We here shall explore the irony of this image. (image source: standardmedia.co.uk)

The necessary subtext and background noise to outline in any conversation of hiring workers and searching for employment, and even the concept of employment itself, is the fundamental nature of the capitalist context of employment. First, however, we bring you a refresher.

Capitalism is the political and economic system (read: all economics being inherently political) which organizes itself for gains of capital, or finance, and where production in all its forms tangible and intangible is controlled by two distinct classes, known sometimes as the capitalist class and the political class. These classes, roughly speaking, constitute corporations and government respectively in such a system, with some varying degrees of overlap dependent upon the minutia of which capitalist system we consider. In other words, what constitutes capitalism is the economic and political control of capitalists and politicians searching for financial gains (i.e. their own).

Yet the quest for profit under capitalism is dependent upon other components to benefit such persons of interest. If one controls political production (i.e. the creation, interpretation and enforcement of laws and rules) then one requires a population from whom these laws and rules must be inspired. Similarly, if one controls economic production, one requires a population from whom the labor of production must be harvested. In either case, the voter or the worker lends the illusion of consensual governance or business credibility via passive compliance. Political activism or worker activism such as strikes, unionization or industrial sabotage — and so we see now how these matters merge — are acts to undermine this credibility and seize increased control in either adjacent realm.

By this analysis, we demonstrate that just as the voter is more central to the political legitimacy of the Republic than the politician, the worker too is more central to the legitimacy of the economy than the capitalist. So why does unemployment exist?

Pictured: workers protesting the firing of thousands of air-traffic controllers under the Reagan administration. (image source: newyorker.com)

At time of writing, the unemployment rate rests at 3.9% or 6.4 million individual unemployed persons. From where the country was nearly a decade ago, this shows significant improvement, but as employment drops wages have not risen. Companies are not, broadly speaking, offering premiums for employment, attempting to draw workers in with attractive wages, and by contrast the requirements for these jobs have not been lowered, either. Many persons unemployed are not accounted for if they are not receiving unemployment benefits. Workers have neither the money to retire nor the finances to pay the debts and bills that they will incur while earning a degree and taking the internship that could, and only tentatively could, end with actual employment.

In theory, commentaries on unemployment simply suggest that there is a limited number of opportunities for financial growth created by the capitalist and political classes in their search for profit, and therefore only some workers are employed. Alternative theories suggest that employment simply arises from skill sets, and that only the unskilled end up either unemployed or working low-wage to minimum-wage jobs. Neither of these interpretations are correct. Not only do they contradict each other, but the former suggests that increasing profits somehow limits employment in some arbitrary capacity, while the latter ignores that all jobs entail labor and there is no such thing as unskilled labor, only labor that is not valued by those with the most influence over the market.

Both interpretations contain grains of truth, but the former actually points to the heart of the issue. Unemployment is the weapon of the capitalist class against workers disliked for their activism against capitalist interests (or other reasons) in the same way that voter disenfranchisement (i.e. voter ID laws, the prison system, targeting of voting locations, etc.) is the weapon of the capitalist class. The latter has become commonly criticized, but the former is also a key element to oppression in our society, and each sustains the other.

If I want to protest something my boss is doing, my first fear will be that I will be fired and replaced. If every person had a job set aside for them, I could simply take the opening created by the person who was hired to replace me, and there would be no unemployment. This is not, however, how our system works. Instead, the potential for a person who has desperate need of a job, such that they would fight me for mine, to show up to promptly replace me, is the employer’s best friend.

Thus, the capitalist class turn the workers against one another.

Pictured: an example of advocacy for one minority, in this case transgender people, who remain disproportionately affected by employment. (image source: sfcenter.org)

There is a darker side to unemployment. Some people cannot be workers in a certain — or any typical — fashion that normatively fits into a capitalist context. These are disabled people who cannot work or simply are not accommodated. They are the elderly and ill. They might be subject to hiring discrimination based on their race, gender, sexuality, religion or other factors, or they might face discrimination in other walks of life that create expenses or social conditions that result in high debt or homelessness. These people, fundamentally, are us. They our our most vulnerable and must be protected.

Unemployment weaponizes the vulnerability of certain minority groups in our economy. It also, in conjunction with our political system, creates economic situations where those groups are shunted into the arms of welcoming capitalists who thrive off their exploitation. The most easily critiqued examples of this in these United States of America are surely chattel slavery and the subsequently engineered sharecropping, but this style of practice is perpetuated to this day. Sex workers are forced by politicians into unsafe conditions that benefit capitalists. The poorest, least educated, most heavily propagandized working class people are compelled to join different branches of the military, or sign with an independent military contractor to fight wars for the benefit of the capitalists who own production in the military industrial complex.

The example of the sinister applications of unemployment are many, if one simply cares to look and understand. Unemployment is a condition created by employment. The “job market” is constructed with capitalists, not workers, in mind. It just goes to show: we don’t truly need, nor should we want, any of it.