this contradiction has boiled over multiple times during the cold war, the answer is more bombs so they have places to rebuild.
This is the best answer. Historically whenever there has been a crisis of overproduction/underconsumption, the capitalists generally responded by either destroying peripheral economies to “open up” new markets, or destroyed one of their own to feed on it like cannibal vultures. “Growth” is not so much the objective any more, just consolidation of monopolies, so they can afford to destroy (“ungrow”) quite a bunch if it means that they’ll stand to be on top.
And we can see this clearly happening today, as they are facing more and more difficulties in halting or turning back the progress of the global south, they have opted instead for the easier option which is dismantling the European economy instead which is turning Europe into a new neocolonial region for US capital to siphon wealth out of.
That’s what wars are for.
We’re already there. If growth is not possible, then the competition must be eliminated by force.
Violent uprising most likely. Once all of the money is squeezed out of the working class and we can’t afford to live the rich will be dragged into the streets and executed. Capitalism will crumble and then we get to start the cycle over again.
We are already there. Business models change and adapt.
Since markets are already mostly conquered, and wages are stagnated all around the world, companies couldn’t continue to grow organically since there was no demand for their products so they started converting into a finance business where they lend you money with interests so you can buy stuff you couldn’t previously buy and thus artificially increasing demand (since more people could buy stuff with credit) and thus increasing prices and profit. This has made the prices of things bought with credit increase at an insane pace (cars and houses being the biggest example), thus further squeezing value out of workers pockets.
Now we are witnessing a rentier economy, where everyone wants to provide a “service” (its always a computer doing the work/ i.e. an app) instead of an actual product. Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Google, Meta, dropshipping, even cars are starting to have suscription model for stuff that already comes in the car itself lmao.
They will continue to try to squeeze blood from a stone until we’re all dead
Collapse
Revolution
Recession, Depression, government bails out corporate sector, working people suffer, cycle repeats
I feel like this has already happened in a lot of sectors and places. We’ll have to put up with working people getting even less and more things getting commodized.
Not if it starts becoming acceptable to kick in doors again. The spate of unionization running through the imperial core needs further radicalization. I don’t have a single issue contemplating 0hp’ing some shitbag pig exec if it means redistributing his hoard.
I mean capitalism is always facing crises like this, and uses whatever means necessary to overcome them. You’ll hear talk in bougie rags about “opening markets”, “creating markets”, etc, that’s often about weathering an overproduction crisis by offloading commodities somewhere else.
The marketing boom that helped create the hyperconsumerist society of the West was a way of dealing with overproduction by artificially bolstering consumption.
So, capitalism runs out of commons to enclose, it runs out of places to expand into, resources to process, people to buy the goods, etc; it finds or creates new commons, new frontiers, new markets. Technology will unlock new domains of expansion, each more abstract from the last. Some so abstract that they’ve lost all semblance of the original relationship they’re trying to simulate (NFTs). Wars will destroy infrastructure and allow capital to flow in, consolidate, rebuild, continue the process.
There’s not a single peak, more like an ebb and flow, creation and destruction. A fungal fractal expanding in every direction and every dimension.
