This Working Day: Marx and the conceptualization of capitalist wage labour

This article explores Marx’s conceptualization of capitalist wage labour in Capital, through focusing on a single chapter, ‘The Working Day’. In the chapter, Marx examines campaigns in Britain for the ‘normal’ working day conducted during the first half of the 19th century. The article identifies four distinct, but intersecting, dimensions of capitalist wage labour, respectively classified here as philosophical-economic, political-economic, moral-economic and socio-economic. The first two are both strictly abstract, with the philosophical-economic dimension being integrated within his process of political-economic conceptualization. This integration creates an internally dynamic concept of capitalist wage labour, which Marx applies to a range of sources from various perspectives, classified here as moral-economic. Marx’s application of this concept leads to a radical, pluralist, socio-economic analysis, encompassing such factors as workers’ gender, age and religion. The article concludes by addressing the theoretical and strategic implications arising from this discussion.