| This question <700|700> overall <699|701> Dyoung: <685|18>. (graded B+) |
| Question 780: What is the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation? |
| [700] Dyoung: Capitalist Accumulation = Worker Exploitation. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, according to my understanding of Marx, hinges on worker exploitation. |
| In [2004fa:596], Rugdoctor talks about the relation between pauperism and the relative surplus population. The pauperized population is a mix of people that are later called the “Industrial Reserve Army”; they are people who are unemployed or partially employed, and this Army of people constantly changes in size and composition depending on the needs of capitalists for labor. Marx says, “The more extensive the pauperized section of the working class and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism” (Marx 798:1). |
| As capitalists acquire more capital, they also gain more power over the pauperized sections of the working class. They gain the ability to work their workers to exhaustion and death, because there are always more workers to take the place of the ones lost. Since this is the case, we can summarize the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation is that as capitalists get more and more wealthy, the poverty and conditions for workers steadily decreases. |
| Hans: You are just giving a sound byte with the result. I would have preferred you saying something about the economic mechanisms which see to it that capital always finds a relative surplus population on the market. |
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