cess of accumulation of capital being its labor-saving quality, and the purpose of its introduction being the replacing of costly live-labor by a cheaper mechanical process, the accumulation of capital is only possible by the constant replacement of live-labor by machinery, by the ever-recurring forcing out of employment of great masses of labor. Thus, this mechanical law of the accumulation of capital, which, as we have seen, finds its economic expression in the rising organic composition of capital and therefore in the falling rate of profits, finds its sociological expression in the capitalistic law of relative over-population.
That is to say, that under capitalism a country may become over-populated with relation to the needs of capital or of the capitalist class in laborers, and large masses of its population may thereby lose their means of productive employment and therefore their means of subsistence, while the absolute needs as well as means of employment and subsistence are quite sufficient to provide for all its members. The Malthusian law, whatever else may be said of it, certainly has no application to the question of population under the capitalist system of society. For aside from the question whether there are any "natural" laws governing the growth of population and of the means of subsistence, such laws, if there be any, would be quite superfluous and inoperative under capitalism. For the very processes by which capital is being accumulated produce an over-population long before the natural limit of population could be reached, and that limit is therefore never reached under capitalism.
The laborers who are continually being thrown out of employment by the introduction of new, labor-saving; machinery, are thereafter absorbed in whole or in part by the process of production, when the new capital, or the old capital in its new form, has had sufficient time to expand and accumulate on the new basis so as to need new "hands." This process of absorption continues as long as the accumulation proceeds on this new (soon to become
