Karl Marx’s Theory of Surplus Population

Karl Marx’s Theory of Surplus Population

Karl Marx, the famous author of Das Kapital, did not propound any specific theory of populations. However, he rejected the Malthusian theory as completely imaginary and false. He did not accept Malthus’s view that population increases in geometrical progression and means of subsistence in arithmetical progression. Marx’s views about population growth are based on his theory of surplus value. According to him, the problem of population arises only in a capitalist society which fails to provide jobs to all workers because the supply of labour is more than its demand. As a result, there is surplus population. But there is no surplus population in a socialist society where the means of production are in the hands of workers. All able bodied workers are employed and there is no surplus labour. So there is no need to check the growth of population in a socialist country.Capitalism, according to Marx, is divided into two classes – the workers who sell their ‘labour-power’, and the capitalist who own the ‘means of production’ (factories). Labour-power is like any other commodity. The labourer sells his labour for its value. And its value, like the value of any other commodity is the amount of labour that is required to produce labour-power. In other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence (i.e., food, clothing, housing, etc.) necessary for the maintenance of the labourer.This is determined by the number of hours necessary for its production. But the value of commodities necessary for the subsistence of the labourer is never equal to the value of the produce that labourer produces. If a labourer works for ten hours a day, but it takes him six hours’ labour to produce goods to cover his subsistence, he will be paid wages equal to 6 hours’ labour. The difference worth 4 hours’ labour goes into the capitalist pocket in the form of profit. Marx calls this unpaid work “surplus value”.According to Marx, this surplus value leads to capital accumulation. The capitalist’s main aim is to increase the surplus value in order to increase his profit. He does so by “the speeding up of labour”, which means increasing the productivity of labour. When the productivity of labour increases, the labourer produces the same commodity in less hours, say 4 hours, or he produces more (two) commodities, say in 6 hours. This raises the surplus value and hence the capitalist’s profit. The increase in the productivity of labour requires a technological change that helps in increasing total output and lowering the cost of production. He introduces labour-saving machines which increase labour productivity. This process of replacing labour by machines creates an industrial reserve army which increases as capitalism develops. The industrial reserve army is the surplus population. The larger the industrial reserve army, the larger the surplus population and the worse are the conditions of the employed labourers.This is because the capitalists can dismiss dissatisfied and troublesome workers and replace them from the ranks of the reserve army. Capitalists are also able to cut down wages to a semi-starvation level and raise more surplus value, while the surplus population increases. Marx explains his surplus theory of population thus: “It is the working population which, while effecting the accumulation of capital also produces the means whereby it is itself rendered relatively superfluous, is turned into a relatively surplus population, and it does so to an ever increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist method.”