Comment on Financial Times book review December 3, 2025.
Paul A. Myers
The motor to capitalist accumulation is the exploitation of labor. One can see this clearly in the fundamental equation of capitalism.
Capital + labor = more capital
More capital is always the goal. Labor is the variable to be exploited and whose work catalyzes capital into more capital. The capitalist output is monetized through distribution in a money-based market system. So the overall story of capitalism is one of many different manifestations of the single driving variable — the exploitation of labor.
Ruthless exploitation of the labor variable has been the rule across all times and places. Slavery is just the most coercive form of labor exploitation. In today’s America one can see capitalist-led enterprises leading the charge to undermine long-established hours and wages legislation and the curtailment of trade union organization power, a countervailing power necessary for labor to achieve a labor rate commensurate with its marginal productivity in monopolized and oligopoly markets in America (there are almost no competitive markets left in America). Accordingly, the economic concentration of markets guarantees intensified exploitation of labor.
The neoliberal emasculation of middle and working classes has been the predictable result. (And the capital side of the equation has been supercharged by government-created monetary expansion channeled to the superrich through a banking and finance system custom designed to this task by highly effective special interest politics — controlled by the great lords of capitalism.)
The idea behind democratic capitalism is that democratic processes representing the broad welfare of people (labor) would be superior and the directive political force overseeing the overall equitable distribution of wealth and income in the society. In America, it has always been stunning how effective the Supreme Court has been to disregard acres of original intent by the Founders to privilege capital over labor.
Myersbooks History 