Schlagwort-Archiv: exchange value

FAZ: The arms industry is driving growth

Dezember 7, 2025 Eberhard Licht

‘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.

Berlin, 7 December 2025

Eberhard Licht

The book Care Economy 2.0 is available for free download.

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Revolutionary transition through global wage renunciation

November 20, 2025 Eberhard Licht

Contemporary social problems

Deutsch Español Nederlands

Contemporary social problems can essentially be traced back to two intertwined contradictions. The first concerns structural inequality between the sexes. This arises from the fact that production and the market are completely subject to capitalist exploitation, while the unpaid care sector exists outside this logic. Precisely because care work is not remunerated, it remains invisible, despite its fundamental contribution to the reproduction of society. Many current efforts, such as the Economiefeministe and CloseEconDataGap initiatives, therefore aim to make the value of care work measurable so that it can be compared with the sphere of paid production.

The second contradiction, which was clearly identified in Elfriede Harth’s contribution (August 2020), among others, concerns the destructive dynamics of capitalist production as a whole: the systematic disregard for human needs, the externalisation of ecological costs, the dogma of growth, social inequality and the profound devaluation of all activities that do not fit into the logic of profit. Harth’s perspective on a care-centred society – on an order in which the yardstick is not profit but the satisfaction of needs and prosperity in the sense of time sovereignty, meaningfulness and ecological sustainability – shows how urgent a fundamental transformation is.

The phenomenon of advanced capitalism

Both contradictions can be traced back to a phenomenon that has emerged particularly in the last 50 years of developed capitalism and which did not exist in this form before. This phenomenon affects the wages needed to purchase everything that is produced in abundance in the economy. They are the cause of gender inequality, because unpaid care work is at a disadvantage compared to paid production work. Wages are also the cause of the destructive dynamics of capitalist production, because wage increases and the safeguarding of social benefits in the face of rising prices are always linked to increases in production, because the funds cannot be generated in any other way. These increases in production are increasingly leading to the overexploitation of resources, to increasing damage and acute threats to our environment due to the ever-growing quantities of waste and exhaust gases, and ultimately also to growing inequality, because profits rise along with increases in production.

We must not forget that they are also the cause of the increasing threat of war, because at some point personal consumption can no longer be increased and then the state steps in and commissions the construction of war equipment, for which generous loans are taken out. All that is needed to justify this is an enemy image, which is not difficult to create.

From economics to ecophilia

Today, on the basis of advanced scientific and technical progress and prevailing overproduction, it is possible to solve both problems at once. The starting point lies in the key features of care work: it serves the survival of humanity, it is based on need rather than market prices, and it does not produce surpluses for exploitation. The essential difference to production is therefore not the type of activity, but solely the fact that care work is unpaid, while production remains wage-bound – and thus trapped in the logic of exchange value.

The transition to a money-free, gift-based care economy is often perceived as a technically highly complex or politically almost impossible, even utopian undertaking. However, a closer look at the existing social structure shows that the decisive lever already exists – in the form of unpaid care work in the context of reproduction, which already accounts for around half of all social activities today. This work is carried out without a market, without wages, without exchange value, and yet it is of high quality, needs-oriented and stable worldwide. It thus represents not only a counter-model, but already the functioning core of a potentially money-free care economy.

What do the gifts of creation cost?

The basis of all human existence is the gifts of creation – water, soil, plants, animals, solar energy. These goods are free by nature, because they arise without human intervention and have no price attached to them. The price only arises when society forces them into the commodity cycle and artificially assigns them an exchange value. But this exchange value is nothing more than a thin shell that disappears as soon as the product leaves the sphere of the market.

If production were organised according to the principles of the care sector, both spheres would automatically coincide. However, the capitalist economic system is based on the principle that production can only take place if money is first used as capital to purchase labour. It is only the payment of wages that ‘transforms’ an activity into a commodity and creates the exchange value of the products. Without wages, the exchange value disappears – and the products logically become part of a free, needs-based supply system.

Refusal of wages

The core of this section of the theory is therefore that a revolutionary transition is possible if wages are renounced worldwide and simultaneously. For people in production, this means that they do not stop working, but on the contrary continue to work – only they refuse to accept wages. However, as soon as wages are no longer paid, production costs disappear immediately and completely. Products instantly lose their price because the gifts of creation are free and no capital needs to be advanced for wage payments.

Ownership of the means of production loses its exclusive function because owners can no longer buy anything with profits and rents. The market dissolves even before it is institutionally abolished. Global networking in conjunction with democratically controlled AI connects demand that is not influenced by advertising with producers, so that a market is no longer necessary. Production today is so flexible that no planning is necessary. This results in the unrestricted freedom of people to take exactly what they need for a life of dignity.

The allocation role of the market is eliminated because in a care economy, durable products are manufactured, almost complete recycling is possible, and there is no longer any overproduction.

Non-violent transformation

In this sense, wage renunciation differs fundamentally from traditional Marxist ideas of transition, which almost always presuppose the appropriation or expropriation of the means of production. While appropriation presupposes that something is obtained by force or political struggle, global wage renunciation has a completely different effect: it simply deprives the means of production of their capitalist function without taking away their physical properties. Machines, factory buildings and real estate continue to be used unchanged; they merely lose their significance as sources of profit. This effectively eliminates the capitalist character of the means of production without having to expropriate them. Their use value remains intact, but their exchange value disappears.

This approach automatically leads to the logic that has always characterised care work: activities are not performed because they generate wages, but because they are necessary. This standard is universally applicable: food is produced because people need to eat; clothing is manufactured because people need it; education, care and energy supply are functionally necessary, not profit-dependent. A mode of production based on wage renunciation is therefore automatically geared to social needs – not to purchasing power or expected returns.

In order for the transition to be understood and socially accepted, four key insights must be communicated:

The household perspective as a key understanding

Everything that is needed in the household – from pots and pans to potatoes to electricity – no longer has any exchange value once the purchase price has been paid. Only its use value remains. The logic of the care sector shows that what we use is free in practical life. This is not easy to understand, as we buy many different things every day and sometimes resell everyday items, i.e. return them to the market.

But if the ingredients for our food, washing powder and shoe polish were not free in the household, we would have to ask our family members for money for our activities.

Property automatically loses its exclusive function

When all products are available free of charge, ownership of the means of production and real estate suddenly changes its character. Profits and rents become obsolete because there is nothing left to buy with them. At the moment of transition to the care economy, profits and rents therefore disappear. That is why it is also important that this transition must take place globally and simultaneously.

Property formally remains in place, but loses its basis of power. The capitalist form is abolished without the need to physically touch anything.

Transition as a new type of global strike

Global wage renunciation is similar to a strike, but it is not industrial action. We do not stop working – we simply refuse to accept wages. In doing so, we deprive capitalism of its basis of existence: the exploitation of human labour. The reproduction of society remains stable, and even stabilises further, because production and care work now share the same logic.

No political or technical preparations

The transition requires no technical preparations, no changes to the law, no reforms, no new institutions. It does not change the mode of production, but merely removes the compulsion to exploit it. The existing structures can remain completely intact; they simply lose their function because the conditions for their functioning no longer apply. This is the starting signal of the post-capitalist development of the economy.

Revolutionary transition

Global wage renunciation thus creates a revolutionary moment that is completely non-violent, unbureaucratic and immediately effective. It combines feminist criticism of the invisibility of care work with Marxist criticism of capitalism to form a common practical strategy. The transition creates the conditions that make it possible to link the free gifts of creation with unpaid production. This gives rise to an economy of mutual giving, in which the value of human activity no longer lies in money, but in caring for one another.

The revolutionary transition is therefore nothing more than the decision to extend the functioning of care work to the entire social production system – and thus to create the basis for a new, egalitarian and ecologically and ecophilically stable order.

Berlin, 20 November 2025

Eberhard Licht

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Care-Economy 2.0

Schlagwort-Archiv: exchange value

The Revolution of Giving