[1996sp:599]

This question <596|600> overall <598|600> Angela: <552|617-1>.

Term Paper 299: Essay about Chapter Twenty-Five

[599] Angela, Caren, and Wolf: Essay on Ch.25 The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation

Growth of capital implies growth of its variable constituent, in other words the part invested in labour-power. Since the capital produces a surplus-value every year, of which one part is added every year to the original capital; since this increment itself grows every year along with the augmentation of the capital already functioning; and since, lastly, under conditions especially liable to stimulate the drive for self-enrichment, such as the opening of new markets, or of new spheres for the outlay of capital resulting from newly developed social requirements, the scale of accumulation may suddenly be extended merely by a change in the proportion in which the surplus-value or the surplus-product is divided into capital and revenue- for all these reasons the requirements of accumulating capital may exceed the growth in labour-power or in the number of workers; the demand for workers may outstrip the supply, and thus wages may rise. This must indeed ultimately be the case if the conditions assumed above continue to prevail. For since in each year more workers are employed than in the preceding year, sooner or later a point must be the customary supply of labour, and a rise of wages therefore takes place.

It is of course true that “under the conditions of accumulation assumed so far, conditions which are the most favorable to the workers, But their relation of dependence on capital takes on forms which are endurable. Instead of becoming more intensive with the growth of capital, this relation of dependence only becomes more extensive, i.e. the sphere of capital's exploitation and domination merely extends with its own dimensions and the number of people subjected to it. A larger part of the workers' own surplus-product, which is always increasing and is continually being transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments, make additions to their consumption fund of clothes, furniture etc. and lay by a small reserve fund of money. But these things no more abolish the exploitation of the wage-labour, and his situation of dependence, than do better clothing, food and treatment, and a larger peculium in the case of the slave. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of the accumulation of capital, only means in fact that the wage-labourer has already forged for himself.”

THE WAGE LABORER WORKS WITH AND CONTROLS THE CAPITAL (LARGE MACHINERY) THUS, THE CAPITALISTS ARE AT THEIR MERCY, IN THE EVENT THAT THE LABORER MISTREATS THE CAPITAL FORCING THE CAPITALISTS TO REINVEST IN THE SAME CAPITAL WITH THEIR ACCUMULATION AND NOT ALLOWING FOR AN INCREASE IN TECHNOLOGY, MORE CAPITAL=INCREASED PRODUCTION AND COMPLETE EXPLOITATION. LEADING TO THE FORMATION OF UNIONS, INSURANCE, AND PENSIONS.

A allow it to be loosened somewhat. It implies “at the best of times a merely quantitative reduction in the amount of unpaid labour the worker has to supply. This reduction can never go so far as to threaten the system itself. This is because : ”Either the price of labour keeps on rising, because its rise does not interfere with the progress of accumulation. In this case it is evident that a reduction in the amount of unpaid labour in no way interferes with the extension of the domain of capital. Or, the other alternative, accumulation slackens as a result of the rise in the price of labour, because the stimulus of gain is blunted. The rate of accumulati but this means that the primary cause of that lessening itself vanishes,i.e. the disproportion between capital and exploitable labour-power. The mechanism of the process of capitalist production removes the very obstacle it temporarily creates. The price of labour falls again to a level corresponding with capital's requirements for self valorisation, whether this level is below, the same as, or above that which was normal before the rise of wages took place.

Marx concludes, the rise of wages is therefore confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalist system, but also secure its reproduction on an increasing scale. The law of capitalist accumulation in fact expresses the situation that the very nature of accumulation excludes every rise in the price of labour, which could seriously imperil the continual reproduction, on an ever larger scale, of the capital-relation.

Marx underlined not only the possibility, but also the necessity of an increase in real wages during the prosperity phase of the industrial cycle. In fact, the growing demand for labour-power' is examined under the assumption that the composition of capital remains the same. That is without taking into account the existence of the industrial reserve army. Now, let us look at Marx's very important doctrine of relative wages. Wages are also detemined by their relation to the gain, to the profit of the capitalist-comparative, relative wages. Real wages express the price of labour in relation to the price of other commodities; relative wages, on the other hand, express the share of direct labour in the new value it has created in relation to the share which falls to accumulated labour to capital.

For the position of the working class under capitalism, real wages may stay the same, the even rise, and yet relative wages may fall. Suppose that all means of subsistence have gone down in price by two-thirds while wages per day have only fallen by one-third, that is to say, for example, from three marks to two marks. Although the worker can command a greater amount of commodities with these two marks than he previously could with three marks, yet his wages have gone down in relation to the profit of the capitalist. The profit of the capitalist (for example the manufacturer) has increased by one mark; that is for a smaller sum of exchange-values which he pays to the worker, the latter must produce a greater amount of exchange-values than before. The share of capital relative to labour has risen. The division of social wealth between capital and labour has become still more unequal. With the same capital, the capitalist commands a greater quantity of labour. The power of the capitalist class over the worker has grown, the social position of the worker has deteriorated, has been depressed one step further below that of the capitalist.

Capitalist production cannot take one step forward without squeezing the workers' share of the machinery, every new application of steam and electricity in production and commerce, the worker's share in the product gets smaller, and that of that capitalist, larger. It is this quite invisible power, a simple mechanical effect of commodity production and competition, which deprives the worker of a larger share of his product. The personal role of the exploiter is still visible where the question is that of absolute wages, i.e. real living standard of living of the workers, is a visible attack by the capitalists against the workers, and will be responded to with an immediate struggle wherever the influence of the unions extends. The effects of all these forms of progress on the relative wage of the worker result quite automatively from commodity production and the commodity-character of labour-power i.e. against capitalist production as a whole. Thus the struggle against the fall in relative wages is no longer a struggle on the basis of the commodity economy, but a revolutionary, subversive attack on the existence of this economy.

There are some general elements of the theory of the industrial reserve army. In the first place, that the rise in the organic composition of capital, which is necessarily bound up with the progress of capitalist production, would have to lead to a proportionate reduction in the variable part of capital, intended for the purchase of labour-power. Of course, capitalist production continually extends itself, and as a consequence the demand for labour-power grows too, in the long run; but it grows in a “continually declining proportion”. the situation was quite different in capitalism's period of infancy: “The composition of capital underwent only every gradual changes. By and large therefore, the proportional growth in the demand for labour has corresponded to the accumulation of capital. However, this was a period in which the variable capital, laid out in the form of wages, heavily outweighed that laid out for machinery, i.e. in which manufacture still predominated and large-scale industry was only in its infancy. The accumulation of capital was identical with a continuously rising demand for labour, and a continual rise in wages, and that the level of wages was simply determined by the relation of the absolute number of workers to the size of the productive capital.”

In fact the development of large-scale industry has rendered this optimistic view obsolete. Capitalists were compelled, on pain of extinction, to constantly introduce new machinery and perfect the machinery they already had; but perfection of machinery means making human labour superfluous. Owing to the expansion of the machine system , the relation of constant to variable capital must change to the advantage of the former.

CAPITALISTS WERE/ARE ALSO COMPELLED TO GIVE IN TO NEPOTISM, MAKE UP SOMETHING LIKE FILING FOR CHAPTER 11 (BANKRUPTCY) AND OR SELLING THEIR COMPANY TO A FRIEND OR RELATIVE IN THE FORM OF A CORPORATE MERGER/TAKEOVER AND THEN TAKING AWAY THE LABORERS' BENEFITS AND PENSION PLANS. IF THEY DIDN'T LIKE IT THEY COULD FIND A JOB ELSEWHERE. WHICH IS NOT FAIR IT IS EXPLOITATION.

However, since the demand for labour is determined not by the extent of the total capital but by its variable constituent alone, that demand falls progressively with the growth of the total capital, instead of rising in proportion to it, as was previously assumed. It falls relatively to the magnitude of the total capital, and at an accelerated rate, as this magnitude increases. This tendency explains the empirically given fact of a relative surplus population of workers, i.e. a population which exceeds the average valorisation requirements of capital. The surplus population is expressed in enormous armies of unemployed during periods of crisis, which almost trickle away during periods of high prosperity, but always remain in existence. The burden of providing this population with a miserable level of subsistence falls partly on society and partly on the employed work-force. What function does this surplus population have in capitalist production? It is indispensable to capital for two reasons. Firstly, it places as its disposal a mass of human material which can be exploited for capital's changing valorisation requirements, which it can either employ, or put onto the streets. Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of disposable labour-power which the natural increase of population yields. It requires for its unrestricted activity and industrial reserve army which is independent of these natural limits. And secondly, the industrial reserve army acts as a powerful regulator of wages which holds the wage demands of the work-force in check. For in a developed capitalist society, it is precisely the fact of relative surplus population which is the background against which the law of the demand and supply of labour does its work. It confines the field of action of this law to the limits absolutely convenient to capital's drive to exploit and dominate the workers. During periods of economic stagnation and at the beginning of upswings it presses down on the active army of workers', by not allowing them to push their wage demands too high; and in periods of crisis it ofter pervents them from making use of their living standards. In this sense the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army and this in turn corresponds to the periodic alternations of the industrial cycle. They are not regulated by the variations of the absolute numbers of the working class is divided into an active army and a reserve army by the increase of diminution in the relative amount of the surplus population by the extent to which it is alternately absorbed and set free.

In this chapter, Marx stresses the fact that capital can increase its supply of labor more quickly than its demand for workers, by extorting a larger quantity of work from the same number of employed workers, by prolonging working-time. The overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of its reserve, while, conversely, the greater pressure that the reserve by its competition exerts on the employed workers forces these to submit to overwork and subjects them to the dictates of capital. The production of a relative surplus population, or the setting free of workers, therefore proceeds still more rapidly than technical transformation of the process of production that accompanies the advance of accumulation and is accelerated by it, and more rapidly than corresponding diminution of the variable part of capital as compared with the constant.

THIS CHAPTER AlSO SHOWS THAT THE STRUGGLE FOR EXPENSION IS AN INTEGRAL AND INEXTRICABLE ELEMENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF CAPITALISM AS A PERIOD OF HISTORY YET AT THE SAME TIME THIS EXPANSIVE ASPECT IS CONSTANTLY UNDERMINING THE VIABILITY OF THE LARGER SYSTEM AND NUMBERS OF PEOPLE (THUS, INCREASING UNEMPLOYMENT)

In all, capitalist accumulation can be seen as an expression of thr class strugle, in which the capitalists/ dominant calss seeks to maintain it's position of superiority. It maintains such, by constantly renewing and expanding its accumulation of capital-the way it enforces its power over labor. And there is one last thing we would like to touch on and that is that profit drives capitalists to do the above to some degree. But there is also something else that is a force in the market place between capitalists, and labourers alike that runs even deeper than the thurst for profit. Some call it survival (instinct) we prefer to call it COMPETION. Competion manifests itself in the on going threat that every capital(ist) poses to every other, and threat that can only be dealt with by ongoing agressive and expansive strategies. In this light, in order to survive capitalists are FORCED to accumulate and expand.

In addition, the fact that in comparison to cooperation, competition is where something is always lost or wasted. Where as in cooperation something is always gained. For example if two people were to bulid a house, if they both worked together they might have a place to stay for winter and can use the capital/machienery to build the next house for the other. But, if they are in competition and do not work together and share there are inumerable wastes and they both may not have a place to stay for the winter.

Hans: You drowned your paper in literal quotes from Marx and also a re-run of your earlier submission [401]. The capitalized paragraphs may have been the starting point for interesting thought pieces.