• What happens here is completely devastating, and I absolutely disagree with it, but I don’t understand your explanation.

    What we currently observe is the phase where the falling profit margins …

    No. Profits of US companies were at pre-pandemic levels already in Q3/2020 (with a slight decrease in Q4/2020), and we have been measuring a steady increase since. In Q3/2022 we saw record profits with a slight decrease in the following quarter, but an all-time high of USD +3tn in the third quarter last year (I couldn’t find data for Q4/2022 and later in my 5 minute research). Corporate profits were roughly 20% higher in Q3/2022 compared to pre-pandemic levels.

    the competition itself (be it aginst other capitalists or rather, since this is monopolist phase …

    What now? Is there competition or do we have a monopoly?

    … forces savings on the variable capital going harder and further than usual.

    What does that mean? What are ‘savings on the variable capital’? And what does capital do if it goes harder?

    • Oh boy. I won’t tell you to read “Capital”, but if you want to understand terms like “profit margins” or “variable capital” and it’s relations to capitalism, and also about the “Imeprialism: th highest state of capitalism” (that’s about monopolies, and this one is Lenin’s book) you should get right in. Or at least see one of numerous reading guides for marxism.

      Very short and unadequate explanation: profit margins are the relation between profits and invested capital, the trend is that profit margins are historically falling averagely when the absolute amount of profit might be record at the same time.

      Competition - i mentioned competition because it is easier to understand how capitalism is developing itself (and it still exist in various sectors or places locally) - capital tends to concentrate, whomever is not either monopoly or cutting edge of the profit margins gets marginalised and eventually eaten by competition. But major sectors of economy in US are effectively monopolies for decades now.

      Savings on the variable capital are savings on labour costs. This can occur in many forms - intensifying productivity, longer hours, pay cuts, safety cuts, etc. etc. Also of course children labour, since you pays children less. If you look at history of labour laws, every positive change always required labour movement to fight for it, and/or have external pressure (like the establishment of socialist countries and revolution threat had significant impact over labour laws in Europe and even US).

      Currently the labour movement is weakest it had been in maybe 1,5 century, and capitalism is nearing yet another point of crisis (probably worst since Great Depression, some even predict worse) so of course you do have things like children labour being considered and attempting to implement.