Lenin correctly describes Sismondi's account of these processes whereby machines replace labour, leading to unemployment and under-consumption, which results in a shrinking of the home market. Its odd he does not recognise that this was also the argument that Malthus plagiarised, but is probably due to him not having access to Theories of Surplus Value, where Marx sets out the way Malthus took his arguments from Sismondi, although the latter did so out of concern for the labourer, whilst the former had no such concern, being the paid apologist of the landed aristocracy.
Indeed, Sismondi's argument in relation to machines is similarly limited. Lenin notes that Sismondi asks the question whether machines are a boon or a bane.
“It goes without saying that the “answer” to this question for all countries and all times whatever, and not for a capitalist country, is a most meaningless piece of banality: it is a boon when “consumers’ demand exceeds the population’s means of production” (les moyens de produire de la population) (II, 317), and a bane “when production is quite sufficient for consumption.”” (p 178)
As Marx points out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9, Sismondi was correct in pointing out the existence of such contradictions, as against the bourgeois economists, including Ricardo, who denied their existence, on the basis of Say's Law, but, rather than examining the nature of those contradictions, and the progressive elements within them, he simply bemoans the negative aspects of them, and retreats into a reactionary desire to avoid them by opposing the social progress from which they derive.
This was the same moralising approach of the Narodniks, and which is seen in the ideas of the Third Worldists, the “anti-imperialists”, and “anti-capitalists”, as well as the environmentalists.
“The Narodniks also confine themselves to stating the fact of a surplus population, and use it merely as a reason to voice lamentations about and complaints against capitalism (cf. N.-on, V. V., and others). Sismondi makes no attempt even to analyse the relation between this surplus population and the requirements of capitalist production, neither do our Narodniks ever set themselves such a problem.” (p 179)
One reason why the relative surplus population is required by capital has already been outlined – to overcome crises of overproduction of capital. But, capital also requires this relative surplus population for other reasons. Levels of production fluctuate during the year, for seasonal and other reasons, and capital needs to be able to draw in additional labour when required. This does not have to be in terms of physically unemployed workers. The social working-day can be increased by employing additional workers, but also by employing existing workers for longer, with or without the payment of overtime. But, also, as Marx describes, in relation to The Civilising Mission of Capital, it continually increases the spheres of production, and, to do so, workers must be available for work in these new industries.
But, Sismondi is wrong in seeing this relative surplus population as an absolute surplus population, again as Marx sets out in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value. The concomitant of the introduction of machines, as part of an overall accumulation of capital, is an increase also of employment, even in the relatively short-term. If the workforce itself expands, then there can be both an increase in employment as well as an increase in unemployment, if the increase in employment is less than the increase in the size of the workforce itself. The machinery, by creating a relative surplus population stops the process by which the demand for labour pushes up wages, and reverses it. By raising productivity, it reduces the value of labour-power, causing wages to fall, and variable-capital to be released, which can now be accumulated, i.e. more labour and materials employed by it. By cheapening materials, constant capital is also released that can be accumulated. By raising the rate of surplus value, and cheapening constant capital, and so raising the rate of profit, the rate of accumulation can now rise, so that more labour and capital is employed. Machines create a relative surplus population, whilst simultaneously creating an expansion of the economy, and of employment.
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