The financial crisis that began in the autumn of 2008 has hit the “real economy,” the sector dealing with the production and trade of goods and services. Despite reassurances from politicians and captains of industry that “our economic fundamentals are sound,” they proclaim this the “biggest crisis since the Great Depression,” much worse than the various “recessions” of the postwar economy.

So it goes once again. Instead of growing, the economy shrinks. So what? Do more and more things and services really always have to be produced and sold? A naive question, it seems, which is definitively answered by the economic news: all the major banks, insurance companies, car companies, communications companies, chip manufacturers, etc etc, all now layoff significant numbers of people. Year after year and month after month, these employees are permitted to earn the incomes needed to cover their living expenses only if their work expands an ever-growing business and increases the property at the disposal of their employers. Evidently, people earn their incomes by making their employers ever richer while at the same time making themselves poor, remaining dependent on jobs and wages. They are paid to service the accumulation of capital – and if they don't do this, they can kiss their income goodbye. That's why, in this economic system, it's a disaster if everything just continues like before: if the same amount of work is done, if the same amount of food, housing, cars and computers are produced and consumed as in the previous period – thus people become not poorer and not richer – this will not do in an economy in which production is not for need, but for the enrichment of those who own capital. If “it” just continues like before, nothing continues – and certainly nothing continues if “the economy” is shrinking.

And why is it, if all the economic subjects have an interest in economic growth or depend on it as their daily bread, and everyone wants growth and is committed to it – why then does it fail to continue? What kind of an economic system is this, in which its agents achieve the opposite of what they are trying to achieve? The entrepreneurs who organize growth do everything right in the business sense: they require more and more work effort from their employees, have more and more goods produced and throw them on the market. But suddenly they can no longer sell their produced commodities or sell them at a profitable price. The purchasing power of society is not enough to turn all these commodities into money. The employers themselves are the ones who have produced this barrier to the ability to sell, because every commodity they produce is a demand for profit. When it comes to producing the mountain of commodities that they want to sell, they recognize no barrier and produce as if society could buy without limit. But when it comes to putting purchasing power in the hands of their suppliers and workers, they are very stingy. Because production takes place for profit, ie for the goal of maximizing the difference between costs and proceeds, the production of commodities to be sold is disengaged from the creation of the purchasing power which is needed to turn them into money. Crisis arises because too much capital was created and invested, the productive forces were too developed and too many commodities were produced to be useful for their purpose: to be profitably sold.

So one is faced with the absurdity that in this society hardships and poverty are not due to a lack of production, such as a natural disaster or war, but because of an abundance of material wealth. Nothing is lacking! Factories are idle, raw materials are not processed, people who are dependent on wages or salaries in order to be able to live stand in the street. All the elements of material wealth are left unused and devalued because and as long as they are not suitable for the sole purpose for which they exist in this economy: profit making. In this phase of the industrial cycle, profit shows point blank that it is an obstacle to production for needs.

If society is blackmailed long enough by the paralysis of its reproduction, if prices for machinery and raw materials go down and the unemployed offer themselves for cheaper, and the point is reached that the investment of capital is again worthwhile – and then the whole circus, the absurd cycle of accumulation and over-accumulation, both set in motion and brought to a standstill by credit, may start all over again.

In any event, as long as workers let themselves be blackmailed by their dependence on capital.