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Reserve army of labour is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy.〔Francis Green, “The Reserve Army Hypothesis: A Survey of Empirical Applications,” in Paul Dunne (ed.), ''Quantitative Marxism'', Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, pp. 123-140.〕 It refers to the unemployed and under-employed in capitalist society. It is synonymous with "industrial reserve army" or "relative surplus population", except that the unemployed can be defined as those actually looking for work and that the relative surplus population also includes people unable to work. The use of the word "army" refers to the workers being conscripted and regimented in the workplace in a hierarchy, under the command or authority of the owners of capital. 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 work. Prior to what Marx regarded as the start of the capitalist era in human history (i.e. before the 16th century), structural unemployment on a mass scale rarely existed, other than that caused by natural disasters and wars.〔, chapter 2.〕 In ancient societies, all people who could work necessarily had to work, otherwise they would starve; a slave or a serf by definition could not become "unemployed". There was normally very little possibility of "earning a crust" without working at all, and the usual attitude toward beggars and idlers was harsh.〔Garraty, p. 14.〕 Children began to work already at a very early age. ==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. 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'',〔(Karl Marx, ''Das Kapital'', chapter 25 )〕 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. Marx called it "the antagonism of capital accumulation" and he cites his ''The Poverty of Philosophy'', (Chapter 2, Section 1) to explain this phenomenon in relation with relations of production.〔''Capital, Volume I'', Chapter 25〕 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reserve army of labour」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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