§1.The validity of the human law of distribution is well tested by considering the light it sheds upon the modern claims of Labour and the Movement which is endeavouring to realise these claims.For the significance of the Labour Movement will continue to be misunderstood so long as it is regarded as a mere demand for a larger quantity of wages and of leisure, important as these objects are.The real demand of Labour is at once more radical and more human.It is a demand that Labour shall no longer be bought and sold as a dead commodity subject to the fluctuations of Demand and Supply in the market, but that its remuneration shall be regulated on the basis of the human needs of a family living in a civilised country.
At present most sorts of labourers are paid according to the quantity of labour-power they give out, and according to the market-price set upon a unit of each several sort of labour-power.This means that the actual weekly earnings of some grades of labourer are much higher than those of other grades, not because the work takes more out of them, or because it involves a higher standard of living, but because some natural, some fortuitous, or some organised scarcity of supply exists in the former grades, while there is abundance of supply in the latter.1 Moreover, the weekly earnings for any of these sorts of labour will vary from week to week, from month to month, or year to year, with the variations of Supply and Demand in the Labour Market.The income of the working family will thus vary for reasons utterly beyond its control, though its requirements for economic and human efficiency show no such variation.Thus there is no security for any class standard of living.
Within each class or grade of labour there will be variations of the individual family wage, based on the amount of labour-power actually given out in the week.A less effective worker, even though he puts out as much effort, will earn less money than a more effective.This seems necessary, reasonable and even just, so long as we accept the ordinary view that labour should be bought and sold like any other commodity.
But once accept the view that to buy labour-power, like other commodities, at a price determined purely by relations of Supply and Demand, is a policy dangerous to the life and well-being of the individual whose labour-power is thus bought and sold, to those of his family and of society, your attitude towards the labour-movement in general, and even to certain demands which at first sight seem unreasonable, will undergo a great change.
The fundamental assumption of the Labour Movement, in its demands for reformed remuneration, is that the private human needs of a working family should be regularly and securely met out of weekly pay.The life and health of the family, and that sense of security which is essential to sound character and regular habits, to the exercise of reasonable foresight, and the formation and execution of reasonable plans, all hinge upon this central demand for a sufficiency and regularity of weekly income based upon the human needs of a family.
§2.This explains alike the working-class objections to piecework, the demand for a minimum wage, and the policy of limitation of individual output.For piece-work, even more than time-work, is based upon a total ignoring of the human conditions which affect the giving out of labour-power.
It is the plainest and most logical assertion of the commodity view of labour, the most complete denial that the human needs of the worker have any claim to determine what he should be paid.
So firmly-rooted in the breast of the ordinary non-working man, and of many working-men, is the notion that a man, who has produced twice as large an output as another man, ought, as a simple matter of right or justice, to receive a payment twice as large, that it is very difficult to dislodge it.It represents the greatest triumph of the business point of view over humanity.If a man has done twice as much, of course be ought to receive twice as much! It seems an ethical truism.And yet I venture to affirm that it has nothing ethical in it.It has assumed this moral guise because of a deep distrust of human nature which it expresses.How will you get a man to do his best unless you pay him according to the amount he does?
It is this purely practical consideration that has imposed upon the piece-work system the appearance of axiomatic justice.
It is not difficult to strip off the spurious ethics of the principle.
You say that piece-wages or payment by result is right because it induces men to do their best.But what do we mean by 'doing their best.'? A weak man may hew one ton of coals while a strong man may hew two.Has not the former 'done his best' equally with the latter? The strength of a strong man, the natural or even the acquired skill of a skilful man, cannot be assumed as a personal merit which deserves reward in the terms of payment.
If there is merit anywhere, it is in the effort, not in the achievement or product, and piece-wages measure only the latter.
No! there is nothing inherently just in the piece-wage system.Its real defence is that it is the most practical way of getting men to work as hard as they can: it is a check on skulking and sugaring.It assumes that no other effective motive can be made operative in business except quantity of payment.
