Industrial reserve army

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The industrial reserve army is defined in Marxist economic theory as the number of workers who are willing and compelled to sell their labor but cannot find a buyer.

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

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

Marx assumed that capital tends to produce an ever-increasing industrial reserve army, since with an approximately constant number of workers, the “release effect” of increased productivity outweighs the “employment effect” of accumulation.

The existence of this reserve army offers a double advantage for the individual capitals. On the one hand, the "unemployed" workers depress the wages of the "employed", on the other hand they represent a "reserve" for sudden expansions of accumulation.

root cause

According to the Marxist view, social unemployment is necessary for capitalism and is one of its necessary side effects. It arises from the compulsion to achieve maximum surplus value. For this reason, when wages are reduced, no additional work is bought if the existing work is sufficient for production. The volume of work depends on various factors such as the number of workers and the working hours. According to Marx, a worker only receives the remuneration necessary for his reproduction. Therefore it can make sense to let some of the workers work a lot and to expel others from the production process. An uneven distribution of the decrease in the volume of work therefore results in an increase in unemployment.

They form the “industrial reserve army” which capital can access at any time when it needs it: “It is therefore just as much a tendency of capital to increase the working population as a part of it constantly as a surplus population - population that initially is useless until capital can utilize it "

The competition of the individual capitals with one another forces the individual capitals to increase their productive power: “The greater productivity of labor is expressed in the fact that capital has to buy less necessary labor in order to create the same value and greater quantities of use-values, or that less necessary labor Labor creates the same exchange value, utilizes more material, and a greater mass of use values. ... At the same time it appears that a smaller amount of work sets a larger amount of capital in motion. " Rationalization or discipline in the labor sector and technical progress make this possible: " The additional capital formed in the course of normal accumulation preferably serves as a vehicle for exploiting new inventions and discoveries, of any industrial perfections. But with time, the old capital also reaches the moment when there is a technically modernized form in which a smaller amount of work is sufficient to set a larger amount of machinery and raw materials in motion. The absolute decrease in the demand for labor that necessarily follows from this, of course, becomes greater the more the capitals undergoing this renewal process have already accumulated in masses ... On the one hand, the grant capital formed in the course of accumulation attracts fewer and fewer workers in proportion to its size. On the other hand, the old capital, periodically reproduced in a new composition, ejects more and more workers previously employed by it. ” “ In the same proportion as capitalist production develops, the possibility of a relatively surplus working population develops, not because of the productive power of social labor decreases, but because it increases, i.e. not from an absolute disproportion between labor and means of subsistence or means for the production of these means of existence, but from a disproportion arising from the capitalist exploitation of labor, the disproportion between the increasing growth of capital and its relatively diminishing needs according to the growing population. "

The emergence of the industrial reserve army can also be traced back to the tendency towards the “ centralization of capital ”, ie the amalgamation of various individual capitals. During this process there is an increase in capital, which is usually also expressed in an accelerated technical upheaval, but without the total capital having grown. In this respect, due to the centralization, productive power increases with significant release effects occur again and again, without being offset by employment effects due to accumulation.

In capitalism, according to Marx, the greater the wealth, the higher the productive power, the higher the unemployment: “The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the scope and energy of its growth, thus also the absolute size of the proletariat and the productive power of its labor the larger the industrial reserve army. The disposable labor power is developed by the same causes as the expansive power of capital. The proportionate size of the industrial reserve army thus grows with the powers of wealth. However, the larger this reserve army in relation to the active workers' army, the more massive the consolidated overpopulation, whose misery is in inverse proportion to their labor torture. The bigger finally the [...] the industrial reserve army, the bigger the official pauperism. This is the absolute, general law of capitalist accumulation. "

"It is in the nature of capital to overwork one section of the working population and impoverish another."

"Relative overpopulation"

In capitalism, a “permanent, apparent worker overpopulation ” is inherent in the system, because the contradiction in capitalism is that capital needs as much work as possible in order to produce as much as possible (i.e. has constant access to work) and at the same time has to buy as little work as possible . Marx calls the industrial reserve army “relative overpopulation ” because it is specific to a capitalist mode of production. He differentiates between three types: a liquid, latent and stagnant overpopulation ( MEW 23, pp. 670–673):

  1. The liquid overpopulation includes the workers in the city who are employed during the boom, but are excluded from the production cycle in times of crisis.
  2. The latent overpopulation is recruited from the part of the population active in agriculture who have no means of production and are therefore “latently” forced to flee from the countryside .
  3. The stagnant overpopulation includes casual workers, for whom very irregular employment is characteristic. They form the main reservoir of available labor.

In Marx's case, the industrial reserve army - in contrast to Malthus , against whom Marx vehemently polemics - does not represent an “absolute”, i.e. H. demographically based overpopulation; Rather, it is an overpopulation relative to the current needs of capital (i.e. the accumulation of capital). In the period of upswing, the industrial reserve army declines, but in times of crisis or lull it increases sharply. In the long term, however, "the working population always grows faster [...] than the need for the valorization of capital" (MEW 23, p. 674), which Marx also calls the "law of the progressive decrease in the relative size of variable capital" (MEW 23, P. 660). In this context, Marx even speaks of wage labor and capital of an "industrial war between capitalists":

This war has the peculiarity that battles are won in it less by recruiting than by abdicating the workers' army. The generals, the capitalists, compete with each other to see who can dismiss the most industrial soldiers. (MEW 6, p. 421).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Heinrich: Critique of Political Economy , p. 125
  2. ↑ See Heinrich: Die Wissenschaft vom Wert , p. 322 f.
  3. ↑ See Heinrich: Critique of Political Economy , p. 126 f.
  4. ^ Karl Marx , MEW 23, 664
  5. ^ Karl Marx , Grundrisse der Critique of Political Economy 302f.
  6. ^ Karl Marx , Grundrisse der Critique of Political Economy , 292f
  7. ↑ See Karl Marx , MEW 23, 762-765
  8. ^ Karl Marx , MEW 23, 657
  9. ^ Karl Marx , MEW 25, 232
  10. ↑ See Heinrich: Critique of Political Economy , p. 126
  11. ^ Karl Marx , MEW 23, 673f
  12. ↑ K. Marx, Theories of Added Value , MEW 26.3, 300
  13. ^ Karl Marx , MEW 25, 233

literature

Writings of Marx

Karl Marx , Theories of Added Value , 1956

Introductions

  • Cyrus Bina: industrial reserve army , in: HKWM , Vol. 6 / II, Sp. 1003-1011
  • Guy Caire: Unemployment , in: KWM , Vol. 1, pp. 101-103
  • Iring Fetscher (ed.): Basic concepts of Marxism. A lexical introduction . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1976, pp. 145–147
  • Michael Heinrich : The science of value: the Marxian critique of political economy between scientific revolution and classical tradition . VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-87975-583-3 , pp. 122-130.
  • ders .: Critique of Political Economy: an introduction . Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart 2009 (7th edition), ISBN 978-3-89657-593-7 , pp. 322–327.
  • Horst Richter u. a. (Ed.): Political Economy of Capitalism and Socialism. Textbook for basic Marxist-Leninist studies. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1977 (4th edition), pp. 143-146

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