Abstract
In this chapter, Otani looks at the influence capital accumulation has on the working class. A rise in the ratio of constant capital to variable capital is called a heightening of the composition of capital. The ratio of the increasing labour-power employed through the increase in overall capital is always becoming smaller vis-à-vis the overall increase in capital as a result of the heightening of the capital composition. This heightening leads to workers being let go due to the concentration of capital and the replacement of fixed capital. A relative surplus population is generated because the increase in the demand for labour through capital accumulation is not able to fully absorb the additional workers resulting from the increase in the working class and the workers who are let go due to the concentration of capital and fixed capital replacement. For capitalist production, the relative surplus population is a control valve for the working population that makes it possible to supply labour-power needed for sudden capital accumulation and to absorb the excessive working population.
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Notes
- 1.
In reality, though, this «intermediate pause» only manifests itself during a certain phase of the industrial cycle.
- 2.
The demand for labour is the demand for labour employed in the production process, while the demand for labour-power is the demand with money on the labour market. When capital requires more labour for accumulation, the demand for labour certainly increases. But if the capital can manage to meet this demand by extending the working day or intensifying labour for the labour-power already employed, it will not be necessary to purchase additional labour-power on the labour market, so that there will be no increase in demand for labour-power. What is bought and sold on the labour market is labour-power, not its use-value (i.e. labour).
- 3.
The widely accepted theory of overpopulation is based on Malthus’ doctrine on population. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) (1798) insisted that, whereas human beings tend to increase in geometric progression, their means of livelihood increase only in arithmetic progression, so that the result, sooner or later, is overpopulation. This overpopulation is an absolute surplus in every society, so that the problem cannot be solved unless the superfluous population is diminished (Malthus 1798, pp. 11–14).
The chronic unemployed population in advanced capitalist countries is certainly a surplus population, but not absolutely superfluous in relation to the means of consumption that sustain the population. This is because if that surplus population could make the huge quantity of idle means of production, which are generated by the limited effective demand for production or commodity stock, then production itself could be augmented to a great extent. This «surplus» is not absolute but rather a surplus compared with something. What, exactly? It is a surplus with regard to the «valorisation desire of capital»—and with regard not to its minimum level but to the valorisation desire of an average level or to the industrial cycle in its middling level of activity.
The surplus population in the advanced capitalist nations is clearly a relative surplus population since the number of unemployed only decreases significantly during a period of prosperity, whereas at other times, there is a constant level of mass unemployment.
- 4.
Marx (1872) writes: «The law which always holds the relative surplus population or industrial reserve army in equilibrium with the extent and energy of accumulation rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalisation and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital» (Marx 1976, p. 799; Marx emphasis as in the first German edition).
References
Malthus TR (1798) (anonym) An essay on the principle of population. J. Johnson, London
Marx K (1872) Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Bd. 1. Buch 1: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals. 2. verb. Aufl. Hamburg. English edition: Marx K (1976) Capital. A critique of political economy, vol 1 (trans: Howkes B). Penguin Books, Harmondsworth
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Otani, T. (2018). Accumulation of Capital and Relative Surplus Population. In: A Guide to Marxian Political Economy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65954-1_10
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