| This question <594|596> overall <594|596> Reidar: <543|100>. |
| Term Paper 299: Essay about Chapter Twenty-Five |
| [595] Reidar: Final paper Section IV Review Chpt. 25 |
| In section IV of Chapter 25, Marx separates the relative surplus population, or the surplus working population into three categories; 1)floating, 2)latent, and 3)stagnant. Floating surplus laborers could be compared to the cyclical unemployed which we study in basic economics. In the industrial sector, many workers are thrown out of employment and simply “float” until they are called back to work or until the find employment in other fields. |
| Marx describes latent unemployment as those workers who have been displaced in the agricultural sector through the effects of the inception of capitalism. They are on the edge of the industrial employment area, and stand ready to commute to employment in the towns where industrial employment is found. |
| The stagnant labor population are those laborers who have been employed but are the loest paid laborers. They usually are employed in the lowest paid positions and work the longest days. They rarely remain employed. |
| Below the stagnant laborers are the paupers. Usually they are unable to adapt to the above categories and are in the lowest of poverty levels. |
| Section IV begins with the classification of laborers into the relative surplus population, but continues with a few points which I found much more interesting. |
| Marx explains on pg. 798 paragraph 3, that the “worker does not employ the means of production, but the means of production employ the worker.” In section three of this chapter, Marx explained that there is a contradiction present in capital accumulation. The more capital that is accumulated does not go toward paying the laborer more or for increasing the amount of hired labor, but for the purchase of greater means of production. |
| With a relative surplus labor population, Marx describes the laborer as standing with one foot on the edge of joining this surplus population. The laborer can be forced to work longer hours without greater compensation in order to use the new means of production which the capitalist has purchased with his accumulation of capital. |
| This goes to explain Marx's statement on pg 799, “all methods of production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation, and every extension of accumulation becomes, conversely, a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker...must grow worse.” Capital accumulation therefore worsens the state that the laborers are in. |
| In footnote 23 pg. 799, Marx explains that the relative surplus labor population is increased by the role which capital accumulation plays among the bourgois classes. “in the same relation in which wealth is produced, poverty is produced also...these relations produce bourgeois wealth...only by annihilating the wealth of the individual members of this class and by producing an ever-growing proletariat.” |
| Marx says that the competition of the bourgeois class not only forces the laborers to accept less pay, but also increase the proletariat by forcing more members of the bourgeoisie into the proletariat. Thus the relative surplus labor population increases. It appears therefore that capital accumulation harms not only the proletariat, but also those in the bourgeoisie who are unable to compete with their elite bourgeois competitors. |
| Hans: I like it! Your characterization of the floating surplus population is wrong, but the others are good, and the selection of points at the end is indeed interesting. |
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