Unemployment is a tragedy for those who are suddenly unemployed.

Producers can be unemployed, not because they deserve unemployment, but only because
they have been too productive, in some cases, while demand has been too restricted, too
restrained. Direct producers are often unemployed because of insufficient consumer
demand, and not because of inefficient performance on the part of the producers. Without
consumer demand, supplies of consumer goods are shut off, and the workers are laid off.
Unemployment is not always the fault of the producers.  Very often unemployment is the fault
of the market.





"The economic puzzle Karl Marx wrestled with was explaining how wealth, or economic
surplus, could accumulate in the hands of a small class under capitalism when no
extraeconomic coercion was involved."
-- John E. Roemer, Free to Lose: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Philosophy, 1988