Reserve army of labour

The Reserve army of labour, also referred as the Industrial reserve army (IRA) is Karl Marx's term for the pool of unemployed and partly-employed workers in capitalism. The reserve army of labour serves as a pool of potential replacements for those workers who are currently employed, thus enabling the capitalists to maintain a high degree of exploitation of the employed workers by holding against them the threat of dismissal and replacement by someone from the reserve army. For this reason the capitalists, despite their occasionally professed concern about unemployment, are in fact not interested in abolishing the reserve army of labour -- i.e., in employing all of the available labour.

Marx's discussion of the concept

Although the idea of the industrial reserve army of labour is closely associated with Marx, it was already in circulation in the British labour movement by the 1830s.<ref>Michael Denning (2010) "Wageless life" New Left Review. 66: 79-97</ref> The first mention of the reserve army of labour in Marx's writing occurs in a manuscript he wrote in 1847 but did not publish:

Marx introduces the concept in chapter 25 of the first volume of Das Kapital, which he did publish twenty years later in 1867, stating that:

His argument is that as capitalism develops, the organic composition of capital will increase, which means that the mass of constant capital grows faster than the mass of variable capital. Fewer workers can produce all that is necessary for society's requirements. In addition, capital will become more concentrated and centralized in fewer hands.

This being the absolute historical tendency, part of the working population will tend to become surplus to the requirements of capital accumulation over time. Paradoxically, the larger the wealth of society, the larger the industrial reserve army will become. One could add that the larger the wealth of society, the more people it can support who do not work.

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. Thus,

Marx concludes that: "Relative surplus-population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works." 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 - in that case workers are able to change jobs rapidly to get better pay.

Composition of the relative surplus population

Marx argues the relative surplus population always has three forms: the floating, the latent and the stagnant.

• The floating part refers to the temporarily unemployed ("conjunctural unemployment").

• The latent part consists of that segment of the population not yet fully integrated into capitalist production - for example, part of the rural population. It forms a pool or reservoir of potential workers for industries.

• The stagnant part consists of marginalised people with "extremely irregular employment". Its lowest stratum (excepting criminals, vagabonds and prostitutes) "dwells in the sphere of pauperism", including those still able to work, orphans and pauper children, and the "demoralised and ragged" or "unable to work".

Marx then analyses the reserve army of labour in detail, using data on Britain where he lived.

See also

• Labour power
• Unemployment
• Wage slavery
• Working class
• Precariat