In general, new technologies are developed, in the Innovation Cycle, at the point in the Autumn/Crisis phase of the long wave, as capital seeks innovative ways of introducing labour-saving technologies, as well as reducing the cost of materials etc. These technologies create new labour saving machines etc., but these same technologies, be it the steam engine, electric motor, internal combustion engine, microchip, originally developed for that purpose, then later become also the base technology for the development of whole new consumer products industries. What may initially result in an absolute, as well as relative, decline in the employment of labour, metamorphoses into a significant absolute increase in the employment of labour. And, in the process, as Marx says, there is no predetermined destination for where the released funds may go. In the 19th century, released wages went to employ a much larger number of domestic servants, for example. In the 20th century, large amounts of released wages has gone to employ a bloated state bureaucracy, which acts to stabilise the position of the ruling-class.
But, as Marx also says, the physical product that is the equivalent of the released variable-capital is not connected to the released workers either. In the 19th century, part of the food etc. that the unemployed workers would otherwise have bought with their wages was instead paid to them as Poor Relief, or to cover their upkeep in the workhouse. Today, it covers unemployment and other benefits. But, a large part of the food etc. that would otherwise have comprised the physical equivalent of the wage, could just as easily be exported.
“Machinery always creates a relative surplus population, a reserve army of workers, which greatly increases the power of capital.” (p 554)
And, this is why the arguments of reformists and syndicalists that workers can increase their wages, the social wage, etc. simply by “more militancy”, and trades union struggle, or the actions of a more left-wing social-democratic government, via policies of redistribution, are crass and ultimately subjectivist. It is precisely because, at times, the more rapid accumulation of capital strengthens the relative bargaining power of workers, because the demand for labour-power rises, so they are able to win higher pay, better conditions and so on. But, it is equally a consequence of that that capital responds with innovation, new labour-saving technologies that throw workers on the street, and depress the demand for labour-power, that means no amount of militancy can win higher wages, or better conditions, and that instead competition between workers, at an individual, sectional, regional and national level increases.
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