The employment crisis that the United States finds itself in is not natural, it is the sole result of capitalist self-reinforcement. This is a point that any Marxist is well aware of, but that the common people of the Union are ignorant of (through no fault of their own). To them, this seems counter-intuitive; why would the capitalists seek to reduce employment and crash the economy? To them, it seems contradictory. This is simply due to the capitalist’s propaganda, where they portray the goal of capitalism to be profit (rather than profit manifesting as a mechanism for control), and where they portray the capitalist system as being one, when in reality two separate interconnected systems manifest as the capitalism which exploits the people. They hide these facts out of malice, as a confused population is a population which is easier control. And when a population believes the opposite of reality, it is easier to act unobstructed.
For one, if control is the ultimate goal of the capitalist, then what proof can be presented to prove that? According to Ren Inc, corporate donations accounted for approximately $29.48 billion in the year of 2022. For connecting this data to my argument, we must first recognize a few things; the corporate world, and the corporations within it, are intrinsically interconnected and can be referred to as a whole as the capitalists, sharing identical goals and motives (for which we will get into later); and secondly that the donations of a corporation can not be assumed to represent individual philanthropy, as corporations by nature consist of numerous departments and boards which make a joint decision. Furthermore, one must acknowledge the role of taxes in these donations; a minority, yet still sizeable, portion of all charity donations provided by corporations get funnelled back into that corporation through funding of research projects or similar programs.
Regardless of the percentage of these donations that are funnelled back into the corporation; it should be evident that if profit was the true motivator behind the capitalist system, then the capitalists should never have donated, as it cuts into their profit margins, even if minor. Instead, these charitable donations represent the control which the capitalists seek; through these donations, the capitalist can control narrative, control what gets funded, and control non-profits through funding. All of these together constitute the largest mechanism which capitalists employ to guide the population; influence over institutions. This point is another one which contributed to my conclusion in “Reform, Revolution, and Replacement,” as any entity reliant on capital to function exists at the whim of the capitalists themselves.
If one is to recognize the reason the economy and the job market must crash under the capitalist system, and why it benefits capitalists, then they must first recognize the two entities within capitalism. The proletariat, and the bourgeoisie. The proletariat, it is their job market which crashes, and their economy which crashes. It is them that are effected by this. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie (or, as I have been referring to them, the capitalists) have their own separate market; their own separate economy. A market and an economy based on long-term deals rather then short term purchases, which in turn decreases the volatile nature of the capitalist economy at their level. The result of this is two distinct outcomes, both contributing to the way in which capitalists benefit off of crashes within the proletarian (or worker’s) economy.
The first outcome it provides is the stability of their ‘high’ economy in comparison to our ‘low’ economy. This comparison allows them to purchase goods and services at a relatively stable long-term price, while over-inflating the short-term price that only effects the low economy through it volatility. This inflation allows for a large profit, provided that relative stability in the low economy is established before the next ‘contract period’ begins (referring to the time after which their current contract with other suppliers in the high economy concludes). This manipulation is the precise reason which gas prices fluctuate so drastically (the most evident way in which this manifests), as the capitalists buy the oil and gasoline on a long-term contract, so short-term fluctuations do not affect them, but affect the highly volatile low economy.
The second outcome it provides is the further commodification of labour. As labour becomes a commodity, it becomes directly tied to the low economy of the workers. As it does not effect the high economy, the capitalists can leverage this to further their control; when work is scarce, wage slavery can be further justified under that relative scarcity. It is for this reason that the capitalist seeks to reduce the number of workers, and why they distract us with the promise of automation and high production; they rely on our lack of education and our misidentification of the driving forces behind them in order to maintain control over us.