Key Arguments

• The same causes that develop the expansive power of capital also develop the labor-power at its disposal
• The reserve army grows in proportion to the active labor army
• The mass of consolidated misery is in inverse ratio to the torment of labor

Source Quotes

The more extensive, finally, the pauperized sections of the working class and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws, it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here.

Finally, the law which always holds the relative surplus population or industrial reserve army in equilibrium with the extent and energy of accumulation rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. 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 at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.

It forms part of the faux frais of capitalist production: but capital usually knows how to transfer these from its own shoulders to those of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productivity of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, also develop the labour-power at its disposal.

Key Concepts

• This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
• accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth
• The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productivity of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army.

Context

Marx formulating the central thesis of the chapter: that wealth and misery grow in tandem, not in opposition