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| Term Paper 299: Essay about Chapter Twenty-Five |
| [600] Chacci and Karl: Term Paper:Sections 1 and 4 Chapt. 25 Sections 1 and 4 |
| Section 1 |
| The subject of this section is an explanation of how a growing demand for labor-power accompanies accumulation if the composition of the capital remains the same. He begins the section with an explanation of the composition of capital. He then defines the composition of the total social capital of a country and states this is what he is concerned with. Marx then states that a growth in capital implies growth of the investment in labor-power. He states that if all else is held constant that there is a growth in demand for labor and the fund for the substinence of the workers. He states that both of these grow in the same proportion. Marx then proves that the accumulation of capital multiplies the presence of the wage earner. In other words in order to multiply capital there must be a wage earner. Without this proletariat a capitalist could not accumulate capital. Marx then states that the capitalist uses this un-paid labor in order to produce a surplus for himself. Marx states, ‘Labor-power can be sold only to the extent that it preserves and maintains the means of production as capital reproduces it own value as capital and provides a source of additional capital in the shape of unpaid labor’. Thus if the capitalist desires the accumulation of capital and the composition of capital is held constant, there must be a growth in demand for labor power. |
| Marx then relates wages and the accumulation of capital. He sums it up when he states ‘the relation between capital, accumulation and the rate of wages is nothing other than the relation between un-paid labor which has been transformed into capital and the additional paid labor necessary to set in motion this additional capital’. In other words Marx is saying that there is a relation between how wages react when un-paid labor increase or decreases, because the rate of wages is dependent on the accumulation of capital. |
| Section 4 |
| One of the key elements of chapter 25 that Marx discusses is the concept of the “floating surplus population”, or the reserve army. Marx describes that in the process of capital accumulation the workers are chained by their labor to a “particular branch of industry.” This keeps the workers in specialized divisions only for as long as they are useful, and profitable for the capitalist in his quest to exploit, and skim wealth of the laborers. Marx said that large numbers of male workers are employed but only to the pooint of maturity. The capitalist will not invest in labor at this point, but will seek additional youthful labor. This surplus is caused by this, or a natural increase of women over men. This is the cause of the “reserve army” or surplus population. In this situation the Capitalist will complain that he has a shortage of labor, while in reality Marx said, “many thousands are out of work, because the division of labor chains them to a particular branch of industry.” Marx believed that the reserve army was a tool the capitalist could always hang over the laborer, like a hammer ready to blow, that would keep wages low, and cause a sense of insecurity in the labor market. |
| Marx is also concerned with the law of capital accumulation, which is as Marx said, “The relative mass of the industrial reserve army thus increases with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labor army , the greater is the mass of consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to the amount of torture it has to undergo in the form of labour.” Marx believed that for the capitalist to acquire wealth, and constant capital, it would only mean that his variable capital (the laborer) would end up as a miserable pauper of a human being. One of the great descriptive narratives by Marx concerning this takes place in section 4 of chapter 25. Here Marx at some length makes one of the best descriptions of the working proletariat class, and the misery, and drudgery caused by the bourgeois capitalist. Here he describes the unbearable pains of the laborer, and humilation of exploitation, becoming a mindless “appendage to the capitalist's machinery.” Marx said of this accumulation and misery, |
| “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and moral degradation.” |
| An interesting point that Marx quotes is the concept that in the poor nations, people in general are comfortable, but in the wealthy nations people are poor, and miserable. This law of accumulation is akin to the adage, one man's loss, is another man's fortune. |
| Hans: Your excerpt of Section 1 is a typical case of: how to excerpt an article without understanding a thing that is written in it. Section 4 is a little better. |
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