5. The Industrial Reserve Army

We have seen that the introduction of female and child-labor in industry is one of the most powerful means whereby the capitalists reduce the wages of working-men. There is, however, another means which, periodically, is just as powerful. This is the introduction of workingmen from regions that are backward and whose population has slight wants, but whose labor-power has not yet been sapped by the factory system. The development of machinery makes possible, not only the employment of such untrained working-men in the place of trained ones, but also their cheap and prompt transportation to the place where they are wanted. Hand in hand with the development of production goes the system of transportation; colossal production corresponds to colossal transportation, not only of merchandise, but also of persons. Steamships and railroads, these much-vaunted pillars of civilization, not only carry guns, liquor and syphilis to barbarians, they also bring the barbarians and their barbarism to us. The flow of agricultural laborers into the cities is becoming constantly stronger; and from ever farther regions are the swarms of those drawing near who have fewer wants, are more patient and offer less resistance. There is a constant stream of emigration from one country of Europe to another, from Europe to America and even from the Orient to western lands. These foreign workers are partly expropriated people, small farmers and producers, whom the capitalist system of production has ruined, driven on the street and deprived not only of a home, but also of a country. Look at these numberless emigrants and ask whether it is Socialism which robs them of their country.

Through the expropriation of the small producers, through the importation from distant lands of large masses of labor, through the use of the labor of women and children, through the shortening of the time necessary to acquire a trade, – through all these means the capitalist system of production is able to increase stupendously the quantity of labor forces at its disposal. And side by side with this goes a steady increase in the productivity of human labor as a result of the uninterrupted progress in the technical arts.

Simultaneously with these tendencies the machine tends steadily to displace workmen and render them superfluous. Every machine saves labor-power; unless it did that, it would be useless. In every branch of industry the transition from hand to machine labor is accompanied by the greatest suffering to the working-men who are affected by it. Whether they are factory workers or independent craftsmen, they are made superfluous by the machine and thrown out upon the streets. It was this effect of machinery that the workingmen felt first. Many riots during the first year of the nineteenth century attest the suffering which the transition from hand to machine labor, or the introduction of new machinery, inflicts upon the working-class and the despair to which they are driven thereby. The introduction of machinery, as well as its subsequent improvement, is always harmful to certain divisions of labor. True enough, under some conditions other working-men, for instance, those who make the machines, may profit by it. But it may be doubted whether a consciousness of this fact affords much comfort to those who are starving.

Every new machine causes as much to be produced as before by fewer workmen, or larger production with no increase in the number of workmen. From this it follows that, if the number of workmen employed in a country does not decrease with the development of the system of machinery, the market must be extended in proportion to the increased productivity of these workers. But since the economic development increases the productivity of labor at the same time that it increases the quantity of disposable labor, it follows that, in order to prevent enforced idleness among workmen, the market must be extended at a much more rapid pace than that at which the productivity of labor is increased by the machine. Such a rapid extension of the market has, however, rarely occurred under the rule of capitalist production. Therefore, enforced idleness is a permanent phenomenon under the capitalist system of production, and is inseparable from it. Even in the best times when the market suddenly undergoes a considerable extension and business is brisk, production is not able to furnish work for all the unemployed. During bad times, however, when business is at a standstill, their number reaches enormous proportions. They constitute, with the workers of superfluous small concerns, a great army, “the industrial reserve army,” as Marx called it, an army of labor forces that stands ever ready at the disposal of the capitalist, an army out of which he can draw his reserves whenever the industrial campaign grows hot.

To the capitalist this reserve army is invaluable. It places in his hands a powerful weapon with which to curb the army of the employed. After excessive work on the part of some has produced lack of work for others, then the idleness of these is used as a means to keep up, and even increase, the excessive work of the former. And yet there are people who will contend that matters are today arranged in the best possible way!

Although the size of the industrial reserve army rises and falls with the ups and downs of business, nevertheless, on the whole it shows a steady tendency to increase. This is inevitable. The technical development moves on at a constantly increasing pace and steadily extends its field of operations, while, on the other hand, the extension of the markets is hemmed in by natural limits.

What, then, is the full significance of lack of work? It signifies not only want and misery to the unemployed, not only intensified servitude and exploitation to the employed; it signifies also uncertainty of livelihood for the whole working class. Whatever hardships former modes of exploitation inflicted upon the exploited, one boon was left them: the certainty of a livelihood. The sustenance of the serf and the slave was assured at least during the life of the master himself. Only when the master perished was the life of his dependents in peril. Whatever amount of misery and want afflicted the people under former systems of production, it never resulted from production itself; it was the result of a disturbance of production, brought on by failure of crops, droughts, floods, invasions of hostile armies, etc.

Today the existence of the exploiter is not bound up in that of the exploited. At any moment the workman, with his wife and children, can be thrown upon the street and given over to starvation without the exploiter, whom he has made rich, being the worse for it.

The misery of enforced idleness is today rarely the result of a disturbance in production caused by outside influences; it is the necessary result of the development of the present system of production. Just the reverse happens of what occurred under the former systems of production; disturbances of production often improve the opportunities for work rather than lessening them; remember the results of the war of 1870 upon the industrial life of Germany and France in the years immediately following.

Under our former system of production on a small scale the income of the worker was in proportion to his industry. Laziness ruined him and finally threw him out of work. Today, on the contrary, unemployment becomes greater the harder and the longer the workman toils; he brings enforced idleness upon himself through his own labor. Among the many maxims from the world of small production which capitalist large production has reversed is: “A man’s industry is his fortune.”

Labor-power is no more a shield against want and misery than is property. As the specter of bankruptcy hovers always over the small farmer and the craftsman, so the specter of unemployment hovers always over the wage-earner. Of all the ills which attend the present system of production the most trying, that which harrows men’s souls deepest and pulls up by the roots every instinct of conservatism, is the permanent uncertainty of a livelihood. This constant uncertainty as to one’s own condition undermines one’s belief in the permanence of the existing order and one’s interest in its preservation. Whoever is kept in eternal fear by the existing order loses all fear of a new one.

Excessive work, lack of work, the destruction of the family – these are the gifts that the capitalist system of production brings to the proletariat, and at the same time it forces more and more of the population into proletarian conditions of living.