Career entry under capitalist conditions

As students, we often have to grapple with what comes after our studies. In the vast majority of cases, entry into the job market proves enormously difficult for students and apprentices. We have to accept jobs we don't want, under conditions that destroy us, just to secure our existence. On top of that comes the extreme competition and performance orientation that prevails in our job market. You want to fulfil yourself in your job and not sell your soul to some large corporation for minimum wage? Your own fault!

According to a survey by the German Federal Statistical Office, average rent in Germany rose by 8.4% between 2015 and 2021. This statistic overlooks the fact that rents were already enormously high in 2015. Back then, one paid an average of €9.41 per square metre for a 30 m² flat. By 2021, this figure had already risen to €12.80. Housing today is therefore not merely expensive, but very expensive. However, it is not only rental costs that are growing seemingly endlessly. The rest of the so-called cost of living – such as food, fuel or cultural offerings – is also becoming increasingly expensive. Anyone who, in light of such findings, assumes that wages should rise adequately as a countermeasure to these developments will be bitterly disappointed. For in fact, according to a survey by the German Federal Statistical Office, real wages have been rising significantly more slowly than the cost of living since 2008, which in practice amounts to a decline. From 2019 to 2020, real wages even fell by 1.1%. It is this interplay of endlessly rising prices for housing, food, etc. and the constant suppression of wages that puts particular pressure on young people entering the world of work. The resulting existential anxiety is not, however, a regrettable by-product of capitalism. Rather, it is a necessary mechanism for maintaining the existing capitalist conditions.
We are supposed to be afraid of falling into unemployment. For this fear ensures that we accept ourselves to sinking wages and rising working hours, namely the capitalist conditions mentioned. Every precarious job, no matter how precarious, we are told from all sides, is better than no job at all. In this way, a particular image of unemployed people is drawn, which further fuels the fear of unemployment. There is a social phenomenon that makes us despise what we fear. It also applies to our treatment of unemployed people. A good example of this is the documentary series "Der Penny-Markt auf der Reeperbahn" and the dreadful memes that resulted from it. Society socially excludes unemployed people, even makes fun of them, because it is considered consensus that every individual is responsible for their own success and failure in capitalism. However, the fact that this is a systemic relationship is deliberately concealed and, unfortunately, not recognised by the majority of society.
It has now been mentioned several times that fear of unemployment is actively stoked and that unemployment must exist in a capitalist society to maintain the conditions. Karl Marx already recognised this connection and describes it using his concept of the "industrial reserve army". In an economic system that pursues solely the goal of maximum surplus value, according to Marx, labour is a commodity that workers offer on the market as such. Through the progressive rationalisation of production, for example through increasingly advanced machinery, the demand for the commodity labour decreases, but not the supply. Through the logic of competition inherent in the market, a decline in demand drives prices down. In concrete terms, this means: if you do not want to be unemployed, you must get by with lower wages. It is nonetheless predetermined that there will be people who cannot find work, since there are simply fewer jobs than workers. This group forms the industrial reserve army. They offer the profiteers of capitalism a twofold advantage: on the one hand, through their existence and the logic of the market, the wages of workers are continuously suppressed, which has already been discussed. On the other hand, industry can always fall back on them if there is a sudden increase in demand for labour.
We must therefore establish, as (soon-to-be) professionals entering the workforce, that the pressure we feel when we think about our professional future is not a consequence of a so-called "whim of the market", but rather, a necessity of the capitalist economic system.