‘The European arms industry is growing and is also a major topic for investors. Sustainability criteria, however, are becoming less important.’ (FAZ, 21 November 2025)

‘Arms boom secures hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to study’ (Handelsblatt, 20 November 2025)

The way out:

Refusal of wages as a direct abolition of capital

1. Why are wages the source of capital?

Marx’s argument is clear:

It is not the machine, not the organisation, not capital itself that generates surplus value, but only living labour, whose value is paid below its product value.

This means that wages are structurally always underpaid.

They only give workers back the value of the reproduction of their labour power, but not the full value they create.

Surplus value arises exclusively from the fact that part of the working time performed is not paid for. The capitalist appropriates this unpaid part.

This leads to the radical but compelling conclusion:

As long as there are wages, there is surplus value. And as long as there is surplus value, there is capital accumulation.

The abolition of capital can therefore only be achieved through the abolition of wages – not through expropriation.

Expropriation can shift ownership, but:

It preserves the wage form,
It preserves exchange value and the market,
It preserves the separation of the means of production and the workers.

Thus, the logic of exploitation remains intact, only in different hands.

2. Why the rejection of wages is more realistic today than ever before

Historically, every attempt to overcome capital failed because labour coordination without a market was inconceivable.

Three material changes have brought about a completely different situation:

a) Surplus production: working time is no longer a scarce commodity

In virtually all sectors – energy, food, industry, services – social productivity is so high that:

basic needs could be met with far fewer hours of work per week. David Graeber argues in ‘Bullshit Jobs’ (2018) that a significant proportion of wage labour in modern capitalist societies produces no social benefit.
many activities can already be automated,
the reproduction of society no longer depends on full-time work.

Capitalism needs wages to enforce discipline.

However, a highly productive society no longer needs wages to ensure its survival.

b) Global networking allows horizontal coordination without a market

The central Marxist problem of any money-free society has always been:

How do we coordinate production and supply without prices?

Today, however, we have:

Real-time data networks
Logistics systems that function globally
Platforms that enable cooperation and matching without money
AI systems that can anticipate needs and optimise resources

This provides a new answer to the central question of overcoming capitalism:

It is not the market that coordinates – it is the flow of information.
Production is demand-driven, not profit-driven.

c) When work is voluntary, exchange value automatically collapses

When work is voluntary, no exchange value can arise – because no one is selling anything.
Everything that is produced is a gift, not a commodity.

This means:

Raw materials no longer have a price
Pre-products no longer have a price
End products no longer have a price
Wages become superfluous
Capital becomes meaningless (it can no longer be exploited)
The financial system dissolves functionally, not administratively.

3. Empirical basis: Refusal of wages is not a utopia

The idea that work must be remunerated in order to ensure social reproduction has been historically disproved. The present shows that

Most of the work necessary for society is invisible in official economic indicators.
In most capitalist countries, the amount of unpaid work (e.g. care work, nursing, education, housework, informal help, voluntary work, digital commons production) significantly exceeds paid work.
Estimates show that around a quarter more unpaid work is done than paid work (DESTATIS: Time Use Survey (ZVE) 2022) – but this work is not included in GDP because it is not mediated by the wage form.

This is a crucial Marxist finding:

Modern society is already largely sustained by work that receives no wages and yet still functions.
The wage form is therefore not a law of nature, but a historically limited principle of coordination for capitalist surplus value production.

This empirical fact shows that

social reproduction is no longer dependent on wages.
The material basis for production beyond the wage form already exists in everyday life.
Much of human labour today is already needs-oriented, not exchange-value-oriented.

The abolition of the wage form is not a utopian project, but the theoretical consequence of Marx’s analysis of surplus value and the empirical continuation of a reality that already exists.

Where labour ceases to be a commodity, capital ceases to be a social form.

4. The intensification of the current crisis of accumulation and the transition to an arms economy

The current economic development in the core capitalist countries can be accurately described using Marx’s theory of overproduction and underconsumption crises. The central dynamic is that the high productivity gains of recent decades have not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in real wages. Read More

Since wages are the only source of realisation of the commodity values created in the production process on the private consumption market, this structural decoupling leads to chronic weakness in demand. As a result, the private sector – in particular the mass production of durable consumer goods – is losing its function as the engine of capitalist accumulation.

This dynamic is exemplified by the automotive industry: High productivity, stagnating mass incomes and an increasingly saturated market lead to overcapacity, plant closures and job cuts. At the same time, the retail sector reports a continuing decline in demand, which is accelerated by real wage losses among the lower and middle income groups. This eliminates a structurally central area in which the capitalist production process was able to realise its commodity values.

Historically, the capitalist state has responded to such situations by replacing the lack of private demand with state demand. Under the current political conditions, this is increasingly happening in the area of arms production.

This sector has several characteristic features that make it particularly suitable for state-organised capital valorisation:

Military demand is largely independent of developments in private purchasing power.
Arms programmes can be politically legitimised and financed through high levels of government debt, provided that an enemy image has been established.
Military production creates jobs and value chains that compensate for the short-term loss of civilian industrial production.

This shifts the mode of social reproduction from a civilian to an increasingly militarised path of accumulation. This transition has not only economic but also political consequences. Unlike civilian consumer goods, military goods do not have an autonomous market; they are only ‘consumed’ when political decisions enable their use. The continued expansion of military production capacities therefore creates systemic pressure for political or military escalation. In other words, the arms industry depends on the real or anticipated destruction of its products in order to open up new cycles of demand.

The current geopolitical constellation reinforces this structural tension. Both the European Union and Russia are reorganising large parts of their industrial base in the direction of an arms and dual-use economy. This symmetrical armament is justified in each case by the military expansion or hostility of the other side, whereby both sides legitimise each other. At the same time, the reference to external threats allows for an expansion of government debt and defence budgets that would be politically unfeasible in the civilian sector.

The urgency arises from the dialectic of these three processes:

the intensification of the civilian overproduction crisis,
the increasing dependence of capitalist reproduction on military demand, and
the accelerating geopolitical confrontation.

The further the transition to a military economy progresses, the more closely economic stability, state legitimacy and military escalation readiness become linked. This not only increases the risk of military conflicts, but also the likelihood that political actors will — explicitly or implicitly — view military conflicts as a functional solution to economic contradictions.

This constellation marks a historic point at which the structural logic of capitalist accumulation increasingly comes into direct conflict with the conditions of social and geopolitical stability. Under these conditions, a social transformation that overcomes the compulsion to produce commodities and wage labour gains not only theoretical relevance, but also a temporal urgency that arises from the internal dynamics of the system itself.

5. The Care Strike of 2027 as a necessary counter-movement

Why the care sector, of all sectors, can bring about the historic break

The invisible basis of the care sector is facing a dramatic double crisis:

The militarised compensation for the overproduction crisis
- Arms production is replacing shrinking private consumption.
- Arms production is becoming the last ‘safe business sector’.
- This structurally increases the risk of real military escalations.
Unchecked ecological destabilisation
- Unchecked rise in emissions despite all ‘climate policy’.
- The destruction of livelihoods is progressing faster than any reform.
- Crisis responses are becoming increasingly authoritarian and military.

The following conclusions can be drawn from this constellation:

Time is running out – economically, ecologically, politically.

The historical window in which social actors can implement an alternative is extremely narrow.

A look at history makes it clear how quickly crises become militarised:

Only six years passed between the National Socialists‘ seizure of power (1933) and the outbreak of the Second World War (1939).
An entire civilisation plunged into war and barbarism in a very short time – out of a situation of massive economic upheaval.

The Care Strike of 2027

Precisely because the care sector today forms the functional core of social reproduction, it has a unique position of power:

When care work stops, everything stops.
When care work becomes visible, the capitalist illusion that only wage labour is ‘productive’ crumbles.
If wages were collectively refused, it would become clear what work really sustains society.

The planned care strike on 8 March 2027 can therefore be more than just a labour dispute.

It can be the historic moment when work that has been kept ‘invisible’ until now reclaims its central social role — and when, in the preparation for this strike, the capitalist wage form is openly questioned for the first time.

It is precisely the combination of

the worsening economic crisis,
the real threat of war,
ecological devastation,
and the structural power of the reproductive sphere

that makes the care strike not a sectoral action, but a possible turning point for civilisation.

The care strike, i.e. the feminist and solidarity-based refusal of wages, is thus the lever that can initiate real social transformation from a defensive position — before military or ecological developments close the historical window.

Care-Economy 2.0

The Revolution of Giving