Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively
 regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and
 these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They
 are, therefore, not determined by the variations of the absolute number of the
 working population, but by the varying proportions in which the working class
 is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase or diminution in the
 relative amount of the surplus population, by the extent to which it is now
 absorbed, now set free. For Modern Industry with its decennial cycles and
 periodic phases, which, moreover, as accumulation advances, are complicated by
 irregular oscillations following each other more and more quickly,
 that 597would indeed be a beautiful law, which pretends to make the
 action of capital dependent on the absolute variation of the population,
 instead of regulating the demand and supply of labour by the alternate
 expansion and contraction of capital, the labour-market now appearing
 relatively under-full, because capital is expanding, now again over-full,
 because it is contracting. Yet this is the dogma of the economists. According
 to them, wages rise in consequence of accumulation of capital. The higher wages
 stimulate the working population to more rapid multiplication, and this goes on
 until the labour-market becomes too full, and therefore capital, relatively to
 the supply of labour, becomes insufficient. Wages fall, and now we have the
 reverse of the medal. The working population is little by little decimated as
 the result of the fall in wages, so that capital is again in excess relatively
 to them, or, as others explain it, falling wages and the corresponding increase
 in the exploitation of the labourer again accelerates accumulation, whilst, at
 the same time, the lower wages hold the increase of the working class in check.
 Then comes again the time, when the supply of labour is less than the demand,
 wages rise, and so on. A beautiful mode of motion this for developed capitalist
 production! Before, in consequence of the rise of wages, any positive increase
 of the population really fit for work could occur, the time would have been
 passed again and again, during which the industrial campaign must have been
 carried through, the battle fought and won.