#low wages

Without a planned economy, there is no way to ensure full employment.

Capitalism consistently operates under capacity. This means empty facilitates, full of productive machinery, while those who could operate it are unemployed.

That’s not an accident.

Competition for jobs drives wages down. If 1000 people are willing and able to fill one post, the employer can choose the cheapest from a large pool of workers, all undercutting the cost of each other’s labour to secure the job.

If there are only a handful of people to do a job, wages cannot be forced down as far.

Near-full employment would leave employers with a very small pool of potential workers, forcing wages to increase or stay the same.

The market drives unemployment, demanding the longest possible hours from the cheapest available labourers.

The working class, or proletariat, are waged employees. They rely on this wage to survive.

They are hired to make money (surpluses) for their employers. In order to keep a job, workers must create more wealth than they receive in wages.

Employers collect these surpluses. Everything left after wages are paid is profit. Employers therefore receive more wealth than they create.

How profit is created and distributed (simplified).

Under capitalism, the wealth dynamic resembles that of older economic systems - lord and serf, or master and slave.

In each instance, those who work create surpluses, and in turn may receive enough to survive, but not enough to escape reliance on the exploiter.

The use of ‘exploiter’ is not moralistic. Under capitalism, individuals must be one or the other - employer or employee, exploiter or exploited. The relationship is systemic.

Wage competition between workers forces wages down.

When workers cannot live on the wage, the capitalist state subsidises the employer through welfare schemes.

If workers could not live, the market would collapse.

Workers compete for jobs. Employers choose those who will accept the lowest wage.

As poorer nations entered the market, employers moved jobs en masse to those places. Workers do the same work on very low wages.

This created mass unemployment in the countries where capitalism began.

Without an income, individuals cannot buy what capitalists are selling. Workers in poor countries can’t afford the products of their labour - wages are too low.

Welfare programmes, although they were won by workers, create a consumer base in the countries left behind by industrial capitalists (they enable the unemployed to buy).

The market depends on the capitalist state. They appear antagonistic, but the capitalist state continually saves the market from extinction by its own hand (this is a ’bourgeois dictatorship’).

Maximisation of profit minimises disposable income. Therefore, a ‘free’ market is impossible, as is ‘anarcho-capitalism’ (also known as ‘right libertarianism’).

Employers want to drive down the price of labour, because it increases profits.

We compete with each other for jobs. Employers hire workers who will do the same work for lower wages.

When groups like immigrants (and women) join the workforce, the average wage is driven down.

This is because, in havingsocial prejudices, we allow the employing class to use them as an excuse to lower the average wage.

All workers’ pay is agreed relative to this average.

Because prejudices are only a smokescreenfor wage competition, excluding particular groups from the labour market is not a solution.

Wherever possible, employers have simply taken jobs out of developed countries altogether, and gone where the labour is cheaper.

The only solution is therefore to organise and stand in international solidarity with other workers.