Capital’s reserve army

The capitalist system requires for its proper functioning a reserve army of unemployed workers which it can draw on in times of expansion and cast aside in times of contraction. This remains as true today as when Marx first drew attention to it a hundred years ago. At that time every country had within its borders such an industrial reserve army composed of its own subjects. In Britain today with unemployment since the war at comparatively low levels some people have drawn the conclusion that Capitalism has reformed itself so as to abolish large-scale unemployment. However, Capitalism is an international system, political boundaries don’t matter to it. Industries in all the countries of the world are linked by means of the world market. Looked at from this point of view Capitalism has by no means abolished large-scale unemployment.

International Capitalism may have put to work nearly all the native workers in Britain, France and West Germany, but as Capitalism expands so does its demand for workers. If these can’t be found within a country they must be drawn from outside. This is precisely what has happened. The capitalists of North West Europe have drawn on the reserve of workers in such places as Spain, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey as well as from North Africa, Malta and Cyprus. Britain, France and Holland can also draw on their former colonial territories in the West Indies and in Asia. In these areas which are, as it were, on the outskirts of Capitalism unemployment is very high. But it has been noticed that workers don’t leave just because of high unemployment and low wages. They leave and return in accordance with the needs of Capitalism in the more developed parts of the world. They form a true industrial reserve army. The myth has been created in the post-war years that the boom-slump cycle inherent in the capitalist system has been overcome. This is just not true as any worker in the motor industry could tell you. The indices of industrial production, trade and unemployment still show fluctuations. True, the effects of these fluctuations haven’t been so widespread as in the past, but that’s another matter (connected, in fact, with the growth of non-industrial employment). The point is that such fluctuations do still take place. And migration from the “labour reserves” takes place in accordance with them.

In the quarterly magazine Race, for July, 1965, Ceri Peach has an article, West Indian Migration to Britain: The Economic Factors. The article shows how it is not population density or low economic development in the West Indies that causes migration but rather the demand for workers in Britain. There is a “close relationship” between the demand for labour in the U.K. and West Indian immigration.” Using the totals of unfilled vacancies for adult workers as an index of demand for labour, we get (p. 34):

This Table shows that “the number of West Indian arrivals rose and fell in accordance with the demand for labour.” The same goes for people returning. More go back when demand is slack than at other times. “Both in the movement into Britain and in the outward movement to the Caribbean, West Indian migrants have been largely governed by conditions in this country.” The 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act upset the pattern by causing a rush to beat the ban in a time of slack demand. But now economic factors are beginning to take over again even under the system where migrants have to get a voucher first. The demand and use of these vouchers also fluctuates with conditions in Britain.

There is of course the danger that the existence of large-scale unemployment in places like Jamaica might give rise there to extremist movements which might succeed in overthrowing a friendly government. But this does not necessarily lead to the loss of the labour reserves. Algerians still go to work in France and elsewhere; even the Yugoslav Government encourages emigration to West Germany. And the flow of refugees is not without its use, economic as well as political. Indeed for many years Capitalism in West Germany lived on refugees from the East.

This August the Labour Government announced tougher restrictions on immigration, mainly for political reasons such as the fear of social unrest and the loss of the racialist vote. That this was done for political reasons is obvious since immigration would begin to fall off anyway when the expected slump in industrial production and employment materialises. However, this manoeuvre could easily backfire. What happens when Capitalism begins to expand again? There will be a demand for more workers who can only come from the traditional reserves. Whichever party is in power, and it may well be the Labour Party, will be faced with an awkward political decision. To prevent their entry and thus slow down the expansion or to let them in and face the charge of “bringing in the blacks.” Such are the problems of administering Capitalism!

We see then that Capitalism’s reserve army of unemployed is still as real as ever. Those who argue on the basis of employment conditions in Britain that Capitalism has abolished unemployment fail to realise that Capitalism is a world-wide economic system. Their argument is as invalid as would have been that of someone who in the 1930’s used the employment statistics for the South East to prove that Capitalism had solved the unemployment problem. The plain fact of the matter is that Capitalism, as an international system, has not and cannot.

A.L.B.