Unions of this country have now for nearly sixty years fought 
against this law—with what result? Have they succeeded in freeing the 
working class from the bondage in which capital—the produce of its own 
hands—holds it? Have they enabled a single section of the working class to 


rise above the situation of wages-slaves, to become owners of their own 


25 means of pf oduction, of the raw materials, tools, machinery required in their 


trade, and thus to become the owners of the produce of their own labour? 
It is well known that not only they have not done so, but that they never 
tried. 


Far be it from us to say that Trades Unions are of no use because they 


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have not done that. On the contrary, Trades Unions in England, as well as 
in every other manufacturing country, are a necessity for the working classes 
in their struggle against capital. The average rate of wages is equal to the 
sum of necessaries sufficient to keep up the race of workmen in a certain 
country according to the standard of life habitual inthatcountry. That stand- 
ard of life may be very different for different classes of workmen. The great 
merit of Trades Unions, in their struggle to keep up the rate of wages and 
to reduce working hours, is thatthey tendto keep up and to raise the standard 
of life. There are many trades in the East-end of London whose labour is 
not more skilled and quite as hard as that of bricklayers and bricklayers' 
labourers, yet they hardly earn half the wages of these. Why? Simply because 
a powerful organisation enables the one set to maintain a comparatively high 
standard of life as the rule by which their wages are measured; while the other 
set, disorganised and powerless, have to submit not only to unavoidable but 
also to arbitrary encroachments of their employers: their standard of life is 
gradually reduced, they learn how to live on less and less wages, and their 
wages naturally fall to that level which they themselves have learnt to accept 
as sufficient. 

The law of wages, then, is not one which draws a hard and fast line. It is 
not inexorable with certain Umits. There is at every time (great depression 
excepted) for every trade a certain latitude within which the rate of wages 
may be modified by the results of the struggle between the two contending 
parties. Wages in every case are fixed by a bargain, and in a bargain he who 
resists longest and best has the greatest chance of getting more than his due. 
If the isolated workman tries to drive his bargain with the capitalist he is 
easily beaten and has to surrender at discretion; but if a whole trade of 
workmen form a powerful organisation, collect among themselves a fund to 
enable them to defy their employers if need be, and thus become enabled 
to treat with these employers as a power, then, and then only, have they ä 
chance to get even that pittance which according to the economical con- 
stitution of present society, may be called a fair day's wages for a fair day's 
work. 

The law of wages is not upset by the struggles of Trades Unions. On the 
contrary, it is enforced by them. Without the means of resistance of the 
Trades Unions the labourer does not receive even whatis his due according 
to the rules of the wages system. It is only with the fear of the Trades Union 
before his eyes that the capitalist can be made to part with the full market 
value of his labourer's working power. Do you want a proof? Look at the 
wages paid to the members of the large Trades Unions, and atthe wages paid 
to the numberless small trades in that pool of stagnant misery, the East-end 
of London. 


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The Wages System 


Thus the Trades Unions do not attack the wages system. Butit is not the 
highness or lowness of wages which constitutes the economical degradation 
of the working class: this degradation is comprised in the fact that, instead 
of receiving for its labour the full produce of this labour, the working class 
has to be satisfied with a portion of its own produce called wages. The 
capitalist pockets the whole produce (paying the labourer out of it) because 
he is the owner of the means of labour. And, therefore, there is no real 
redemption for the working class until it becomes owner of all the means 
of work—land, raw material, machinery, etc.—and thereby also the owner of 

the whole of the produce of its own labour.