Profits Over People Every Time
by Miranda Alpert and Jeff Booth (AFSCME Local 3650, personal capacity)
Boston, MA
published in the April 2026 edition of Socialism Today
Before the Trump regime launched its war on Iran, there was already a recession brewing in the weakening U.S. economy. The murderous war for oil increases the threat of recession, pushes inflation even higher, and accelerates the fall in living standards for working-class people.
But the corporate owners, billionaires, and multi-millionaires get richer from war. All the death and damage, higher inflation, and further decline in living standards for the majority of people won’t be a problem for the capitalists. They’ll profit from all that, in the Middle East and in the U.S. They’ve forced another war on the working class, at the expense of our livelihoods, living standards, and even lives.
As the capitalist class and its “Billionaire in Chief” Trump were bombing Yemen in March 2025, bombing Iran during the 12-day war in June 2025, and attacking Venezuela in January 2026, U.S. economic conditions deteriorated. The Trump administration tries to hide bad news. But new revisions in key economic statistics for 2025 and early 2026 reveal what most working people already knew: economic conditions were getting worse.
This March, revisions to the 2025 statistics by the U.S. Commerce Department (including its Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis), revealed that real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the fourth quarter of 2025 fell to just 0.7%, down from an earlier estimate of 1.4%. The new revision included declines in consumer and government spending. Per-capita real income also fell in the last quarter of 2025, down to an anemic 1.1%, while core inflation increased in early 2026.
Economic growth failed to meet capitalist and government expectations in the last three months of 2025, with an estimated real GDP growth of only 2% for 2025. This continues a downward trend from 2.4% in 2024 and 3.4% in 2023.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, corporations cut 92,000 jobs this February, and the official unemployment rate rose to 4.4%. The unemployment rate for Black workers increased to 7.7% and for young workers to 7.4%. Job growth in December and January was revised downward by 69,000. Job openings in December were the lowest since the pandemic and the 108,435 layoffs in January were the worst since the 2007-2008 recession.
Capitalism benefits from constant unemployment, what Marxists call “a reserve army of labor”. Under capitalism, a zero unemployment rate is impossible. Capitalists extract profit by exploiting the environment and the working class by not paying workers the sum of the value they produce. Capitalists maintain a reserve army of labor to keep wages depressed.
The working class is being attacked from all sides. As the cost of living continues to rise, real wages remain stagnant. The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour since 2009. Trump’s “Big Beautiful” Bill is slashing over $1 trillion from Medicaid and $536 billion from Medicare over the next decade. It is cutting $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Affordable Care Act subsidies expired at the end of 2025, which increased health insurance premiums for 22 million Americans by 114%. (CNBC, 24 Feb 2026)
Healthcare and housing are human rights, but under capitalism, they’re commodities to make a profit from. In 2023, 50% of US renters spent more than 30% of their income on rent, and over 25% of renters spent more than half of their income on rent. (Axios, 12 Sept 2024)
The affordability crisis is forcing workers further into debt. According to the New York State Federal Reserve, in the fourth quarter of 2025, “Total household debt increased by $191 billion to hit $18.8 trillion…Mortgage balances grew by $98 billion to total $13.17 trillion…Credit card balances rose by $44 billion and stood at $1.28 trillion, while auto loan balances increased by $12 billion to $1.67 trillion… Student loan balances rose by $11 billion to $1.66 trillion.” (New York Fed, Feb 2026)
The War Against Iran Sharpens the Economic Crisis
Higher inflation is projected due to the war. Average gasoline prices have rocketed to $3.63 per gallon, up from $2.94 in February and a 21% increase since before the war. With the price of diesel increasing by 23% since the war started, the cost of transporting goods and food jumped up. Corporations engage in price gouging whether or not their costs actually increase due to higher oil prices. But when their costs do increase, they are always eager to add price increases for consumers in order to continue to maximize their profits.
As a bad economic situation for the working class grows worse, the billionaires are thriving. They’re metastasizing within a cancerous economic system built on the exploitation of nature and human labor for corporate profits. The world’s wealthiest 500 people gained an unprecedented $2.2 trillion in 2025, with only eight billionaires gaining a fourth of this total. “Inequality is growing worse – billionaires are pulling further away from everyone else, with the number of billionaires jumping by more than 50% since 2017. The richest 1%, whose wealth has more than doubled since 2017, owns 32% of the nation’s wealth, more than 10 times the 2.5% share owned by the bottom 50%….100 billionaire families gave $2.6bn to federal elections in 2024, one in every six dollars spent by candidates, parties and committees.…” (The Guardian, 15 March 2026)
The U.S. alone has over 900 billionaires. They’re a statistically insignificant part of the population. But their combined ownership and monstrous control over land, factories, farms, transportation, housing, schools, stores, etc. (what Marxists call “the means of production”) results in the billionaires using social production and public resources for their own profit, locking out the working class from the wealth we create through our labor.
As Marxist economics explains, labor creates all wealth, and profits are the unpaid wages from the labor of workers. Billionaires don’t work for their money. They steal it from the working class. Under capitalism, economic power is political power. The power of the billionaires seems unchecked right now. Capitalists compete and conquer through controlling or heavily influencing governments in the countries where they’re based. Conflicts over raw materials, cheap labor, trade, and markets mean chronic warring between capitalist nation-states. And without war, no capitalism. And without capitalist wars, no billionaires.
The Democratic and Republican Parties Offer No Solution
We need a world where neither capitalism nor its wars for profit can exist. The political struggle to win that world won’t be through either corporate political party in the U.S. The Republicans and Democrats conflict over how to manage capitalism, exploit labor, and wage war. The Democrats are pro-capitalist and backed by billionaires just like the Republicans. The Democratic Party is just as eagerly imperialist as the Republican Party.
U.S. workers have no conflict with the Iranian working class. This is a capitalist war for oil and regional geopolitical dominance. The Democrats have raised no moral or economic objections to the war, which has killed over 1,300 Iranians, including 200 children, and 826 Lebanese, with millions displaced. The primary concern Democratic politicians have is that they weren’t consulted about initiating and executing the capitalist war.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties support war. The 2026 Defense Appropriations Act passed Congress with bipartisan support (115 House Dem. votes and 27 Senate Dem. votes). This additional $838.7 billion includes $702.5 million for Israel, even though American approval of U.S. support for Israel is at an all-time low.
The economy is run for the ultra-rich and corporations, not for the good of the majority of society. Over the past 25 years, both parties have passed tax cuts equal to more than $20 trillion, with 80% of this going to corporations and the rich.
More workers and students, especially Gen Z, are drawing the conclusion that the broken two-party system cannot be reformed. Many are turning towards socialism. Workers and youth need a new, independent political party that could fight for the working class. A workers’ party, independent of the Republican and Democratic Parties and their billionaire money, would be a crucial way for the working class in the U.S. to build mass movements against wars and for reforms like a living wage, universal healthcare, guaranteed housing, and more. A workers’ party could also organize on a socialist program and be part of the international fight for revolutionary socialism—an end to capitalism, its chronic economic crisis, and forever wars.
Independent Socialist Group 