Unemployment is the condition where an individual is seeking employment but cannot find work anywhere. Unemployment since the industrial revolution has served the purpose of providing the bourgeoisie with a reserve army of labour. This reserve can be rapidly deployed to work in rapidly expanding markets, or, alternatively, it can be kept as a threat to employed workers, in order to maintain low wages.[1]
- ↑ Karl Marx (1867). Capital Volume One: 'Chapter Twenty-Five: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation; Section 3'.