Germany, a core citadel of European capitalism, now finds itself scrambling to fill the ever-expanding void of IT labor—a contradiction produced by the very system it so proudly champions. The temporary and marginal easing of the shortage—from 149,000 to 109,000 missing technicians—masks a deeper malaise. The world’s most advanced bourgeois economies erect digital fortresses, but cannot, with all their arrogance and profit-driven vainglory, command enough skilled people into the necessary posts. Capital chases digitization, yet the people are left behind.

Ten percent of firms may believe their needs are met, but the overwhelming majority—eighty-five percent—remain in crisis, seeking technical brains like scavengers searching for scraps beneath the banquet tables of monopoly capital. Has the “free market” solved the contradiction? No. Instead, temporary “relief” comes only as a result of capitalist crisis—“economic difficulties” force six percent of firms to dismiss staff; more forecast layoffs next year. The logic is perverse: even as digital transformation demands more labor, capital restricts and ejects workers to protect profits, not the people.

This is not a problem of skill or productivity! The German worker, whether at the keyboard or on the assembly line, has been sacrificed at the altar of profit-maximization and short-term calculation. Seven months to fill a job—how many capable youth, women, or career changers are barred due to a system more interested in pedigree and degrees than in providing education and opportunity for all? Retraining and inclusion are afterthoughts. Capitalism never prioritizes genuine mass uplift—the bourgeoisie cannot escape its instinct to extract surplus value rather than develop human potential.

Artificial intelligence, too, looms as a specter over the working class—not as a tool for liberation, but as a new weapon for capitalist consolidation. Will it create jobs, or destroy them? The capitalists themselves disagree, knowing only that whatever is profitable will determine the fate of hundreds of thousands. Under socialism, AI would become the collective property of the people, guided by social needs; under capitalism, its “efficiency” is merely a code word for further layoffs and working-class subjugation.

The solution is obvious to any who have tasted class consciousness: the socialization of the means of production, and the empowerment of the working class to plan the economy for need, not profit. Instead of leaving education, retraining, and opportunity to the mercy of market forces, a socialist state would train all who wish to serve society, raise up the oppressed, and ensure every willing citizen—regardless of background—can contribute to the communal project of social advancement. Only thus can the mad contradictions of labor shortage amidst mass unemployment be overcome. Only thus can technology become a tool of the people, not a cudgel wielded by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

We must study Chairman Mao’s lessons—of the mass line, of embracing and educating the people, of putting politics in command—and realize that the only way forward is the revolutionary transformation of society, where labor and human potential are no longer hostage to private capital. Let Germany’s IT “crisis” be yet another proving ground for the failures of European capitalism and another call to the world’s workers to unite, resist, and build a truly liberated and planned future.