Verlag: Monsenstein und Vannerdat; Auflage: 1., Aufl. (Februar 2010), ISBN-10: 3869910038, ISBN-13: 978-3869910031
No decline of the Economic System, but a New Beginning at the Expense of Dependent Employees
Strange crisis. Apparently there is too much of everything. The economic supply in a country is too large for demand; there is not to little, but too much capacity. What to do with all the useful objects that are being produced? Employees are fired and thus have no more money because too much was produced. Useful objects are stockpiled and functioning production sites are closed because of low demand and the same time widespread poverty. Poverty and thus the exclusion of wealth rise and all of this without any real need – no flooding, no earthquake, no fire. Too much has simply been produced compared with solvent demand. Economic crisis is synonymous with overproduction. So the supply with articles of use could be continued if the planned production and distribution of use value were the goal and not only a means of production. But this is not the case.
Economic crises are considered to be a normal phenomenon in the market economy. They are also called depressions, as they occur in various degrees more or less regularly. According to widespread economic opinion, these are simply fluctuations in the utilization level of the production potential of a national economy. No one thinks it is good, but there is no one that thinks it is bad enough to question the economic system, although the consequences of the depression are anything but pleasant for the majority of the population.
The market economy as an efficient system of controls for regulating supply? At the latest, the crisis will make it obvious that the owners of the means of production are not interested in producing and distributing useful articles. They are only the means to an end. The real goal is to increase the capital invested. The investments in raw materials, machines, and labor power and the sale of the corresponding use values must generate a sustained profit for the investor or he will stop production. This simple principle – there has to be something in it for the owner of the means of production – is the core difference between the market economy and the planned production of use value. Just producing additional means of subsistence is, according to the market economy goal of increasing investment capital, not a good enough reason to produce. For how many people this decision means absolute misery is uninteresting from the standpoint of the market economy. Demand (human need) that cannot be paid for simply does not exist for this purpose. Thus mass poverty and the closure of existing production facilities go hand in hand.
There would not have to be any crisis at all if the goal was to use raw materials, machines, and labor power to produce useful objects for supplying the population. Increases in productivity could be used in the event of lower demand to reduce working hours or if necessary, to increase the production of use values with the same working hours. In the question of whether economic growth pays off, the labor costs and conditions, that is, the health of the working population, must be part of the decision. Zero growth, the nightmare of every entrepreneur, would not bring on a crisis.
By contrast, how does the market economy phenomenon of an economic crisis come about where production facilities are closed, machines mothballed, and employees fired, although all the conditions of production remain unchanged? Why does it suddenly no longer pay for many companies to continue production?
