Reserve army of labour

The reserve army of labour is a persistent group of unemployed, underemployed or non-proletarianized people whose presence undercuts the wages of the working class. It was first described in a prototypical form by Chartist labor activists in the 1830s, discussed by Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England, then given its most familiar form by Marx in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. It was subsequently commented upon and expanded upon by many other socialist economists and political figures, including Vladimir Lenin. Despite its origins with English Chartism, and its usage by bourgeois economists, it is sometimes treated as a strictly Marxist hypothesis in academic literature.

Introduction

Definition

The Reserve army of labour consists of the chronically unemployed or underemployed surplus working class population whose existence benefits the capitalist class by driving down down wages, (the market price, as opposed to natural price, of labour-power) and thereby driving up rates of profit. This surplus population is created by changes in the organic composition of capital, and the tendency of the class-conscious bourgeoisie to act collectively in their own class interests. The reserve army of labour is also used for procuring scabs to use against labour strikes.

Context

In Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Chapter 25, Section 3, titled "Progressive Production of a Relative surplus population or Industrial Reserve Army", Karl Marx develops the idea of an reserve army of labour, also sometimes called an industrial reserve army, or reserve army of unemployed, or relative surplus population. Marx did not invent the term "reserve army of labour". It was already being used by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England. What Marx did was theorize the reserve army of labour as a necessary part of the capitalist organization of labour-power.

History and development of the idea of the reserve army of labour

Pre-Marxist use, before 1845

According to Michael Denning, writing for the New Left Review, Issue #66, in December 2010, in an article titled "Wageless Life", the concept of a reserve army of labour was used before Engels by the Chartist labour leader Bronterre O’Brien as early as 1839:

Radicals, particularly the Chartists and Fourierist associationists, imagined the new factory workers as great industrial armies, and this common trope led the Chartist leader [James] Bronterre O'Brien to write of a reserve army of labour in the Northern Star in 1839. The young Engels picked up that image in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, and Marx would invoke the metaphor occasionally, distinguishing between the active and reserve armies of the working class. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was part of the commonsense understanding of unemployment: by 1911, even the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of labour could conclude that, ‘however prosperous conditions may be, there is always a “reserve army” of the unemployed’ —  Michael Denning, New Left Review, 2010, issue 66, article entitled "Wageless Life"

"English manufacture must have, at all times save the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve army of workers, in order to be able to produce the masses of goods required by the market in the liveliest months." - Engels, 1845

First socialist use of the idea by Engels, 1845

In The Condition of the Working Class in England, in the chapter titled "Competition," Engels introduces the idea of the "reserve army of workers" in the following passage:

[...]English manufacture must have, at all times save the brief periods of highest prosperity, an unemployed reserve army of workers, in order to be able to produce the masses of goods required by the market in the liveliest months. This reserve army is larger or smaller, according as the state of the market occasions the employment of a larger or smaller proportion of its members. And if at the moment of highest activity of the market the agricultural districts and the branches least affected by the general prosperity temporarily supply to manufacture a number of workers, these are a mere minority, and these too belong to the reserve army, with the single difference that the prosperity of the moment was required to reveal their connection with it. When they enter upon the more active branches of work, their former employers draw in somewhat, in order to feel the loss less, work longer hours, employ women and younger workers, and when the wanderers discharged at the beginning of the crisis return, they find their places filled and themselves superfluous – at least in the majority of cases. This reserve army, which embraces an immense multitude during the crisis and a large number during the period which may be regarded as the average between the highest prosperity and the crisis, is the “surplus population” of England, which keeps body and soul together by begging, stealing, street-sweeping, collecting manure, pushing hand-carts, driving donkeys, peddling, or performing occasional small jobs. In every great town a multitude of such people may be found. It is astonishing in what devices this “surplus population” takes refuge. —  Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845

Summary

In the above passage, Engels gives the prototype of the idea, establishing:

• The reserve army of unemployed workers is sought after precisely because of their unemployment. This unemployment makes them available for the "liveliest" months of market activity, during which "greater masses of goods are required," (i.e. are more demanded by consumers) compared with the rest of the year. A modern example of this principle in action might be the type of a chronically unemployed person who gets a low-paying part-time job at a Halloween store, selling costumes during the month of October.
• These "liveliest months" of market activity constitute a form of economic crisis in miniature. Engels refers to the reserve army as "the wanderers discharged at the beginning of the crisis."
• The reserve army of workers includes not only the chronically unemployed, but the chronically under-employed, who belong to the "districts and the branches least affected by the general prosperity[...]", i.e. the internal colonies, those parts of a given geographical region which have a lower standard of living than their surroundings.
• when the chronically under-employed [men] return to their original jobs after being used as part of the reserve army of workers, they find their positions have been taken workers who, owing to their social position, are even more desperate and marginalized than themselves, usually women and children, in the historical context in which Engels was writing. This marginalizes the men further, and makes them part of a "surplus population."
• This "surplus population" often becomes part of the lumpenproletariat, or homeless, and must keep itself alive through crime, begging, and unpleasant odd jobs. This makes them more subject to death, disease, imprisonment, and exploitation above and beyond what is usual even for the average proletariat.
• This "surplus population" can be found "in every great town" of England, and by extension, every geographical region in which the capitalist mode of production prevails.

"Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army. . ." - Marx, 1867

Development of the idea by Marx in Capital

The first mention of the reserve army of labour in Marx's writing occurs in a manuscript entitled "Wages", which he wrote in 1847, but did not publish:

Big industry constantly requires a reserve army of unemployed workers for times of overproduction. The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it, i.e., when the overpopulation is the greatest. Overpopulation is therefore in the interest of the bourgeoisie, and it gives the workers good advice which it knows to be impossible to carry out. Since capital only increases when it employs workers, the increase of capital involves an increase of the proletariat, and, as we have seen, according to the nature of the relation of capital and labour, the increase of the proletariat must proceed relatively even faster. The above theory, however, which is also expressed as a law of nature, that population grows faster than the means of subsistence, is the more welcome to the bourgeois as it silences his conscience, makes hard-heartedness into a moral duty and the consequences of society into the consequences of nature, and finally gives him the opportunity to watch the destruction of the proletariat by starvation as calmly as any other natural event without bestirring himself, and, on the other hand, to regard the misery of the proletariat as its own fault and to punish it. To be sure, the proletarian can restrain his natural instinct by reason, and so, by moral supervision, halt the law of nature in its injurious course of development. — Karl Marx, Wages, 1847

The idea of the labour force as an "army" (independent of the "reserves") occurs also in Chapter 1 of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Marx and Engels in 1848:

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is. — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848

19 years later, in 1867, Marx introduced a more fleshed-out concept of the reserve army of labour in chapter 25 of the first volume of Capital: Critique of Political Economy. Marx stated the following:

It is not merely that an accelerated accumulation of total capital, accelerated in a constantly growing progression, is needed to absorb an additional number of labourers, or even, on account of the constant metamorphosis of old capital, to keep employed those already functioning. In its turn, this increasing accumulation and centralisation becomes a source of new changes in the composition of capital, of a more accelerated diminution of its variable, as compared with its constant constituent. This accelerated relative diminution of the variable constituent, that goes along with the accelerated increase of the total capital, and moves more rapidly than this increase, takes the inverse form, at the other pole, of an apparently absolute increase of the labouring population, an increase always moving more rapidly than that of the variable capital or the means of employment. But in fact, it is capitalistic accumulation itself that constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of labourers, i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a surplus population. [...] The number of labourers commanded by capital may remain the same, or even fall, while the variable capital increases. This is the case if the individual labourer yields more labour, and therefore his wages increase, and this although the price of labour remains the same or even falls, only more slowly than the mass of labour rises. Increase of variable capital, in this case, becomes an index of more labour, but not of more labourers employed. It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about the same. In the latter case, the outlay of constant capital increases in proportion to the mass of labour set in action; in the former that increase is much smaller. The more extended the scale of production, the stronger this motive. Its force increases with the accumulation of capital. — Karl Marx, Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Chapter 25 (1867)

However, as Marx develops the argument further it also becomes clear that, depending on the state of the economy, the reserve army of labour will either expand or contract, alternately being absorbed or expelled from the employed workforce:

Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They are, therefore, not determined by the variations of the absolute number of the working population, but by the varying proportions in which the working-class is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase or diminution in the relative amount of the surplus-population, by the extent to which it is now absorbed, now set free. — Karl Marx, Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Chapter 25 (1867)

Marx concludes as such:

The industrial reserve army, during the periods of stagnation and average prosperity, weighs down the active labour-army; during the periods of over-production and paroxysm, it holds its pretensions in check. Relative surplus population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works. It confines the field of action of this law within the limits absolutely convenient to the activity of exploitation and to the domination of capital. — Karl Marx, Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Chapter 25 (1867)

Summary

In the above passages, Marx gave the idea its fleshed-out form, still used today, establishing:

• Even though total capital increases, the mass of constant capital grows faster than variable capital.
  • This means that the organic composition of capital (the ratio of constant to variable capital, or c/v) will increase.
• Fewer workers can produce all that is necessary for society's requirements.
• Capital will become more concentrated and centralized into fewer hands.
• This is an absolute historical tendency under capitalism.
• Part of the working population will tend to become surplus relative to the requirements of capital accumulation.
• This surplus part of the population will grow proportionately to the part of the population still necessary for capital accumulation.
• The larger the wealth of society, the larger the reserve army of labour will become.
• The larger the wealth of society, the more non-working people it can support .
• The larger the wealth of society, the more unproductive labour it can support (i.e. labour which does not produce surplus value).
• The availability of labour influences wage rates and the larger the unemployed workforce grows, the more this forces down wage rates
  • conversely, if there are plenty jobs available and unemployment is low, this tends to raise the average level of wages.

After Marx and Engels

"The formation of a reserve army of unemployed is characteristic of capitalism in general" - Lenin, 1899

Lenin

The Economic Content of Narodism (1894)

In one of his earliest published political works, The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of it in Mr. Struve’s Book (The Reflection of Marxism in Bourgeois Literature) (1894), Lenin says the following:

. . .we know that poverty is created by capitalism itself at a stage of its development prior to the factory form of production, prior to the stage at which the machines create surplus population; secondly, the form of social structure preceding capitalism—the feudal, serf system—itself created a poverty of its own, one that it handed down to capitalism . . . Capitalist over-population is due to capital taking possession of production; by reducing the number of necessary workers (necessary for the production of a given quantity of products) it creates a surplus population . . . The formation of a reserve army of unemployed is just as necessary a result of the use of machinery in bourgeois agriculture as in bourgeois industry.

— Lenin, 1894

The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899)

In The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), Lenin comments on the reserve army of labour on several occasions. Lenin quotes a local agricultural investigator in Novorossia (modern day Ukraine) by the the name of Tezyakov:

As regards Novorossia, local investigators note here the usual consequences of highly developed capitalism. Machines are ousting wage-workers and creating a capitalist reserve army in agriculture. “The days of fabulous prices for hands have passed in Kherson Gubernia too. Thanks to . . . the increased spread of agricultural implements . . .” (and other causes) “the prices of hands are steadily falling” . . . "The distribution of agricultural implements, which makes the large farms independent of workers the workers in a difficult position” — Tezyakov, 1896 (as quoted by Lenin)

Having referenced the creation of a reserve army of agricultural wage workers in semi-feudal 1890s Novorossia, and having cited a local economic authority in Novorossia who openly used this term, Lenin comments, "The same thing is noted by another Zemstvo Medical Officer, Mr. Kudryavtsev, in his work." and proceeds to quote said work:

"The prices of hands . . . continue to fall, and a considerable number of migrant workers find themselves without employment and are unable to earn anything; i.e., there is created what in the language of economic science is called a reserve army of labour—artificial surplus-population” The drop in the prices of labour caused by this reserve army is sometimes so great that “many farmers possessing machines preferred” (in 1895) “to harvest with hand labour rather than with machines” — Kudryatsev, 1895 (as quoted by Lenin)

In contrast with the bourgeoisie of the early 21st century, who often cover up the reserve army of labour or reference the reserve army of labour without using the term itself, the bourgeoisie of Imperial Russia, where Lenin grew up, were perfectly comfortable with using scientific socialist terminology to diagnose certain features of the development of capitalism in Russia. Having quoted Tsarist officials Tezyakov and Kudryatsev on the reserve army of labour developing in Imperial Russian agriculture, Lenin further comments:

More strikingly and convincingly than any argument this fact reveals how profound are the contradictions inherent in the capitalist employment of machinery! — Lenin, 1899

Lenin wanted his readers in 1899 to understand that the reserve army of labour sometimes causes the market price of the commodity labour-power to drop so low that capitalists will temporarily forgo taking advantage of the latest developments in the means of production, because they are too expensive compared with the market price of the labour-power commodity sold by the wage workers. This sacrificing of productivity and efficiency in order to take advantage of a temporary depression of wages is a contradiction of capital which Lenin saw as inherent to the development of productive technology under capitalism. Later in the same work, Lenin says:

if we presuppose the maximum development of capitalism, we must also presuppose the maximum facility for the transfer of workers from agricultural to non-agricultural occupations, we must presuppose the formation of a general reserve army from which labour-power is drawn by all sorts of employers. — Lenin, 1899

Lenin wanted his readers in 1899 to understand that this reserve army of labour applied not merely to the seasonal work of the agricultural sectors the Tsarist officials Tezyakov and Kudryatsev had been writing about, but to all industries:

. . . it is quite wrong to discuss the freeing of the farmer’s winter time independently of the general question of capitalist surplus-population. The formation of a reserve army of unemployed is characteristic of capitalism in general, and the specific features of agriculture merely give rise to special forms of this phenomenon. — Lenin, 1899

Lenin also analyzed the effects of domestic industry on the reserve army of labour:

it is extremely important to point to the significance of capitalist domestic industry in the theory of the surplus-population created by capitalism. No one has talked so much about the “freeing” of the Russian workers by capitalism as have [various] Narodniks, but none of them has taken the trouble to analyse the specific forms of the “reserve army” of labour that have arisen and are arising in Russia in the post-Reform period. None of the Narodniks has even noticed the trifling detail that home workers constitute what is, perhaps, the largest section of our “reserve army” of capitalism. By distributing work to be done in the home the entrepreneurs are enabled to increase production immediately to the desired dimensions without any considerable expenditure of capital and time on setting up workshops, etc. Such an immediate expansion of production is very often dictated by the conditions of the market, when increased demand results from a livening up of some large branch of industry . . . This error of the Narodniks is all the more gross in that the majority of them want to follow the theory of Marx, who most emphatically stressed the capitalist character of “modern domestic industry” and pointed especially to the fact that these home workers constitute one of the forms of the relative surplus-population characteristic of capitalism . . . A small example. In Moscow Gubernia, the tailoring industry is widespread (Zemstvo statistics counted in the gubernia at the end of the 1870s a total of 1,123 tailors working locally and 4,291 working away from home); most of the tailors worked for the Moscow ready-made clothing merchants. The centre of the industry is the Perkhushkovo Volost, Zvenigorod Uyezd. . . The Perkhushkovo tailors did particularly well during the war of 1877. They made army tents to the order of special contractors; subcontractors with 3 sewing-machines and ten women day workers “made” from 5 to 6 rubles a day. The women were paid 20 kopeks per day. “It is said that in those busy days over 300 women day workers from various surrounding villages lived in Shadrino (the principal village in the Perkhushkovo Volost)” . . . “At that time the Perkhushkovo tailors, that is, the owners of the workshops, made so much money that nearly all of them built themselves fine homes”. These hundreds of women day workers who, perhaps, would have a busy season once in 5 to 10 years, must always be available, in the ranks of the reserve army of the proletariat. — Lenin, 1899

Lenin talks about lumber workers as members of the reserve army of labour in the context of the development of capitalism in Tsarist Russia:

Agriculture . . . constitutes an auxiliary source of income, although in all official statistics you will find that the people engage in farming. . . . All that the peasant gets to meet his essential needs is earned in felling and floating lumber for the lumber industrialists. But a crisis will set in soon: in some five or ten years, no forests will be left. . . .” “The men who work in the lumber camps are more like boatmen; they spend the winter in the forest-encircled lumber camps . . . and in the spring, having lost the habit of working at home, are drawn to the work of lumber floating; harvesting and haymaking alone make them return to their homes. . . .” The peasants are in “perpetual bondage” to the lumber industrialists. Vyatka investigators note that the hiring season for lumbering is usually arranged to coincide with tax-paying time, and that the purchase of provisions from the employer greatly reduces earnings. . . . “Both the tree-fellers and the wood-choppers receive about 17 kopeks per summer day, and about 33 kopeks per day when they work with their own horses. . . . This paltry pay is an inadequate remuneration for labour, if we bear in mind the extremely insanitary conditions under which it is done,” . . . Thus, the lumber workers constitute one of the big sections of the rural proletariat; they have tiny plots of land and are compelled to sell their labour-power on the most disadvantageous terms. The occupation is extremely irregular and casual. The lumbermen, therefore, represent that form of the reserve army (or relative surplus-population in capitalist society) which theory describes as latent; a certain (and, as we have seen, quite large) section of the rural population must always be ready to undertake such work, must always be in need of it. That is a condition for the existence and development of capitalism. To the extent that the forests are destroyed by the rapacious methods of the lumber industrialists (which proceeds with tremendous rapidity), an ever-growing need is felt for replacing wood by coal, and the coal industry, which alone is capable of serving as a firm basis for large-scale machine industry, develops at an ever faster rate. — Lenin, 1899

Lenin also discusses the effects of the development of industrial machinery on the reserve army of labour:

the multitude of small establishments, the retention of the tie with the land, the adherence to tradition in production and in the whole manner of living—all this creates a mass of intermediary elements between the extremes of manufacture and retards the development of these extremes. In large-scale machine industry all these retarding factors disappear; the acuteness of social contradictions reaches the highest point. All the dark sides of capitalism become concentrated, as it were: the machine, as we know, gives a tremendous impulse to the greatest possible prolongation of the working day; women and children are drawn into industry; a reserve army of unemployed is formed (and must be formed by virtue of the conditions of factory production) . . . Large-scale machine industry can only develop in spurts, in alternating periods of prosperity and of crisis. The ruin of small producers is tremendously accelerated by this spasmodic growth of the factory; the workers are drawn into the factory in masses during a boom period, and are then thrown out. The formation of a vast reserve army of unemployed, ready to undertake any kind of work, becomes a condition for the existence and development of large-scale machine industry. — Lenin, 1899

Lenin discusses how fluctuation in the demand for specific kinds of labor, particularly railroad labor, expands and contracts the reserve army of labour:

The length of the Russian railway system increased from 3,819 kilometres in 1865 to 29,063 km. in 1890, i.e., more than 7-fold. . . The length of new railway opened per year differed considerably in different periods; for example, in the 5 years 1868-1872 8,806 versts of new railway were opened and in the 5 years1878-1882, only 2,221. The extent of this fluctuation enables us to judge what an enormous reserve army of unemployed is required by capitalism, which now expands, and then contracts the demand for labour. — Lenin, 1899

Lenin criticises the Narodnik view of the development of Capitalism in Russia, particularly with respect to the reserve army of labour:

The data regarding the total number of wage-workers in all branches of the national economy bring out very clearly the basic error committed by the Narodnik economists . . . who have talked a great deal about capitalism “freeing” the workers, have not thought of investigating the concrete forms of capitalist over-population in Russia; as well as in the fact that they failed completely to understand that the very existence and development of capitalism in this country require an enormous mass of reserve workers . . . We have now estimated the total number of the various categories of wage-workers, but in doing so do not wish to say that capitalism is in a position to give regular employment to them all. There is not, nor can there be, such regularity of employment in capitalist society, whichever category of wage-worker we take. Of the millions of migratory and resident workers a certain section is constantly in the reserve army of unemployed, and this reserve army now swells to enormous dimensions—in years of crisis, or if there is a slump in some industry in a particular district, or if there is a particularly rapid extension of machine production, which displaces workers—and now shrinks to a minimum, even causing that “shortage” of labour which is often the subject of complaint by employers in some industries, in some years, in some parts of the country — Lenin, 1899

The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture (1910)

In The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture (1910), Lenin pointed out that the partial survival of serfdom under the developing capitalism of Imperial Russia (and to a lesser extent Germany) constituted a form of reserve army of labour, and also that the reserve army of labour consists not only of those workers who are unemployed, but of those workers who are under-employed, as well:

The question arises of the significance of these masses of proletarian “farmers” in the general system of agriculture. In the first place, they represent the link between the feudal and the capitalist systems of social economy, their close connection and their kinship historically, a direct survival of serfdom in capitalism. If, for example, we see in Germany and particularly in Prussia that the statistics of agricultural enterprises include plots of land (known as Deputatland) which the landlord gives the agricultural labourer as part of his wages, is this not a direct survival of serfdom? The difference between serfdom, as an economic system, and capitalism lies in the fact that the former allots land to the worker, whereas the latter separates the worker from the land; the former gives the worker the means of subsistence in kind (or forces him to produce them himself on his “allotment”), the latter gives the worker payment in money, with which he buys the means of subsistence. Of course, in Germany this survival of serfdom is quite insignificant compared with what we see in Russia with her notorious “labour-rent” system of landlord farming, nevertheless it is a survival of serfdom. The 1907 census in Germany counted 579,500 “agricultural enterprises” belonging to agricultural workers and day-labourers, and of these 540,751 belong to the group of “farmers” with less than two hectares of land.

In the second place, the bulk of the “farmers” owning such insignificant plots of land that it is impossible to make a living from them, and which represent merely an “auxiliary occupation”, form part of the reserve army of unemployed in the capitalist system as a whole. It is, to use Marx’s term, the hidden form of this army. It would be wrong to imagine that this reserve army of unemployed consists only of workers who are out of work. It includes also “peasants” or “petty farmers” who are unable to exist on what they get from their minute farm, who have to try to obtain their means of subsistence mainly by hiring out their labour. Their kitchen garden or potato plot serves this army of the poor as a means of supplementing their wages or of enabling them to exist when they are not employed. Capitalism requires these “dwarf”, “parcellised” pseudo-farms so that without expense it can always have a mass of cheap labour at its disposal.

— Lenin, 1910

Lenin's Karl Marx (1914)

In Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (1914), Lenin says the following of the reserve army of labour:

Marx revealed the error made by all earlier classical political economists (beginning with Adam Smith), who assumed that the entire surplus value which is transformed into capital goes to form variable capital. In actual fact, it is divided into means of production and variable capital. Of tremendous importance to the process of development of capitalism and its transformation into socialism is the more rapid growth of the constant capital share (of the total capital) as compared with the variable capital share.

By speeding up the supplanting of workers by machinery and by creating wealth at one extreme and poverty at the other, the accumulation of capital also gives rise to what is called the “reserve army of labor”, to the “relative surplus” of workers, or “capitalist overpopulation”, which assumes the most diverse forms and enables capital to expand production extremely rapidly. In conjunction with credit facilities and the accumulation of capital in the form of means of production, this incidentally is the key to an understanding of the crises of overproduction which occur periodically in capitalist countries—at first at an average of every 10 years, and later at more lengthy and less definite intervals. From the accumulation of capital under capitalism we should distinguish what is known as primitive accumulation: the forcible divorcement of the worker from the means of production, the driving of the peasant off the land, the stealing of communal lands, the system of colonies and national debts, protective tariffs, and the like. “Primitive accumulation” creates the “free” proletarian at one extreme, and the owner of money, the capitalist, at the other.

— Lenin, 1914

Bourgeois Ideology

Regarding the reserve army of labour, the bourgeoisie have taken various strategic and ideological positions. These positions can typically be divided into the forms they take, which are denialist, obscurantist, and apologetic.

Bourgeois Denialism

The bourgeoisie often denies...

• ...the very existence of a reserve army of labour, or surplus population of unemployed workers.
• ...that they use the reserve army of labour as scabs.
• ...that the reserve army of labour has a significant effect on the economy.
• ...that it is possible (in a post-capitalist society) to give all able-bodied adults meaningful employment doing productive labour.
• ...that it is in their class interests to maintain a reserve army of labour.
• ...that there is a high rate of unemployment.

Bourgeois Obscurantism

The bourgeoisie will undertake a number of strategies to hide or obscure the reserve army of labor and its effects. This strategy is different from outright denialism, in that it centers on the action of obscuring, excluding or restricting access to available information, rather than the rhetoric of denying the truth of available information once it has been revealed. The forms bourgeois obscurantism often takes with respect to the reserve army of labor often include...

• ... removing people who have stopped looking for work from official unemployment statistics (even if they would accept a job if offered one).
• ... ignoring the statistical significance of the mass of under-employed workers who require more hours since they are not making enough money to subsist.

Bourgeois Apologia

Real estate CEO Tim Gurner advocating expansion of the reserve army of labour (without using the term itself) during an onstage appearance at the Australian Financial Review's Property Summit.

Contrary to the above two strategies, there exists a third strategy which does not seek to deny or obscure the reserve army of labour, but rather to acknowledge, justify, and embrace the reserve army of labour, sometimes even going so far as to suggest that the reserve army of labour is good for society as a whole and not merely good for the bourgeoisie, thereby conflating the class interests of the bourgeoisie with the interests of the proletariat.

• Originally GATT was set up as a temporary body to facilitate trade negotiations. The International Trade Organisation (ITO) had instead been created to break down trade barriers, govern trade during negotiations, and resolve trade disputes. The ITO Charter, adopted at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTE) in 1948, included (among other "leftist" principles) a provision that all nations should maintain full employment. This provision outraged the U.S. and U.K.; both calling it socialistic and a violation of national sovereignty. In 1950, the U.S. government refused to ratify the agreement, and the ITO died
  • Here, we can see a blatant instance of the international bourgeoisie colluding to frame the full employment of the proletariat of all nations as somehow being harmful to society (specifically the bourgeois ideal of national sovereignty).

• Real estate CEO Tim Gurner openly advocated for a reserve army of labour during an onstage appearance at the Australian Financial Review’s Property Summit:

  I think the problem that we’ve had is that people have decided they really didn’t want to work so much anymore through COVID, and that has had a massive issue on productivity. . . . They have been paid a lot to do not too much, and we need to see that change. We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment needs to jump 40-50 percent, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurt in the economy.

• The Economist, a bourgeois magazine, published a thinkpiece on November 24th, 2022, titled "Why American unemployment needs to rise," openly advocating for an increase in the size of the reserve army of labour:

  As the tightest corner of the ultra-taut American labour market, Minnesota bears watching. Its unemployment rate has started to tick up, rising from 1.8% in June to 2.1% last month. It might seem perverse to call that good news, but one lesson from the past year is that excessively low unemployment really does hurt: it constrains and corrodes the services offered by hospitals, schools, restaurants and more. In Northfield there is at least one tiny hint that relief might be at hand. After a difficult dry spell, the HideAway, a downtown café, received four job applications over the past two weeks. From those it hired two sorely needed baristas. “We just got lucky,” reckons Joan Spaulding, its owner.

• The Wall Street Journal, a bourgeois magazine, published a thinkpiece on July 31, 2022, titled "Lower Inflation Likely Requires Higher Unemployment; How High Is the Question," also openly advocating for an increase in the size of the reserve army of labour. In that piece, former United States Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was quoted as saying the following:

  [in order to lower inflation] we need two years of 7.5% unemployment, or five years of 6% unemployment, or…one year of 10% unemployment

• CNN, a bourgeois news network, published a thinkpiece on September 2, 2022, titled "Yes, the unemployment rate rose. Here’s why that’s good news." In that piece, United States Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh was quoted as saying:

  Increasing the supply of available workers is positive for the economy, even if it does increase the official jobless rate

• CBS, a bourgeois news network, published an article on September 30, 2022, titled "Buckle up, America: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment." In that piece, it is suggested that wage increases cause inflation, because wage increases cause the bourgeoisie to hike prices. In short, it is suggested that the prices of commodities are determined or regulated by wages.

  Here's the idea behind why boosting the nation's unemployment could cool inflation. With an additional million or two people out of work, the newly unemployed and their families would sharply cut back on spending, while for most people who are still working, wage growth would flatline. When companies assume their labor costs are unlikely to rise, the theory goes, they will stop hiking prices. That, in turn, slows inflation.

  The above idea, the bourgeois dogma that “The prices of commodities are determined or regulated by wages." was firmly argued against by Marx in Chapter 5 of Value, Price and Profit (1865):

  The dogma that “wages determine the price of commodities,” expressed in its most abstract terms, comes to this, that “value is determined by value,” and this tautology means that, in fact, we know nothing at all about value. Accepting this premise, all reasoning about the general laws of political economy turns into mere twaddle. It was, therefore, the great merit of Ricardo that in his work on the principles of political economy, published in 1817, he fundamentally destroyed the old popular, and worn-out fallacy that “wages determine prices,” a fallacy which Adam Smith and his French predecessors had spurned in the really scientific parts of their researches, but which they reproduced in their more exoterical and vulgarizing chapters.