The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-05-28
BY BILL dunno.


IN the best of times, even in the holiday OF
capitalism, when it was lusty, growing
system inspiring its press agents to mrestran-
ed tributes to its beauties and advantages over
all other systems of society, when the over
whelming majority Of the working class still
retained belief in capitalism and the good IN
tentions of its capitalist class a certain per-
centage of workers could never find jobs.
The disappearance of free land and the rapid
introduction of -displacing machinery in
industry gave American capitalism its first re-
serve army of unemployed. Marx wrote of
this early period of American capitalism:
con the one hand, the enormous ceaseless
stream of men, year after year, driven upon
America leaves behind a stationary sediment
in the east of the United States, the wave
of immigration from Europe throwing men
on the labor market there more rapidly than
the wave of emigration westwards can wash
them away. On the other hand, the Amer
lean Civil War brought in its train colossal
national debt, and, with it, pressure of taxes,
the rise of the vilest financial aristocracy,
the squandering of a huge part Of the public
land on speculative companies for the eX-
ploitaton of railways, mines, etc, in brief,
the most rapid Capitalization of capital.
MARX, Capital, Vol. l, Page 374.-kerr
Edition, 1919.
Every great struggle of the American work
ing class comedies with the introduction of
new methods of production and the higher
organization of capitalism.
The introduction of misunderstanding machin-
cry, resulting in the destruction of the small
capitalist-the individual boss-as an import
ant factor in production, the beginning of the
combinations of concerns in the same industry,
the organization of the trusts, the merging of
the trusts into still greater and more power
full combinations their theft of the natural
resources-oil, coal, iron, lumber, copper and
zinc, waterpower, etc.-the growing together
of banking and industrial capital, the marriage
of business and government"-all these steps
in the development of American capitalism
inc imperialism have been taken at the expense
of the working class.
Unemployment is caused, among other
lated causes, by the fact that the working class
under capitalism receives for its labor power
less than the value of the goods it produces.
Since it is the overwhelming majority of the
population in such countries as the United
States, there is periodical industrial depres-
sion-an economic crisis in which the Preserve
army" of unemployed workers has its ranks
increased by millions and the doors of the in
dustries are closed to them
"Capitalistic production" said Marx, "moves
through certain periodical cycles. 1t moves
through state of quiescense, growing ANNA
ton, prosperity, overproduction, crisis, stag
nation. The market price of commodities, and
the market price of profit, follow these phases
now sinking below their averages, now rising
above them. . . During the phases of the sink
ing market prices and the phases of crisis and
stagnation, the working man, if not thrown out
of employment altogether, is sure to have his
wages lowered" Value, Price and Profit
Kerr Edition-Page Ill.
It is thus seen that mass unemployment is
not only an inevitable and PERIODICAL result of
the capitalist mode of production but that it is
also weapon in the hands of the capitalists
and their government for reducing the living
standard of the working class and securing still
greater profits in the next period of high in
dustrial activity.
Marx points out the necessity of struggle by
the workers in order to prevent being forced to
accept slave conditions:
"The slave receives permanent and fixed
amont of maintenance; the wage laborer does
not -. If he resigned himself to accept the
will the dictates of the capitalist a per-
menant economic law, he would share in all
the miseries of the slave, without the security
of the slave"
Sharply expressing the class nature of the
struggle against unemployment, and the neces-
sty for organized and militant battle for work
or wages-support of all unemployed workers
by special insurance equal to full wages to
be furnished by the government at the eX.
pense of the capitalists, the Communist Party
of the United States points out to the working
class at the same time that there is no cure
for unemployment under capitalism.