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demand and supply of labour works. It confines the field of action of this law within the limits
absolutely convenient to the activity of exploitation and to the domination of capital.
This is the place to return to one of the grand exploits of economic apologetics. It will be
remembered that if through the introduction of new, or the extension of old, machinery, a portion
of variable capital is transformed into constant, the economic apologist interprets this operation
which “fixes” capital and by that very act sets labourers “free,” in exactly the opposite way,
pretending that it sets free capital for the labourers. Only now can one fully understand the
effrontery of these apologists. What are set free are not only the labourers immediately turned out
by the machines, but also their future substitutes in the rising generation, and the additional
contingent, that with the usual extension of trade on the old basis would be regularly absorbed.
They are now all “set free,” and every new bit of capital looking out for employment can dispose
of them. Whether it attracts them or others, the effect on the general labour demand will be nil, if
this capital is just sufficient to take out of the market as many labourers as the machines threw
upon it. If it employs a smaller number, that of the supernumeraries increases; if it employs a
greater, the general demand for labour only increases to the extent of the excess of the employed
over those “set free.” The impulse that additional capital, seeking an outlet, would otherwise have
given to the general demand for labour, is therefore in every case neutralised to the extent of the
labourers thrown out of employment by the machine. That is to say, the mechanism of capitalistic
production so manages matters that the absolute increase of capital is accompanied by no
corresponding rise in the general demand for labour. And this the apologist calls a compensation
for the misery, the sufferings, the possible death of the displaced labourers during the transition
period that banishes them into the industrial reserve army! The demand for labour is not identical
with increase of capital, nor supply of labour with increase of the working class. It is not a case of
two independent forces working on one another. Les dés sont pipés.
Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the one hand, increases the
demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply of labourers by the “setting free” of them,
whilst at the same time the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to
furnish more labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent, independent of
the supply of labourers. The action of the law of supply and demand of labour on this basis
completes the despotism of capital. As soon, therefore, as the labourers learn the secret, how it
comes to pass that in the same measure as they work more, as they produce more wealth for
others, and as the productive power of their labour increases, so in the same measure even their
function as a means of the self-expansion of capital becomes more and more precarious for them;
as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves
depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades’ Unions,
&c., they try to organise a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order to
destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic production on their
class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political Economy, cry out at the infringement of the
“eternal” and so to say “sacred” law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and
unemployed disturbs the “harmonious” action of this law. But, on the other hand, as soon as (in
the colonies, e.g.) adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and,
with it, the absolute dependence of the working class upon the capitalist class, capital, along with
its commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels against the “sacred” law of supply and demand, and tries
to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.
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Section 4: Different Forms of the Relative surplus population.
The General Law of Capitalistic Accumulation
The relative surplus population exists in every possible form. Every labourer belongs to it during
the time when he is only partially employed or wholly unemployed. Not taking into account the
great periodically recurring forms that the changing phases of the industrial cycle impress on it,
now an acute form during the crisis, then again a chronic form during dull times – it has always
three forms, the floating, the latent, the stagnant.
In the centres of modern industry – factories, manufactures, ironworks, mines, &c. – the labourers
are sometimes repelled, sometimes attracted again in greater masses, the number of those
employed increasing on the whole, although in a constantly decreasing proportion to the scale of
production. Here the surplus population exists in the floating form.
In the automatic factories, as in all the great workshops, where machinery enters as a factor, or
where only the modern division of labour is carried out, large numbers of boys are employed up
to the age of maturity. When this term is once reached, only a very small number continue to find
employment in the same branches of industry, whilst the majority are regularly discharged. This
majority forms an element of the floating surplus population, growing with the extension of those
branches of industry. Part of them emigrates, following in fact capital that has emigrated. One
consequence is that the female population grows more rapidly than the male, teste England. That
the natural increase of the number of labourers does not satisfy the requirements of the
accumulation of capital, and yet all the time is in excess of them, is a contradiction inherent to the
movement of capital itself. It wants larger numbers of youthful labourers, a smaller number of
adults. The contradiction is not more glaring than that other one that there is a complaint of the
want of hands, while at the same time many thousands are out of work, because the division of
labour chains them to a particular branch of industry.
21
The consumption of labour power by capital is, besides, so rapid that the labourer, half-way
through his life, has already more or less completely lived himself out. He falls into the ranks of
the supernumeraries, or is thrust down from a higher to a lower step in the scale. It is precisely
among the work-people of modern industry that we meet with the shortest duration of life. Dr.
Lee, Medical Officer of Health for Manchester, stated
“that the average age at death of the Manchester ... upper middle class was 38
years, while the average age at death of the labouring class was 17; while at
Liverpool those figures were represented as 35 against 15. It thus appeared that
the well-to-do classes had a lease of life which was more than double the value of
that which fell to the lot of the less favoured citizens.”
22
In order to conform to these circumstances, the absolute increase of this section of the proletariat
must take place under conditions that shall swell their numbers, although the individual elements
are used up rapidly. Hence, rapid renewal of the generations of labourers (this law does not hold
for the other classes of the population). This social need is met by early marriages, a necessary
consequence of the conditions in which the labourers of modern industry live, and by the
premium that the exploitation of children sets on their production.
As soon as capitalist production takes possession of agriculture, and in proportion to the extent to
which it does so, the demand for an agricultural labouring population falls absolutely, while the
accumulation of the capital employed in agriculture advances, without this repulsion being, as in
non-agricultural industries, compensated by a greater attraction. Part of the agricultural
population is therefore constantly on the point of passing over into an urban or manufacturing