Accumulation of capital, though originally appearing as its quantitative extension only, results eventually in the change in its composition, under a constant increase of its constant constituent, and a constant decline in variable constituent.
On several occasions when the total capital increases, its variable part may also increase, but it will increase in a constantly diminishing proportion. Technological development, rise in productivity of labour and centralization tend to decrease the ratio of variable capital further. Since in a capitalist society the demand for labour depends on the variable constituent only, it falls progressively, and the labouring population, therefore, produces, along with the accumulation of capital, the means by which it is rendered superfluous and surplus to an increasing extent. Accordingly, the advancement of modern industry leads to unemployment and underemployment.
For Marx, therefore, the correlation between accumulation of capital and rate of wages is nothing else than the correlation between the unpaid labour transformed into capital and the additional paid labour necessary for the setting in motion of this additional capital. It is not to be seen as a relation between two independent factors – population and capital. It must be seen as the relation between unpaid labour and paid labour of the same labouring population. Thus Marx shows that the existence of what has been considered as surplus population is a necessary product of accumulation of wealth on a capitalist basis. It is also a lever of capitalistic development (Ananyeva, et al., 1974).
If the quantity of unpaid labour supplied by the working-class, and accumulated by the capitalist class, increases so rapidly, that its conversion into capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labour, then wages rise, and, all other circumstances remaining equal, the unpaid labour diminishes in proportion. But as soon as this diminution touches the point at which the surplus labour that nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quantity, a reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalized, accumulation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receives a check. To explain this, Marx would use a simile: as in religion man is governed by the products of his own brain, so too in capitalistic production, is he governed by the products of his own hand. |
