Reserve army of labour

As industrial reserve army, the amount of workers referred to in the Marxist economic theory, who are willing and forced their labor power to sell, but can not find a buyer.

Contrary to popular in his time Malthusian population theories that saw the reason for unemployment in too high a reproductive rate of the workers, Karl Marx tried to show that the existing in the labor market "overpopulation " will produced by capitalist development itself.

The size of the industrial reserve army depends, according to Marx of two effects: on the one hand, of the employment effects of capital accumulation, on the other hand by the opposite effect of the increase of the productive forces that leads to a release of labor.

Marx assumed that capital tends to be a growing industrial reserve army brings forth, as at a roughly constant number of workers of the " release " effect of the productivity increase in the " employment effect " of accumulation outweighs.

The existence of this reserve army offers a double benefit for the individual capitals. On the one hand, press the " unemployed " workers on the wages of " workers ", on the other hand, they represent a "reserve" for abrupt expansions of the accumulation dar.

Cause

After Marxist conception of society unemployment is necessary for capitalism and its necessary concomitants provides a; they created by the compulsion of achieving maximum added value. For this reason, no additional work will be bought at reduced wages, if the existing sufficient for production. The working volume is dependent on various factors such as the number of workers and the working hours. According to Marx, a worker only receives necessary for its reproduction remuneration. Therefore, it may be useful to have work very much a part of the workers and to expel another part of the production process. For a non-uniform distribution of the reduction in the volume of work that is followed by an increase in unemployment.

They form the " industrial reserve army ", to which capital can be accessed at any time if it needs it: " It is therefore as much tendency of capital to increase the working population as a part of the same stable as the surplus population - population, the first is useless until the capital can exploit it "

The competition of individual capitals to each other forces the individual capitals to increase their productive power: " The greater productivity of labor is expressed in it from that capital has less to buy necessary work to create the same value and larger quantities of use values ​​, or that less necessary work creates the same exchange value, recycled more material, and use a larger mass values ​​. It appears this is ... at the same time so that a lesser amount of work requires a greater amount of capital in motion. " Rationalization and discipline in the sector work and technical progress allow: " The additional capitals formed in the course of normal accumulation preferably serve as a vehicle for exploitation new inventions and discoveries ever industrial perfections. But also the old capital reached over time the moment when there is a technically modernized form, in which a lower mass enough work to put a greater mass of machinery and raw materials in motion. The resulting necessary following absolute decrease in the demand for labor is of course greater, the more that are already piled up masses of this renewal process by solubilizing capitals ... so one hand pulls the grant capital formed in the course of accumulation, proportionate to its size, fewer and fewer workers of. On the other hand pushes the periodically reproduced in a new composition ancient capital more and more earlier by him employed workers. " " In the same proportion, therefore, as the capitalist mode of production develops, the possibility of a relatively SUPERNUMERARY working population developed, not because the productive power of social labor decreases, but because it increases, not out of an absolute mismatch between labor and means of subsistence, or agents for production of these means of subsistence, but from an imbalance, arising from the capitalist exploitation of labor, the mismatch between the increasing growth of capital and its relatively decreasing need by a growing population. "

The emergence of the industrial reserve army is also due to the tendency to " centralization of capital ", ie the union of different individual capitals. In this process, there is an increase of capital, which usually expresses itself in an accelerated technological revolution, but that the total capital would have grown without. So it is due to the centralization repeatedly to productive power increases with significant release of securities without them would face employment effects due to accumulation ..

In capitalism applies according to Marx: The greater the wealth, the higher the productive forces, the more unemployment: " The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, ie, the absolute size of the proletariat and the productiveness of his labor, the greater the industrial reserve army. The disposable work force is developed by the same causes as the expansive power of capital. The relative size of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the powers of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labor-army, the more massive the consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse proportion to their labor torment. The larger finally the Lazarus layer of the working class and the industrial reserve army, the greater the official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. "

"It is in the nature of capital, to revise a portion of the working population and to impoverish another. "

" Relative overpopulation"

In capitalism is thus a "permanent apparent Arbeiterübervölkerung. " Inherent in the system, because the contradiction in capitalism is that capital needs as much work to as much to produce (ie, must have a constant access to work) and at the same time buy as little work has. Marx called the industrial reserve army as "relative overpopulation", since it is specific to a capitalist mode of production. He distinguishes three types: a liquid, latent and stagnant overpopulation ( MEW 23, pp. 670-673 ):

The industrial reserve army is in Marx - in contrast to Malthus, fierce polemic against Marx - no "absolute", ie demographically justified overpopulation is; if it were at her rather an overpopulation relative to the current needs of capital (ie the accumulation of capital). In the period of recovery the industrial reserve army take off, in times of crisis or lulls she may rise against it strongly. In the long run, however, grow " the laboring population always faster [ ..] as the recovery needs of capital" ( MEW 23, p 674 ), which Marx, also known as the "law of the progressive decrease in the relative amount of variable capital " ( MEW 23 p 660) referred to. In Wage Labour and Capital Marx speaks in this context even be called ' industrial war of the capitalists among themselves ":