Unemployment crises are as old as modern capitalism, and thus it is clear the causes and roots of unemployment lie in how capitalism works. Under capitalism goods are produced for the market, that is, they are commodities. Included in commodities is a special commodity, labour power, which is also bought and sold in the open market. The price of labour power takes the form of wages. These wages are supposed to be enough to allow the laborer to purchase the necessities of life which can reproduce the labour power lost at work.
Under capitalism there are private owners of the factories, mines and other means of production, and the mass of workers must sell their capacity to work to the capitalists for wages. However, when the workers in the factories and other places of production work for the capitalists, they produce much more value than they receive in the form of wages. This surplus value included in the whole product of the factory is the property of the capitalist and becomes his profit.
The capitalist is in business for the profit and does his best to increase the mass of profit and the rate of profit. He can do this either by winning more markets or by reducing the cost of production or by speeding up the circulation of his capital, or all these. In short, in order to increase his profit the capitalist must expand his business and produce more stuff at lower cost. To do this he must accumulate capital and reinvest part of his profits back into the business. This accumulation of capital is the basic law of capitalism. Because of it, the factories grow larger, the industries become greater, little business turns into big business in this in turn develops into huge national and international corporations.
The chief method by which the capitalist can lower the cost of his production is through cheapening the value of labour power. This is done by introducing new machinery which can enable the worker to produce an ever-increasing quantity of goods in less and less time and with the same effort. Thus the introduction of machinery which increased not only the actual production but also the productive capacity of industry had two effects: if the market did not expand as rapidly as production increased, then workers were thrown out of work. Secondly, the amount of goods that were turned over to the employer, over and above the amount set aside for wages and replacement of capital, became increasingly large and increasingly difficult for the boss to get rid of.
Hand in hand with all these methods to increase the productivity of labour went all sorts of clever schemes to speed up (that is to increase the intensity of labour) and to increase the hours of labor wherever possible. The speed-up and stretch-out system was elaborated to its highest point and labor became so condensed that the laborer was burned out in a very short time. Social welfare schemes were introduced to keep the workers docile and to break up any tendency to organisation. Many company unions were cleverly contrived to keep the discontented in a safe channel.
Added to these industrial measures were methods in the field of finance, and circulation of capital that helped capitalists scientifically to increase the rate and mass of profits. The government rushed to the aid of big business and in a thousand ways saw to it that rivals countries’ businesses were excluded by protectionism and the maximum possible was squeezed out of the workers.
In periods of depression the "normal" waste under capitalism is tremendously increased. Half of the productive apparatus of the country is left idle, the machinery abandoned to rust or doomed to be thrown out as antiquated. Since the product is not consumed, the gap between capacity to produce and actual production so greatly increases as to threaten the very ability further to increase capacity and government aid must be given to private industry in order to prevent a complete cessation of new inventions and industrial processes that increase the capacity of the country to produce. The soil is so wastefully mishandled that we are forced to become acutely aware of this chaos through droughts, erosion, and floodsetc. The natural resources literally cry aloud for social control in a rational manner and failing to receive this control, take their dire vengeance upon humanity.
This is capitalism. This will not end. This is going to be the future.
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