UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF WORK IN JAPAN

Abstract

It is widely known that capitalistic accumulation or the development of productivity causes, through the process of high change in organic composition of the capital, relative surplus population or the unemployed labourers. Its inevitability can be explained by the law of disproportion in the capitalistic production. The labourers are at once attracted on the one hand and on the other repelled. In other words, employment and unemployment occur at the same time in the various enterprises of productive branches, and thus in the society as a whole relative surplus population or the unemployed labourers always exist and increase. Relative surplus population is thus the result of capitalistic accumulation and also a necessary condition for its development. The existence of the unemployed labourers plays a part of a lever for capitalistic accumulation. The fact has two aspects. In the first place, Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of disposable labour-power which the natural increase of population yields. It requires for its free play an industrial reserve army independent of these natural limits.'n) The unemployed are exactly what Marx called the human material always ready for use being independently of the limits of actual increase of population 2) and mean the existence of freely disposable labour power under the absolute control of the capital. Therefore, when the capital requires a greater amount of labour at the prosperous phase of economic cycle, relative surplus population answers that demand and supplies with labour power. The unemployed are produced as a result of multiplying in value of the capital in the process of progress of organic composition of the capital with disproportioned development, while the same factor causes them to function as a source of necessary additional labour power. Secondly, the existence of the unemployed lowers the various conditions