Marx has pointed out that unlike general, who win their wars by
recruiting armies, captains of industry win their wars by discharging armies.
A necessary consequence of management and technology is a reduction in
the demand for labor. The constant raising of the productivity of
labor through the organizational and technical means that have been described
herein must, in itself, produce this tendency. The application of
modern methods of management and machined technology, however, become practical
only with the rapid increase in the scale of production. Thus the
rapid increase in the productivity of labor tends to be counterbalanced
by the growth in production. Chiefly as a consequence of this, employment
in those industries concerned with production of goods has not declined
in absolute terms (163).
If the displacement of labor cannot be seen in the figures for the absolute
size of the working population occupied in the making of goods, it can
be seen in the measures of its relative size (164).