134);—and the Malthusian theory “attributes want to the decrease of productive power” (p. 134);—finally Malthus does not know “the real law of population,” which is that “the tendency to increase, instead of being always uniform, is strong where a greater population would give increased comfort, and where the perpetuity of the race is threatened by the mortality induced by adverse conditions, but weakens just as the higher development of the individual becomes possible, and the perpetuity of the race is assured” (p. 123). What is right in this view of the real law of population is common to Mr. George with Mr. Herbert Spencer;[906] what is wrong is common to him with Godwin.[907] The view of Karl Marx,[908] the prophet of the International and of modern economic Socialism, is built on much more solid foundations. It is a corollary of his view of capital. The general law of the accumulation of capital, in these days of large manufactories and machinery, involves not only a progressive addition to the quantity of capital, which is all that Adam Smith contemplated, but a qualitative change in the proportion between fixed capital, such as machinery, and the circulating which is paid in wages. To use the author’s words, the progress of accumulation brings with it a relative decrease of the variable component of capital and a relative increase of its constant component. New machinery is constantly supplanting labour without any real compensation in increased demand, either at once or in the long run. The constant element increases at the cost of the variable; and this can only result in the progressive production of a population which, in relation to capital, is a surplus or superfluity, an over-population;—the cause which increases the net revenue of the country at the same time renders the population redundant and deteriorates the condition of the labourer.[909] So far from deploring the existence of this redundant class, the capitalists depend on it,[910] as the reserve of their army. They trust to its cheap labour to save them from the depression which in our days (though never before) appears with unfailing regularity after brisk trade and a crisis. If the hands were not always there for them to employ, they would not at once be able to seize the happy moment of a reviving demand for their goods. “Malthus with his narrow views understands the surplus population to be superfluous absolutely in itself, and not merely in relation to capital; but even he recognizes that over-population is a necessity of modern industry.”[911] In proof of these statements he quotes the words of Malthus (_Pol. Econ._, ed. 1836, pp. 215,[912] 319, 320):—“Prudential habits with regard to marriage carried to a considerable extent among the labouring classes, of a country mainly depending upon manufactures and commerce, might injure it.”... “From the nature of a population, an increase of labourers cannot be brought into [the] market, in