Technology

It is enshittification and state intervention. Also theres like 8 different kinds of productivity, but as leftists i believe we are most concerned with the productivity of living labor.

Like the other commenter said, its theft.

Corporations are locked in a death spiral of declining rate of profit.

1. Covid made workers more productive by letting them work at home, which allowed us to regenerate our energies and take care of things in our lives, rather than obsessing over and shopping for new outfits and spending an hour in the car every day commuting.

2. Covid killed so many people, particularly older people, that it reduced the unemployed population by 12-15%. Lower unemployment is deeply connected to higher wages, as is higher unemployment to lower wages. Many workers were able to get promotions or find better jobs/leave dead end industries. This raised wages while productivity increased further. (This point is interesting given your name, Marx abandoned his formulation of the lumpen by the time he wrote Capital, but his analysis of the lumpen in the 18th Brumaire still has some relevant lessons.)

3. Increase in wages leads to increases in prices. Not because the money supply has become tighter or because theres a significantly higher demand for eggs; but because businesses increase prices when wages increase. Despite the war in Ukraine causing some cost increases, at least 50% of inflation was driven by corporations arbitrarily increasing costs to goose their bottom line. Well, it isn't arbitrary. Capitalism compels corporations to compete with each other.

4. Bosses didn't like their employees having a better standard of living (see note) so they ordered people back to work. Labor productivity returns to baseline.

5. When political and economic pressures forced companies to stop raising prices, they started shrinking packages in order to cut costs and add value to their bottom line. Again, competition forces everyone to do this in different ways.

6. When political and economic pressures forced companies to stop raising prices, the American business community elected Trump to do another tax break. DOGE gutted federal services and created the concrete basis for demolishing the USAmerican social and natural welfare state. This created a basis for reduced corporate taxes introduced in the Big Beautiful Bill, which will goose profitability in the short term.

7. Long term, the plan is for Ai to replace workers; eliminating intellectual workers and forcing a more competitive market and/or higher qualification hurdles for decent paying tech jobs, and lowering wages across the whole sector. This is necessary because tech skills are going to be really valuable of the AI grift actually works, and we can't be paying workers the value of their labor. Over years it will increase unemployment as lower paying jobs are also automated away. That is, if AI actually works the way the grifters claim, which in my opinion is mathematically impossible.

However the economic effects of building all this tech infrastructure, like data centers and chip factories, will have varied impacts across various sectors. While there's lots of uncertainty in the economy, my experience with the 2007 financial crash was that all these housing construction companies and related services started going under about 6-12 months prior to the second, larger crash, that included all the big banks and insurance companies.

There's also an element of unemployment/reserve army related to people in prison. ICE raids drive down wages in industries that rely on immigrant labor; while putting stress on small farms to find workers. Small farms go under, get bought by big farmers and landlords, goosing the monopolization tendency of capitalism. And incarcerated people who are compelled to work are a part of the national productive apparatus, and drive down wages even further across all sectors.

Note from point 4, a quote from Karl Marx :

To the capitalist, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need – be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity – seems to him a luxury