How capitalism works

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And, as is to be expected, Blacks and women lead the descent into poverty.

Karl Marx warned of the tendency toward pauperization of the working class. He concluded that the bourgeoisie "is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him!"

Capitalism, of course, never gives anything away if it can possibly help it. The tax structure was adjusted and readjusted so that the working classes in Europe and America pay an increasingly larger share to maintain the equilibrium of capitalism.

Furthermore, this growing shift of the tax burden onto the backs of the working class is used to cool enthusiasm for social programs and divert the ire of overtaxed workers from capitalist profiteers to the most hapless victims of the system. In the meantime, the welfare network provides just enough sustenance to forestall an DAUTUMANUES 6 960404000 UNITED STATE when warehouses bulging with unsold commodities force a halt in production. Workers are dismissed. Unemployed workers, without income or with greatly reduced income, contribute further to the crisis of overproduction-having been made even less able to absorb the surpluses.

The logic of this productive system creates competition between capitalists within and between nations for access to finite markets. The weaker capitalists unable to find markets for their products are ruined and absorbed by the stronger.

But the main victims are working people of every nation. Factories closed by this irrepressible competition mean increasing impoverishment for ever-larger portions of the working class everywhere.

This means that major breakdowns in the system such as we now see developing will accelerate the pauper-