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Capitalism In The United States: Summary And Analysis

492 Words2 Pages

The treadmill of accumulation is used to describe capitalism in six easy to understand steps. First, there must be a class imbalance in society. This consists of the capitalist class, which is a small group of people on the top of the societal pyramid. Class imbalance also links to the absolute general law of capital accumulation that is defined as “accumulation of wealth at one pole; the accumulation of relative misery at the other” (Foster, 2010, p. 208).
Therefore, by such a small margin of wealthy people, it is destined that there is a continued creation of the working class. The creation of such a large working class bring upon the vanishing of the middle class in the United States. However, what the working class doesn’t know is that they fuel the never ending cycle of the capitalist system. …show more content…

This also relates to the absolute general law of capital accumulation because capitalism is all about competition. For example, Speedway Oil bought out Hess which then replaced all Hess gas stations with Speedways. When a company buys out another, it increases its value and decreases the number of available labor. Externally, the constant need of expansion equals to the inflating wealth overall of the capitalist. With the expansion of capital comes the creation of new technology. New technology is a cheaper and faster way of creating the goods a capitalist society craves. By replacing laborers with machines, the workers get poorer and the wages start declining. State support of the capitalist is a very important feature of the treadmill. The state provides laws and promotes the class system. The police placed in power to enforce both laws and class system. They are an armed group that imposes the capitalist system that protects the wealthy elite.
Another way the system is reinforced is the use of education and media to shape beliefs and

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