New Critisticuffs article: Covid-19 and Crisis-20

We've written a new piece on the economic impact of the pandemic, Covid-19 and Crisis-20

People not consuming things is the problem, not for them but for the businesses selling to them. These businesses then fire their workers, depriving them of their wages which they need to access basic necessities, a fact which is discussed as further exacerbating the demand shock. Some people not consuming enough leads to other people not being able to consume.

This is a profoundly weird result for a society to wind up with, but it reveals something about the relation between production and consumption under the capitalist mode of production: consumption is a means for the production of profit. Rather than the economy providing people with what they need, apparently people consuming what they can must provide for the economy.