Reflections on ‘capital’s cost-of-living crisis’

Abstract

Few people will be unaware of the global cost-of-living crisis. This paper situates the crisis in the much larger crisis of capital and, specifically, the present form of accumulation, premised at one end by parasitic capital and at the other by the impoverishment of labour. It does so by examining the immediate and underlying causes of capital’s cost-of-living crisis. It is argued that both immediate and underlying causes link the cost-of-living crisis to its basis in relations of capitalist parasitism and worker impoverishment that characterise present-day capitalism.