two_tree_hundo

[middleclassparty @middle_class_us]

They will never say the quiet part out loud.

That the system was not broken by accident.

That wages stayed flat on purpose.

That housing got expensive on purpose.

That healthcare stayed tied to employment on purpose.

That debt became the only path to education on purpose.

Every single pressure point keeping the working class in place was a policy decision made by people who never felt the pressure.

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

A type - that supports every protest except the present one, & enables the atrocity that in the future they will have always opposed.

[Jon Brooks @jonbrooks]

If housing prices had simply followed income growth since 1970, the average home today would be $138,000.

So… what actually broke?

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

it has now become a hindrance — superfluous as the feudal lord — private property in means of production has transformed from motive force of progress to cause of social degradation.'

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

'Beyond periodic crises, capitalism generates chronic overproduction: an incessant pressure to expand production that the market cannot absorb.
Every new market opened by capitalism eventually becomes a new competitor; capitalism begins to suffocate in its own surplus.

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

Surplus labor-power finds no productive outlet; it feeds armies, parasitic middlemen, the slum proletariat, & personal servants — waste of productive power on an enormous scale.
The capitalist class has fulfilled its historic function of developing productive forces;

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

Trusts cannot abolish crises; at best they shift crisis burdens from capitalists to workers & consumers.'

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

'Crises arise from planlessness: each producer independently estimates demand; no coordination exists across the system; the credit structure connects all; one failure cascades.
Under simple small production, overproduction was self-correcting;

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

under capitalism, inability to sell destroys the value of goods & triggers chain bankruptcies.
Large production's elasticity (elastic capital via credit, elastic labor via the reserve army) allows explosive expansion followed by catastrophic collapse.

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

'Competition systematically favors large over small capital;
Syndicates/trusts arise from the drive to monopolize;
Stock companies complete the separation of function from person;
Capitalism produces not security but dependence & uncertainty even for the capitalist class.'

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

'The modern state grew with & through the capitalist class & requires expanding revenues; military competition among nations drives state expenditure ever higher. War is now commercial rather than dynastic; militaries are means of the capitalist class in intl competition.'

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

Credit is a lever that accelerates capitalist development rendering the whole system hypersensitive to disturbance.'

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

'Under capitalism, credit is not a luxury but a necessity—the sustenance of society now depends on its uninterrupted operation.

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

Credit has reversed its historical role: formerly flowing from lenders to non-capitalists, it now flows from all non-capitalists into the hands of capitalists — savings and investment are instruments of intensified concentration, not popular utility.

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

those who are unequal to the “struggle for existence.” The destruction of every one of these draws in its wake the ruin of numberless others who were economically connected with the bankrupt concern — wage-earners, creditors, etc.'
–Kautsky. 1892. The Class Struggle.

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

Competition no longer produces survival of the fittest but survival of those who happen to occupy favorable positions and possess sufficient capital.

'It is at the expense of a prodigious waste of power and of materials and under stress of constantly increasing economic crises

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

The fact is, however, that competition crushes, not so much the truly unfit, as those who happen to stand in the wrong place, and who lack either the special qualifications or, what is more important, the capital to survive. But competition is no longer satisfied with crushing

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

undermines one’s belief in the permanence of the existing order and one’s interest in its preservation. Whoever is kept in eternal fear by the existing order loses all fear of a new one.'
–Kautsky. 1892. The Class Struggle.

[two_tree_hundo @two_tree_hundo]

'Of all the ills which attend the present system of production the most trying, that which harrows men’s souls deepest and pulls up by the roots every instinct of conservatism, is the permanent uncertainty of a livelihood. This constant uncertainty as to one’s own condition