Marx postulated a number of different components of the reserve army of labour.
The ‘latent reserve’ includes those currently outside of the market system, either
performing unpaid household labour or eking out a meager subsistence in the periphery
of Third World economies. The ‘stagnant reserve’ includes those who are almost never
employed, boom or bust. Members of the ‘floating reserve’ alternate between
employment and unemployment, with the ups and downs of the business cycle.
‘Paupers’ is the term Marx used to identify those who are now often referred to as the
‘underclass.’ Recently, it has been suggested that changes in global capitalism have
rendered some of these components no longer functional. And this has resulted in an
environment conducive to policies that may promote the elimination of the emerging
‘surplus population’ with scary, genocidal, and racist connotations (Darity, 1998).