The Demographic Contradiction of Capitalism

Abstract

In this paper, I draw on recent arguments and evidence from demography (including the prediction that world population will stabilize sometime in the next century) to argue that capitalism generates a demographic contradiction. I start from Marx's analysis of capitalism as a process of extraction of surplus value but then argue that this framework rests on several demographic assumptions which remain largely implicit, but which suppose an effectively endless supply of new workers. I question this endogeneity of the reserve army of the unemployed: if it is not produced by dynamics inherent to capitalism, but if the extraction of surplus value nevertheless depends on its existence (as a way of disciplining labor), then capitalism as we know it will not outlast the coming global demographic transition.