[Translated from broadcast by Gegenstandpunkt Marburg November 24, 2004]
Unemployment is an indication of an absurd situation and is a fundamentally devastating judgment on the social order. Not because people do not find work, but because people need work -- although society does not need this work at all. Work is the effort people must exert in order to wrest a living from nature in accordance with their needs. Work is the expenditure that must be performed so that there are houses, bread and beer – all those objects that satisfy needs of every kind. As effort, everyone benefits if this expenditure, these efforts, becomes less. When people face nature with their needs, they exert what is necessary and are happy when the work is over and can enjoy its results. Every method to reduce the burden of work is, from this point of view, an increase in leisure or in material wealth.
Not in our society. Here it is said: our society is poor in work. Insane! That means, turned around, our society is too rich in the products of work. Everything that needs to be done is already finished; therefore, the insane message of all responsible people in this society is that there is just not enough work. Government and opposition, trade unions and even the remnants of the left are unanimous in their opinion that the fight against unemployment is a central task of politics. Of all things, the work that one must exert is missing; the wealth of the society that exists if less toil is needed is supposed to be a problem. Of all things, work gets the character of a desirable good in short supply. And even after the toil, many enormously important and unsatisfied needs still exist.
Nobody actually has a need for work, but for the fruits of work; but they do the work in order to have something of these fruits.
In this social order it is different; in this society it becomes a social phenomenon that people express a need for work that goes unsatisfied. What does this mean? This shows that people in this country are unable to perform the necessary labor exertion for the satisfaction of their necessities for living. Not because they are not physically or mentally able -- here we mean somebody who needs work and does not get work but who can work. Unemployment shows that people have been made unable to carry out the expenditure of work necessary for their living.
What is the cause of this? These people are separated from the materials necessary for work. They would have worked, and wanted to work, but the materials for it are not at their disposal. They are put in the social position of being a mere work capacity, a mere possibility of employment. And whether this possibility of employment becomes a working reality is not up to those who can work. The work force does not decide in this society on the transition from the fact that they can work, want to work and must work to the actual activities, to practical work.
There is a condition: Only if he finds somebody to whom the materials belong, and who lets him work on the materials, only then can he take up the work process necessary for his own living. If, however, an entrepreneur lets a worker use his materials, then he gives him nothing thereby: everything that the worker produces as his living costs he does not get from his entrepreneur, but must first create with his own work.
But the matter is still not really decided. Because the worker is not let near the materials to work in order to obtain his own living costs and can not use the materials only until he has worked for his own living costs along with his co-workers. The worker is not let near the materials to produce only the equivalent to his and his co-workers’ living costs.
The worker must work more, produce more than he gets in living costs, he must gain for the owner of the means of work a profit that is clearly much higher than his own wage.
Only then the work which is absolutely necessary for him at all costs takes place; actually, in the words of Marx: in capitalist society, additional work is not what one still performs if all the necessary work has been performed and all necessary needs are satisfied, but in capitalism additional work is the condition for the necessary work to be performed for the receipt of the workers at all. If no more than the necessary work is carried out, then the necessary work also does not take place.
It is a completely absurd arrangement: millions suffer deprivation, have no income, live in poverty and sink ever deeper into poverty. They want to compile their living costs. But before permission to work for their living costs is allowed, the barrier of profit is set. If the work is not suited to provide an entrepreneur with a profit, then the necessary work for people's living costs does not take place at all.
For the profit of the entrepreneurs, millions are simply not needed. Why? Because socially necessary work is defined by the needs of “the economy," not those of the consumers. In these parts, socially necessary work is the work that records profit. Socially necessary work is work that can be completed so that it leads to a product with a price that can be sold at a profit. Other types of work which would be useful -- better childcare, transfer of knowledge to young people, and so on -- does not take place because it does not bring anything financially significant, does not lead to profit.
Why are millions superfluous for socially necessary work, which is defined in capitalism by what can be produced at a profit? Millions are socially superfluous because the work that gains profit is already so enormously productive.
Unemployment is an indication of the enormously risen productivity of work. Millions are not needed because those who are needed work so productively that everything that the entrepreneurs can produce at a profit has already been produced. And this is the task and doing of the entrepreneurs themselves: They are the ones who continuously increase the productivity of the work they buy. They constantly use new machinery that can be worked more productively, which in the same time can produce more products or -- expressed differently – can produce the same large amount of products in less time. They thereby make the work cheaper for themselves, with the productivity of work they save on paid work. This way they dismiss people and those who remain produce exactly the same amount of products as they did yesterday with a bigger staff. Result: The work, although perhaps not the individual worker, has become cheaper for the enterprise. The entrepreneur needs a smaller total wage bill for the same or a larger amount of goods.
But not only this. Where possible, the entrepreneurs reduce not only the total wage sum by saving on and dismissing the previously paid staff. Where possible, they also lower the payment of each individual. This can happen because the new machinery no longer requires as many skills or qualifications; the work is made easier, simpler, so additional charges are not justified any longer -- labor costs are saved there also.
Millions are not needed any more because the sources of wealth are already so productive – made productive by the entrepreneurs, who by the fact that they increase the productivity of work lower their labor costs and thus increase their profit per product.
To put the absurdity in a different way: people are unemployed, socially superfluous, because there is abundance. Not only no shortage in material products exists -- the means are so highly developed that the society needs less work. In every other social system this would be a blessing for all. In our society it is a profit for the entrepreneurs: They make their business with lower expenses, i.e. labor costs. On their side, wealth grows. And on the opposite side grows the misery of those who are not used, and who thus cannot be allowed to compile their living costs for themselves because of the increase of wealth and the productivity of the sources of wealth.
Then the ridiculous confrontation arises from it: because the society, certainly capital, does not need their work any more, they become desperate for work.
It might seem a little surprising that the politicians do not hide this disgrace of the system, which they establish and maintain with their laws. They insist on the fact that there is a serious problem. No material emergencies, no difficulties of the majority of the population is more recognized -- unemployment occupies the place of the social, the "social question" which the government should take care of.
And nobody fears that the indication of millions of unemployed persons becomes a criticism of the whole system, as we have just done. Why not? Because unemployment undergoes a transformation that is barely recognized. What begins as a concern about the plight of the unemployed ends up as a concern about profits, about the health of the economy. What begins as understanding for the problems of the unemployed ends with the criticism of the problems that unemployed persons make for the state and its finances. This is what passes for a self-criticism by the government: that it has not cared for the fact that the people have enough opportunities for acquisition ends with a criticism of the unemployed persons, that they are good for nothing.
How does it come to this revolving door in which everything always comes out in a different way than it went in? What is the security based on, that this mechanism functions so that no devastating criticism of this system arises, but everything ends in a complaint against the unemployed? In the word "unemployment" part of the transformation already revolves. The starting point is that it is about people who are dependent on work for an entrepreneur -- they are not employed and therefore without income. Their true and simple problem in this society is that they have no money.
If their problem is thus defined as: they have no work -- an easy shift is present. Of course, they have no work. But if it is immediately said that their problem is not their exclusion from all the things which they need to live, but that they lack something else, i.e. work -- then one does not concern oneself at all with what is really present, and where it comes from, but approaches the thing supposedly pragmatically: the people need work! It shifts toward a "solution" that fits the redefined problem. Since the problem is calmly not called one any more -- the people are pushed into a poverty which capitalism produces -- but the problem is unemployment -- the apparently practical solution is designed for it: the people must go back again into the system that has spat them out.
If one is a politician or wants to think like a politician, one does not ask: What is the thing and where does it come from? Because if one asks these questions, as we have, then one lands with a total and devastating criticism of this whole system. As a politician one must transform the question immediately: One must define the problem as: the people have no work. Then one can take the transformed question and ask: Why do the people find no work? Then point for point all the madness and cynicism of the capitalist economic system emerges, but transformed: Not as criticism, but as conditions that have to be fulfilled at all costs so that the people again find work.
This is the miserable constructive thinking that believes itself to be so uncommonly practical. Do not ask what a thing is and where it comes from -- immediately ask how one makes the best of this. Someone who asks why it is that people can only live if they find an entrepreneur who needs them for himself rejects the whole system in the end .
Practical thinking, however, is called for: What is missing so that they find work again? Then one immediately comes into the politically useful and desired channel. Then the answer is said to be: unemployed persons in their damage need nothing other than an entrepreneur who could need them again. And this continuation is characteristic: Why is there no entrepreneur who would like to use the unemployed persons? Then even a reference comes up to the criterion that caused the unemployed persons to all be dismissed -- but naturally completely constructively: an entrepreneur must profit. Why are the unemployed persons unemployed? Because no profit is to be made with them. What is the problem of the unemployed persons? They are simply not productive enough. How can one help them with their so-defined problem? One must make them more productive for the entrepreneurs.
The wage-laborer lives by the fact that he makes someone else, an entrepreneur, rich with his work; only communists say this. And they say it because it is correct and because they hold it as a scandal. They say it because with it they have grasped the whole reason, the whole evil of this society and why people should revolt against it.
Now here come the politicians and say: Yes if people live only by the fact that they must make others rich, then it is no wonder they cannot live if they do not succeed in making others rich. Then it is their mistake -- or also the mistake of the social system -- that they do not find an entrepreneur to enrich. And then they say: So it is clear that no work can be found for them. How then can one help the unemployed persons? The official answer is: by ensuring that capitalists get more from them.
The political leaders of the market economy and its experts announce such exquisite cynicism as a self-evident fact: In no other way than by an aggravation of exploitation can the unemployed persons be helped at all. This helps them? Whoever does not reduce his life in price has then no chance of life. And this is the only choice this system has to offer ...!
Thus wages are made responsible for the profitability of the work. Reality is turned around: the increase of the productivity of work for capital, the increase of the productivity for the net yield, makes people superfluous for capital. The lowering of labor costs by capital produces unemployment; for less wages, more is produced; the saved labor costs are the living expenses of the unemployed persons. In the public logic, this is turned upside down: The fact that the capitalists lower the wage per piece, thus lower labor costs so that unemployment is produced, is now to be because wages are too high. With this circular argument the entrepreneurs produce the proof for their own view: The more wages their businesses save, the more unemployed persons there are to point to and say: its just simply too expensive, labor costs are too high.
This is not even correct: cheap wages do not lead to more positions because wages are only a base calculation, i.e. whether they are repaid in the enrichment of the entrepreneurs for whom the profits are worthwhile. The workers have nothing at all in their hands, they decide nothing, they are a calculation mass -- and the employers always decide in each case on the cheapest offer. Nevertheless, the unemployed persons are accused of being the reason for their non-employment.
And this assignment of blame also becomes practical: the wage is lowered and the unemployed persons are made a special offer for the entrepreneurs, and here the interest of capital still decides: do the entrepreneurs actually need people to extend production, is such an extension of output better with more cheap people or with fewer cheap people and better machinery?
It is very doubtful in another respect that the unemployed person is helped; they must work for money, but their financial difficulties are still not gone – so it is not about their financial difficulties at all.
Unemployment as a “national problem” includes a fundamental reinterpretation and transformation of the miserable situation that this social system prepares for people. “Unemployment” refers only formally to the emergencies of the unemployed, as so many personal tragedies. Their difficulties are recognized as a social problem by the political leaders; but then it is also this social problem that is to be repaired. And then the social problem is said to be: in this country not enough capitalist business is found for all those who are intended to be a national capacity for work to create capitalist wealth for the nation. Then the social problem is said to be: the misery of the unemployed is a burden -- not for them, but for the national budget and the economy.
The state that establishes these social conditions with its laws, maintains and wants to get going the opinion that the unemployed are themselves responsible for their situation, so that in any case unemployment must be fought as them -- and implements this in its laws.
It uses its power as a legislator to force changes on the unemployed persons that make them more profitable and cheaper for the capitalists and less burdensome for the treasuries. And force is also necessary for what it wants to accomplish. The objective constraints of the conditions which it establishes -- one must search for work, make an entrepreneur rich, so that one can actually live -- this appears to the state as not sufficient against a group of workers, counting in the millions, who are not needed by capital any more. That they will accept the reduction of every job to a price on which they can not quite live – that they will simply adapt their interests and remain completely unsatisfied with such work and its payment -- the state does not believe this. Here it is sure that it needs constraints, and organizes these constraints by its violence: A modern system of hard labor for the unemployed.
An interesting and illuminating difference between the classes: it is left up to each entrepreneur whether to undertake something or not if he does not find it worthwhile. Here property is holy because it is big enough to be capital, it is able to be increased by other’s work. There lies the entrepreneur's freedom -- and if entrepreneurs might not invest, the state switches to self-criticism: what have we done wrong, how can we make it easier for the entrepreneurs, how can we improve for them the conditions for enrichment by others’ work?
On the side of the wage-working class it looks different. Someone who, like an entrepreneur, considers whether work is worthwhile for him or not is considered a sponge. Someone who wants to use the payments of the unemployment insurance into which he has deposited for times of unemployment so as to at least reject the job offers which are not good enough is insulted as a shirker and treated in practice as one who has abused the money. No freedom is entitled to him – only the freedom to starve.