After a short hiatus, the “Capitalism Must Die!” series is back.

Other capitalists are running this same cycle at the same time. All their commodities flow into the marketplace. Competition is the major economic driving force of capitalism.

Capitalists compete against each other for the sale–by out-marketing each other or by undercutting each other in price. Usually both. This puts pressure on the rate of profit to fall. To remain competitive, the capitalists are forced to continuously cut the costs of production.

Wages are the largest variable cost in most businesses, so there’s tremendous pressure on capitalists to keep them as low as possible. To accomplish this, even during periods of high employment they manipulate the economy to keep the unemployment rate at about 5% or higher, so there are always plenty of desperate people competing for jobs. They move their factories to countries where wages are the lowest they can find, and where repressive governments prevent workers from organizing. They pressure laborers to work longer days, and they escalate productivity so that each worker produces ever more surplus value per hour.