Recessions are the inevitable product of the capitalist mode of production.

Capitalist production tends toward periodic over-production, and since different firms need to sell commodities in order to see their money capital returned for a further cycle (replacing their fixed, constant and variable capital), production grinds to a halt. If such crises were really under-consumption crises then the Keynesian measures put in place after the post-war economic boom would have actually worked (ie: raise wages so workers can buy the commodities produced), but we can empirically examine those years and see that such measures were unable to stop inflation nor save the falling rate of profit. Why didn’t they?

In truth, as labour is the only source of surplus value (ie profit), these measures can never work. The profit motive drives capitalists to invest in machinery to increase productivity, but only labour can produce profit, and therefore capitalists hack away at their own legs as the rate of profit falls over time. As the rate of profit falls while the organic consumption of capital rises, capital is either hoarded or increasingly dumped into speculative activities (real estate, stock market) ie: unproductive investment (or “bubble” forming) which leads us closer and closer to the final crisis. The only actual way to reverse this trend while maintaining the mode of production is by the mass-destruction of capital (ie: recession, world war) which will allow productively-invested capital to make a profit again (which is the only way the capitalists will invest in it). Hence the boom-bust.

This is particularly ghoulish when you realize that this choice made by the ruling capitalist class & their puppet governments every decade, give or take a few years, results in the destruction of the lives of hundreds of millions of working class people. We bear the brunt while they get richer than ever before.

This system must end.