Since the capitalist’s goal is the growth of his wealth, he is always searching for ways to achieve this. Nothing is fixed for him. So, he can try to increase exploitation of the worker by extracting more labour from her – e.g., by extending the workday. Similarly, the pores of the given workday when the worker pauses or takes a bathroom break are a waste for the capitalist, so he does what he can to intensify the pace of work (“speedup”). Every moment workers rest is time they are not working for capital. Further, for workers to be able to rest away from work allows capital more room to intensify the pace of work. Similarly, the existence of unpaid labour within the household reduces the amount of the wage that must be spent upon necessities and facilitates the driving down of the wage. In this way, capitalism supports the maintenance of patriarchy and exploitation within the household. Both by intensification of work and by driving wages downward, surplus labour and surplus value are increased. Accordingly, it’s easy to understand why Marx commented that “the capitalist [is] constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum and extend the working day to its physical maximum.” He continued, however, saying “while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction.” Class Struggle In other words, within the framework of capitalist relations, while capital pushes to increase the workday both in length and intensity and to drive down wages, workers struggle to reduce the workday and to increase wages. Just as there is struggle from the side of capital, so also is there class struggle from the side of the worker. Why? Take the struggle over the workday, for example. Why do the workers want
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