old) basis of production, and until it has sufficiently accumulated to require, and has actually found, a new basis of production in the further invention of some newer machinery. When this occurs there is a new "freeing" of a mass of workingmen from the bondage of employment, and the process begins all over anew.
This constant hunt for additional surplus-value, here by expanding the old processes of production by constantly employing more labor and here by changing the processes so as to narrow down its base of human labor, in short: the process of accumulation of capital, requires, not only a "free" but an elastic working class. It necessitates the existence of a "reserve" army of workingmen beside the active one. This it creates and augments by the repeated displacements of live-labor by machinery, and it makes use of it for the purposes of expansion when accumulation glides along smoothly until the next "fitful" explosion. The greater the accumulation of capital, the greater the "reserve" army which it needs and creates, as compared with the "active" army which it maintains. The "reserve" army is not identical with the "army of the unemployed," but the greater the "reserve" the greater the potential army of the unemployed.
The workingmen under capitalism being "free" and equal, there is no actual line of division between the active and reserve army of laborers. On the contrary they are in continual flux, men on duty and reservists continually changing place, and the same men sometimes being half active and half reserve. The existence of the reserve army and this relation between the active and reserve armies of the working class have the most deplorable effect on wages, and on the condition of the working class generally. Aside from the destitution caused by the introduction of new machinery among those workingmen who are thereby thrown out of employment and those directly dependent on them, the presence in the market of this superfluous mass of labor-power entering into competition with that part of the
