capitalists at this pole, more wage-
workers at that… Accumu-lation of
capital is, therefore, increase of
the proletariat.” (600[613].) Since,
however, owing to the progress of
machinery, owing to improved
agriculture, etc., fewer and fewer
workers are necessary in order to
produce the same quantity of
products, since this perfecting,
i.e., this making the workers
superfluous, grows more rapidly
than capital itself, what becomes
of this ever-increasing number of
workers? They form an industrial
reserve army, which, during times
of bad or moderate business, is
paid below the value of its labour
and is irregularly employed, or
comes under the care of public
Poor Law institutions, but which is
indispensable to the capitalist
class at times when business is
especially lively, as is palpably
evident in England-and which
under all circumstances serves to
break the power of resistance of
the regularly employed workers
and to keep their wages down.
“The grater the social wealth… the
greater is the [relative surplus-
population or] industrial reserve
army…. But the greater this
reserve army in proportion to the
active [regularly employed] labour
army, the grater is the mass of a
consolidated [permanent] surplus-
population [or strata of workers]
whose misery is in inverse ratio
to its torment of labour. The more
extensive, finally, the Lazarus-
layers of the working class, and
the industrial reserve army, the
grater is official pauperism. This