The industrial reserve army is the legion of workers in an economy lying in wait. It consists of part of the population that is constantly changing both in size and the elements to which it is made of. Also referred to as the relative surplus population, it comes from the accumulation of capital within the capitalist system. According to Marxian theory it plays a couple of key roles in a capitalist economy. The industrial reserve army is comprised 4 elements, called forms by Marx*, 3 of the forms are permanent, but the fourth form is temporary. The three permanent forms are: the floating, the latent, and the stagnant.* The temporary form Marx refers to as the “sphere of pauperism”.* Each of the forms that make up the industrial reserve army are unique …show more content…
The make up of the latent form is fairly stable as workers do not come and go as much and as easily as workers in the floating form. Capitalists use this part of the industrial labor force as a reserves since they can be recruited into the workforce just not that easily. The final permanent form of the industrial reserve army is the stagnant form. This form consists of people who Marx considers to have “extremely irregular employment”.* Workers here are employed but are looking for better work in terms of both pay and quality. The modern term for this type of worker would be those who are underemployed. They frequently have part time jobs, seasonal work, work in a dangerous occupation, or maybe have a job under utilizes their abilities. A dog walker with a bachelors degree would be a great example of someone who is part of the stagnant form of the industrial reserve army. The temporary, or what Marx considers to be temporary, form of the industrial reserve army is the sphere of pauperism which consists of “the actual lumpenproletariat”.* Marx has, or had, a very low opinion of this segment of the population.
a. Systems: Personnel Readiness Management (PRM), Personnel Information Management (PIM), Personnel Accounting and Strength Reporting (PASR), Unit Manning Roster (UMR), Electronic Military Personnel Office (eMILPO), Defense Theater Accounting System (DTAS), Interactive Personnel Electronic Records Management System (iPERMS).
Labor and the American Revolution is but one of dozens by one the most well known and controversial marxist historians of the last century, Philip S. Foner. To say he was a prolific writer is somewhat of an understatement. His obituary credited him with writing more then a hundred volumes, but Worldcat.org shows more then double that number authored or co-authored by him. In 1941, his political views brought the scrutiny of a communist witch hunt conducted by the state legislature's Rapp-Coudert Committee, which led to his subsequent dismissal from the faculty of New York's City College, along with dozens of others including his three brothers. In 1967 he finally returned to academia, joining the faculty of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. One has to wonder though if this was a step taken out of necessity, or rather a desire to teach again, and perhaps to show a kind of symbolic solidarity with the down-trodden of our society, which he dedicated so much of his life to writing about. Foner retired in 1979 and in 1981 City College finally apologized to all of those who were fired forty years earlier, for what it called regretful violations of academic freedom.
Factory workers of this time had very little freedom. Aside from having to work outrageous hours for 6 days of the week, there was no job security, no solid way to survive day-to-day, and if a family member were to suffer an accident, families had no financial means to carry on. In the early 1900s, there were no labor laws, including the right to organize, an eight-hour day, safety standards, or unemployment/disability pensions. M...
Magdoff, F., & Magdoff, H. (2004). Disposable workers: Today's reserve army of labor. Monthly Review, 55(11), 18-35. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/213209994?accountid=14543
Karl Marx looks at human societies as a whole, and asks how they reproduce themselves, and as a result, change. For Marx a fundamental question about any society is whether it can produce more than it needs to reproduce itself, that is, a surplus product. Karl Marx believed that the middle class is based upon economic factors and rooted in solely that perspective. Many people have examined his work closely arguing that economic factors could not possibly be the only definition o...
Karl Marx is one of the most influential socialists, economists, and philosophers to emerge in the 19th century. His work was largely ignored by the scholars of his lifetime, yet has gained rapid acceptance since his death in 1883. One of his greatest works includes the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 which introduces his central concepts of alienation labor. In this essay I will provide an interpretation of what I understand Marx’s account of alienated labor to be well as a critical evaluation of the material he provides.
Commodity fetishism has blinded people into believing that value is a relationship between objects, when in reality, it is a relationship between people. This in turn, prevents people from thinking about the social labor condition workers have to endure; they only care and value about how much objects costs. They think that the source of the value comes from the cost, but it truly comes from labor (FC). Through this objectification stems alienation and estrangement. Marx starts with the assumption that humans have an intrinsic quality. As human beings, individuals like to be create and manipulate his or her environment. Creating is a part of people; therefore, people their being into their creations. However, Marx postulates that capitalism and specialized division of labor separates that working class from their creations in four ways- through alienation from the product, the labor process, one’s species-being, and humanity itself. The working class suffers through this hostility to make create more wealth for owners of factories. They get trapped in a cycle to make products for profit, but as automation advances, machines begins to take over people’s jobs; therefore, there less employment opportunities available, which in turn allows factory owners to decrease wages and exploit and devalue the working class (EL). In the The Poverty
Turbulent times of a newly freed democracy bred a longing for civil liberties and birthed what would become equality for all. The United States of America, known for independence, has not always been balanced in its freedom. The labor movement in America was a significant step in developing equal opportunity. In the nation’s infancy, working conditions were abominable. Workers were underpaid, overworked, and abused. Women and children in the workforce were ubiquitous in certain industries, often earning far less than a man would. Countless laborers were injured or killed on the job, and there was no health insurance. If a worker was wounded while working, he or she would simply be replaced. As a result of the deplorable labor environment, unions
When you hear the name Karl Marx (1818-1883), it is tempting to wonder and question why you should be studying him, considering that he’s been dead for over a hundred years already. This German philosopher had become one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Marx’s ideas all come together and holds that human societies develop through class struggles, a conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that dominates over the working class (known as the proletariat). He was well known for studying the disputes that occur between different classes in society, also refer to as the ‘conflict theory.’ Through his theories of alienation, Marx argued that capitalism promoted the idea of inequality, commodification, and the exploitation of labor. The purpose of this paper is to view Marx’s concept of capitalism and alienation along with how it affects the workers.
The changes accompany the transition from one epoch to another. In the late nineteenth century labor has become a commodity to the merchants, and the formation of a new mode of production has risen which gave rise to a capitalist society. There is a new class distinction between the laborer and those who owned the means of production.
Webster’s dictionary defines the word profession as a type of job that requires special education, training, or skill. Many Soldiers would not consider the Army as a profession but a way of life. Some think the word profession belongs to everyday jobs like a plumber, mechanic, or doctor. Dr. Don M. Snider stated “the Army is a profession because of the expert work it produces, because the people in the Army develop themselves to be professionals, and because the Army certifies them as such” (Snider, D. M. 2008). In October 2010, the Secretary of the Army directed the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to lead an Army wide assessment of the state of the Army Profession. We have been at war as a Country for over a decade and the Army wanted to know how to shape the future of the Army as a profession and the effects the past decade had on our profession.
Industrial Revolution, which took place over much of the nineteenth century, had many advantages. It provided people with tools for a better life; people were no longer dependent on the land for all of their goods. The Industrial Revolution made it possible for people to control nature more than they ever had before. However, now people were dependent on the new machines of the Industrial Age (1). The Revolution brought with it radical changes in the textile and engine worlds; it was a time of reason and innovations. Although it was a time of progress, there were drawbacks to the headway made in the Industrial Revolution. Granted, it provided solutions to the problems of a world without industry. However, it also created problems with its mechanized inventions that provided new ways of killing. Ironically, there was much public faith in these innovations; however, these were the same inventions that killed so many and contributed to a massive loss of faith. These new inventions made their debut in the first world war (2) ).
The Industrial Revolution’s foundation began with many new technical inventions that widened the need for industrial workers. Hargreave’s spinning jenny and Arkwright’s water frame both allowed inexperienced workers to spin yarn much faster than talented cottage weavers. Thus, these developments not only assisted the manufacture of cotton goods by making the process much quicker, but they also began the cultivation of a new class of factory workers. For the first time, men, women, and children united in a single working space with complicated machinery to work for middle-class employers. Critics defined this new class of workers as being made up of “part-humans: soulless depersonalized, disembodied, who could become members, or little wheels rather of a complex mechanism” who yielded to their boss’s every demand (Pollard 1). Once-skilled artisans and craftsmen were often subject to working routine processes as machines began to mass produce the goods formerly made by hand. This change in labor had a devastating impact on accomplished workers; they were no longer any different than their unskilled counterparts, women, and children in the eyes of factory owners.
The American Labor movement called attention to working condition problems in the United States. Gompers states (1919: 183) “The American labor movement will cooperate with all other agencies to help in this reconstruction time. Our movement is not to destroy, but to construct”. It was a time for change, there was a rapid growth of population, manufacturing factories and exploitation of its workers. The American Labor movement fought for worker’s rights and created lasting labor laws to protect individuals from exploitation.
In stark contradiction to pre-industrial capitalistic characteristics, were those conditions that were endured by workers under capitalism and its emphasis on modern industrialized manufacturing. To Marx it seemed as if the ordinary factory worker was viewed as being no more than a replaceable cogwheel in an enormous and emotionless machine driven only by quotas and greed.