The solution to this overproduction of capital/underproduction of labour, is then to increase the supply of labour, but without a large rise in population, or access to new supplies of exploitable labour, the only way of achieving this is to create a relative surplus population, by increasing productivity, so that any given amount of labour now does the work of more labour. That can only be achieved by a technological revolution, not just on the usual gradual basis, but on a rapid and widespread basis across the economy, or at least its most important sectors.
The overproduction of capital may go side by side with overpopulation of a large number of workers who are unemployed, and who cannot, thereby, provide for their own reproduction. That is because the overproduction of capital is only an overproduction of the means of production as capital, and not of means of production per se. It is only an overproduction in terms of being able to produce additional profits from the utilisation of those means of production. But, the point, here, is that, unlike the conditions that determined plant and animal populations that have to take available food etc., as they find it, Man changes the world around him, so as to produce more of those things, so that the laws determining human populations must be different. And, what specifically makes capitalism different to other modes of production is that not is the determination of overpopulation dependent on the needs of capital, but capital itself has the ability to remedy a condition of underpopulation.
Capital has the capacity to revolutionise production. It controls science and technology to that end. A rise in productivity means that less labour is required to produce a given level of output, so that the labour, thereby released, forms part of a relative surplus population. This relative surplus population pushes down on wages, causing profits to rise. But, the higher productivity also means the value of labour-power falls, and so surplus value rises. By these means, capital reverses the overproduction of capital, raises the rate of surplus value and of profit, and so creates the basis for increasing demand for labour once more. It is this movement of capital that dictates whether there is over or underpopulation.
Lange concludes that Marx's theory appears to break the thread that runs the whole of organic nature up to Man “as though general investigations into the existence, reproduction and perfection of the human race were quite superfluous to our purpose, i.e., to an understanding of the labour problem” (154).” (p 454)
But, Lenin points out that this is not true, and the “labour problem” is one that only exists under capitalism. Since it exists only under capitalism, it is only on the basis of a specific analysis of the laws of capitalist production and distribution, and not on the basis of “general laws” that it can be understood. Lange begs to differ. Factory labour, he says, presumes poverty. But, in fact, as Lenin points out,
“... we know that poverty is created by capitalism itself at a stage of its development prior to the factory form of production, prior to the stage at which the machines create surplus population; secondly, the form of social structure preceding capitalism—the feudal, serf system—itself created a poverty of its own, one that it handed down to capitalism.” (p 454)
The reality is that it is capitalism, as large-scale industrial capitalism, based upon machine industry, that brings about a fantastic rise in living standards for everyone, including workers. Lange, however, argues that, even with this poverty, the first capitalists had difficulty in recruiting labour, and persuading the producers to join in this new form of production. Lange sets out a description of how he thinks this process of industrialisation occurs. In a locality, he says, a capitalist, with a few workers, sets up in business, and then recruits other workers from amongst a few landless peasants. Lenin points out that Lange never explains that these landless peasants are themselves the outcome of the process of differentiation, occurring in the countryside. He instead explains them on the basis that ““the tendency towards voluntary birth-control has not firmly gripped the people’s morals” (p.157)?” Note *, p 455) The remainder come from within “the rising generation” (156)” (p 455)
Lange's concern with birth control is continued by today's Malthusians who see the misery of millions deriving from overpopulation, and overuse of resources due to too rapid growth – and for some even any growth at all – rather than being from too slow a rate of growth, and the unequal distribution of resources, due to capitalist productive relations.
Lange sets out his Malthusian theory, saying that, in an agrarian economy, where birth control has not been adopted, overpopulation inevitably arises. The basis of this unsubstantiated claim is Malthus' own claims about the rate at which output could rise from a given area of land, as well as his fallacious theory about exponential population growth. The Malthusians of today still repeat this nonsense, but garb it in semi-radical, environmentalist clothes, based upon concern for the destruction of the environment, due to the overuse of resources and so on.
“but all these assertions are totally unsupported. Whence does it follow that a “surplus of workers” was really “inevitable”? Whence does the connection arise between this surplus and the absence in the people’s morals of a tendency to voluntary birth-control? Ought he not, before arguing about the “people’s morals,” to take a glance at the production relations in which the people live?” (p 455-6)
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