Reserve army of labour

Reserve army of labour is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. 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. 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. Children began to work already at a very early age.

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.Friedrich Engels discussed the reserve army of labour before Marx did, in Engels's famous book The condition of the working class in England (1845). 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:

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