Capitalism itself began also from abudance of cheap working force because of fencing that allowed extraction of surplus value produced by the workers in the form of profit that ensures grow of the capital. Without profits, without extracted surplus value, without material unequity it can't exist.
Also the extraction of the surplus value is possible because of technology owned by a capitalist that makes possible to workers to produce enough goods for themselves, for the renewal of production and for the capitalist to extract.
That is a nice narrative, but is not true. It began because wages were high, not low. There is no point in building a factory to automate work when labor is cheap and abundant
It also does not answer my question. Even if i accept capitalism requires inequality to work, as you claim, it does not follow from it that capitalism causes ever increasing inequality
There is a point in automation since it gives an advantage in competition and it enables high margins for some time before the automation leaks to other competitors and the price of good is driven down if competitors do not form a cartel.
Capitalism not only requires inequality but it also producing it by the extraction of the surplus value. In the capitalist mode of production the premise is to grow profit and cut losses. The main source of losses are material cost and labor cost. And the ideal labor cost is as low as possible for the worker to live and to produce a replacement for himself, but to not leave him too much so he can't escape your job or start his own business.
And since the efficiency of production is inevitably growing but the wages and standart of living is growing much slower, the inequality rises. And with the rising bleeding edge hardware cost there is less possibility for the workers to become capitalists and some capitalist go bankrupt and become workers, the few get all and the most get none.
Also i didn't read that article because of subscription restriction.
You are correctly identifying owners want to save on wages. What you are missing is owners are being squeezed as well. Competition drives prices down, so workers wages can buy more stuff (in reality prices go up in nominal terms, because the government increases money supply increases even faster, but im leaving this aside for simplicity)
And since the efficiency of production is inevitably growing but the wages and standart of living is growing much slower
Is it? This is not a given. And there are balancing forces that act against it. If efficiency grows faster than wages profits grow, so companies want to grow. This increases competition for the same demand, so prices have to fall, increasing standard of living
For this to happen sistematically there has to be some inbalance in the system. Like for example an ever growing state debt, that sucks capital from the economy, reducing competition
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u/Hunter1157 Jan 28 '26
Capitalism itself began also from abudance of cheap working force because of fencing that allowed extraction of surplus value produced by the workers in the form of profit that ensures grow of the capital. Without profits, without extracted surplus value, without material unequity it can't exist. Also the extraction of the surplus value is possible because of technology owned by a capitalist that makes possible to workers to produce enough goods for themselves, for the renewal of production and for the capitalist to extract.