Das Kapital Plot Analysis

Exposition (Initial Situation)

Working all the time

Marx says: Nothing characterizes the spirit of capital better than the history of English factory legislation from 1833 to 1864 (10.6.3), and that's what we'll look at for our plot analyses, as it's depicted in Chapter 10. The story starts with the rules of the Factory Act of 1833 (10.6.4): the working day is 15 hours—from 5:30AM to 8:30PM with an hour and a half for meals. There's no employment of children under nine; children from nine to thirteen can only be worked eight hours a day; and children from thirteen to eighteen can work anytime, as long as they're not working more than 12 hours in a day. Yeah, all that's insane.

Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)

Quit being mean to me

The already brutal provisions of the Factory Act of 1833 aren't bad enough: the manufacturers also start cheating with a complex system of bookkeeping called the relay system (10.6.6). Here's an example of the relay system: one set of children ages nine to 13 works from 5:30AM to 1:30PM—their eight hours—and another set of children from 1:30PM to close, 8:30PM, which is another set of (almost) eight hours. Children are only supposed to be working eight hours a day, but the manufacturers figured out that they could have different children working at different times and thus have children working all day long.

Workers don't like this at all. By 1838, they make the concept of a ten hours' bill, which ordered that the working day should only be ten hours (10.6.10). They manage to get a Ten Hours' Act enforced on May 1, 1848 (10.6.20), but their leaders are imprisoned, and the working-class movement is ground down.

Then the manufacturers cheat even more. They put mealtimes before and after the 10 hours of work (10.6.23), for example, which wasn't the intention of the laws. They say you don't get lunchtime if you're a child starting work in the afternoon, since lunch means around noon (10.6.26). The relay system of cheating bookkeeping continued.

Climax (Crisis, Turning Point)

We're not going to let you do this

A decision by the Court of Exchequer in February 1850 (10.6.32) basically negates the Ten Hours' Act. But the workers aren't going to tolerate the injustice: their meetings and protests begin to threaten the manufacturers (10.6.33). So a compromise is brokered, and the Factory Act of 1850 is passed (10.6.34). Now the working day for young persons and women is 12 hours—from 6AM to 6PM—with 1.5 hours off for meals properly scheduled at the exact same time daily, which leaves about 10 hours of work.

Since men basically have to work along with the children, the working day for men is limited, too. Attempts to work children all the time, and to make the men work all the time, are met with resistance by the adult male workers (10.6.36). A formal prohibition of using children in the morning before and in the evening after young persons and women is passed in 1853, completing the 1850 Act (10.6.36).

Falling Action

Widening the scope

Other industries are brought under the scope of the reforms, which had originally been targeted at the cotton, wool, flax, and silk factories (10.6.3). In 1860, dye-works and bleach-works are brought under the Factory Act of 1850 (10.6.39). The same fate soon strikes the manufacturers of all earthenware products, matches, percussion-caps, cartridges, carpets and fustian cuttings, and finishing processes (10.6.39). Meanwhile, the capitalist economists are saying the reforms are achievements of capitalism—remember, better-rested workers are also more productive—but that's a crazy claim after all the cheating of the manufacturers.

Resolution (Denouement)

Now What?

Labor struggles have continued since Marx wrote Chapter 10. However, labor union membership is on the decline in the United States. Nevertheless, it's still a real issue faced by workers every day. What are the working conditions like at your current job or what might they be like at your future ones? What can you do about it?