I would like to preface by saying I am very sorry if this is the wrong community. This post touches on the core philosophy of Marxism, and I was hoping to get some insight.
My friend claims that the only reason companies produce things is because the working class, regular citizens, are asking for it; he does not get behind the idea of companies subconsciously persuading people to buy the items they sell. He believes that because your regular person wants a new phone, kitchen equipment, clothes, whatever - they are pushing capitalism forward and therefore it is the right / natural system.
How would you reason? I feel conflicted. On one hand, people do want things and there is almost always something to produce it for them, but on the other hand companies are steadily pushing for profit, using various tactics to drive consumerism. I would appreciate what you guys think and what you would answer, because according to him, capitalism only exists because demand exists. Whether that's true or not, I hope we can discuss. Cheers!
Extending for clarity: Capitalism is where owners extract more value from a business than they put in through work or risk. This is not to say that ownership alone should receive no compensation; putting your own capital at risk by investing it into a business should get some compensation - provided that the risk is real.
The problem arises when that compensation is wildly greater than the "risk" or work provided, because that unearned differential has to come from somewhere, and it invariably comes from shortchanging non-owner labor. Say you have a labor force of 100 people, but as a group, you're only compensating them 80% (ha) of what their labor is actually worth, and diverting the 20% into your own compensation. This means that, as a group, you have 80 employees and 20 slaves, or that each worker, on average, is 20% slave.