New figures reveal growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the growing concentration of wealth in fewer hands is not a contingent or temporary feature of the current conjuncture but a structural law of capitalism itself. The central thesis is that the falling share of GDP going to wages — documented across OECD countries over the last three decades — is not an anomaly but the expression of an irresolvable contradiction: capital must drive down wages to maintain profitability, yet in doing so it undermines the very demand on which its profits depend. This contradiction cannot be managed or reformed away; it can only be resolved through the abolition of capitalism itself.

The article claims that mainstream economics refuses to acknowledge this dynamic because doing so would require admitting the reality of class struggle. The constant ratio between wages and profits, taught as axiomatic in neoclassical economics, is a theoretical defence of the status quo. The real movement of the economy — falling labour shares, rising exploitation, and recurrent crises — confirms Marx's analysis that the bourgeoisie is "unfit any longer to be the ruling class."

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in classical Marxist political economy, specifically Marx's theory of exploitation and the contradiction between the forces and relations of production. The article deploys the labour theory of value to argue that all wealth is produced by the working class, and that the portion of the working day performed as unpaid labour — surplus value — is the source of profit. The falling share of wages in GDP is therefore not a distributional quirk but evidence of intensifying exploitation: workers are producing more value relative to what they receive in wages.

The article also draws on Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, quoting the passage on the pauperisation of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie's inability to "assure an existence to its slave within his slavery." This situates the argument within the tradition that sees capitalism as historically exhausted — a system that has outlived its progressive role and now acts as a fetter on the development of productive forces.

The theoretical framework is explicitly anti-reformist. The article rejects the possibility of resolving capitalism's contradictions through education, training, or privatisation, arguing that each proposed solution merely reproduces the underlying contradiction. This places the analysis firmly within the revolutionary Marxist tradition, as distinct from social-democratic or Keynesian approaches that seek to manage the wage-profit relationship.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in December 2013, at a moment when the post-2008 recovery was uneven and anaemic across the advanced capitalist economies. The specific data points cited are:

• US wage growth falling from 3.4% per year (pre-2008) to 2.1% per year (2008-2012)
• OECD labour share of GDP falling from 66% (early 1990s) to 62% (early 2000s)
• Dramatic declines in labour share in Spain (75% to lower), France (80% to lower), Norway (64% to 55%), and Sweden (74% to 65%) since the 1980s
• £750 billion held by British capitalists in low-interest bank accounts, uninvested in productive capacity

The article connects these figures to the broader crisis of overaccumulation and the shift toward fictitious capital. British capitalists' refusal to invest in long-term productive projects like nuclear power — despite having enormous sums of idle money — is presented as evidence of the system's short-sightedness. The "recovery" in UK GDP growth at the time is identified as a mirage, driven by speculation and cuts to wages and public services rather than genuine productive investment.

The conjuncture is also defined by the weakening of organised labour. The article notes that trade unions have lost much of the power they held 30-40 years ago, a result of sustained attacks by the bourgeois state and media. This is not presented as an accident but as a necessary condition for the shift in the balance of class forces toward capital.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a relatively early statement of themes that the Revolutionary Communist International has developed extensively since 2013. The argument about the falling rate of profit as the underlying driver of crisis — only gestured at here through the wage-profit contradiction — is elaborated in numerous subsequent articles on marxist.com, particularly those dealing with the long downturn and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

The critique of "responsible capitalism" models in Scandinavia has been deepened in analyses of the Nordic model's erosion, especially in Against the Current episodes and articles examining Sweden's shift toward neoliberal labour market reforms.

The argument about British capitalism's peculiar short-termism and preference for speculation over productive investment connects to a broader corpus on the decline of British manufacturing and the City of London's role as a centre of fictitious capital accumulation. Readers should consult the RCI's analyses of the 2008 crisis and its aftermath, particularly the series on the "Great Recession" and the political economy of austerity.

The article's treatment of technology and automation as forces that intensify exploitation rather than liberate humanity is developed further in the RCI's writings on the "fourth industrial revolution" and the political economy of AI, which argue that technological unemployment is not a bug but a feature of capitalism in its current phase.

Connections

• Marx, Capital Volume I: The theory of surplus value and exploitation that underpins the wage-profit analysis.
• Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto: The passages on pauperisation and the bourgeoisie as grave-diggers, quoted directly.
• Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England: The empirical tradition of documenting the effects of capitalist accumulation on working-class living standards.
• Trotsky, The Transitional Program: The strategic perspective of revolutionary struggle against reformist illusions, implicit in the article's rejection of half-measures.
• Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital: The analysis of capitalism's need for non-capitalist markets and the limits this imposes on accumulation, relevant to the article's discussion of globalisation and cheap labour.
• IDOM articles on the falling rate of profit: For the theoretical mechanism that explains why wage compression leads to crisis rather than stable profitability.
• Against the Stream episodes on the Nordic model: For the empirical refutation of "responsible capitalism" as a viable alternative.

Key Quotes

1. "Modern economics sells us the line that the ratio between the share of GDP going to labour and that going to capital always remains constant. That way, any increase in the boss's profits equals a corresponding increase in the workers' wages."

2. "To accept that the division of GDP between labour and capital is not a permanently fixed ratio is to accept that it can be moved and changed, and such movement would primarily be caused by pressure from either capital or labour."

3. "By pursuing ever greater profits they inevitably drive down wages through automation and by accessing to new sources of cheap labour on the world market. The problem is that wages also make up the demand which keeps businesses afloat."

4. "The impoverishment of the masses and the concentration of wealth and capital in the hands of a small minority is a law of Capitalism and as long as the right of private ownership to the means of production exists this process will prevail."

5. "Capitalism has developed to a point where technology and globalisation, phenomena that have the potential to improve the lives of all people hundreds of times over, are actually making the lives of wage-earners worse."

6. "The reason the bourgeois fight so hard against the working class is because they know how powerful an organised workers' movement can be. Strikes, occupations and revolutions are illustrations of workers attempting to take control of the wealth that they produce and leaving the bosses powerless."