Poverty and unemployment function as deliberate system solutions, not failures

Evidence

It’s time to stop buying into the idea that, within a capitalist society, it makes sense to discuss economic policies according to the criterion of “right” and “wrong” for an elusive common good. Our economic machinery is structured not to meet the needs of ordinary people but to increase the rents and profits of the few capital holders. Economic policies cater to these priorities. What critics point to as “problems” of the system—poverty, inequality, and unemployment—are actually its precise “solutions.” — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 159

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports the sacrifice-as-stabilizer framing from ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — here sacrifice is repackaged as economic policy that maintains a stratified order.
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion of ‘problems’ into ‘solutions’ reframes the entire discourse of poverty and inequality; dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: connects to: Unemployment functions as a deliberate worker-discipline device — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 18; Unemployment is not a flaw of capitalism but essential to it — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 251; Unemployment structurally disciplines workers and lowers labor costs in capitalism — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 150 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Unemployment functions as a deliberate worker-discipline device #corroborates (1.00) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 18
• Unemployment is not a flaw of capitalism but essential to it #corroborates (1.00) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 251
• Unemployment structurally disciplines workers and lowers labor costs in capitalism #corroborates (1.00) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 150
• Unemployment functions as the pivot keeping labor markets within exploitative limits of capital dominance #corroborates (1.00) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 256
• Depoliticized labor markets discipline workers through the threat of unemployment and lower wages #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 796
• Unemployment functioned as a deliberate political weapon to weaken labor #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 994
• Welfare functions as social control by giving workers something to lose #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1661
• Overabundance and deprivation form one causal system, not an administrative problem #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1568
• Poor immigrants’ capital accumulation refutes the vicious cycle of poverty theory #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1317