Articles
Capitalism in Crisis, Government Impotent
The media, academics, and politicians often speak and act as if government economic policies can or will "solve" or "end" or "overcome" capitalism's crises. They don't. They never have. The often-cited counter-example, FDR's New Deal program in the 1930s, failed to get the US out of the Great Depression. World War 2 finally did that. Government economic policies targeted at crises are mostly secondary, weak sideshows. The main event is the intrinsic relationship between capitalism and its crises.
Rethinking Health Care
Published on July 31, 2009AUDIOIn an interview, Rick Wolff analyzes the current debate over health care reform in the US in relation to the uniquely high costs of medical care and its relatively poor results. Generally accessible health care in the US is compared to that in most other wealthy industrial societies. Wolff identifies some of the key obstacles to changing and improving the US health care system.
Obama should force the votes on health care
Professor Wolff talks with The Real News Network and claims that Obama must make his party vote for real health care reform.
Marxian Economics
This course provides a working foundation in the core concepts of Marxian economic theory – necessary and surplus labor, labor power, surplus value, exploitation, capital accumulation, distributions of the surplus, capitalist crises, and the differences between capitalist and other class structures. In addition, these core concepts will be systematically used to understand current social problems (including political and cultural as well as economic problems).
Tax the rich to pay for health care?
Rich people do not make an economy strong. What makes the country wealthy is its people.The Blue Dogs refuse to support the House health reform bill as long as it includes the surtax on the rich. Some Democrats have backed away from their previous statements regarding surtax, fearing they would not be able to pass the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has 7 Blue Dog Democrats. Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics, talks about his view on this issue.
Crises in versus of Capitalism
Capitalism has generated recurring "crises" everywhere and throughout its history. It alternates bursts of growth and prosperity with crisis periods when many workers lose jobs and homes, bankruptcies close enterprises, production shrinks, and governments reduce public services. Growth periods almost always promote speculation, overproduction, inflation, and excess debts that crises then erase or even reverse. As crises deepen, the increasingly desperate unemployed accept lower wages and poorer working conditions. Business "revives" if and when lo
Economic Crisis from a Socialist Perspective
The crisis in capitalism today is not, or not yet, a crisis of capitalism. Whether it evolves into a crisis of capitalism - when the system itself is in question for significant numbers of people - depends on three factors. The first is the extent of the economic meltdown now underway, and the mass suffering, resentment, and opposition it provokes. The second factor comprises the policies undertaken to contain and reverse the crisis, their effects, and their public perception.
Progressive Radio Network Interview
Progressive News Network's Danny Schechter interviews Professor Wolff and Max Fraud-Wolff on the financial crisis.
The Obama Strategy: America’s New Role in the World Economy
Obama’s chief strategic goal, at home and abroad, is to manage a severe crisis in one kind of capitalism (private) by achieving a transition to another kind (state managed or state). Because the crisis of private capitalism inside the US is so serious and requires so many resources and so much focused policy attention, the global position of the US receives relatively less attention and a lower priority. The Obama strategy thus entails a retreat from the Reagan-through-Bush positions on the US role in the world (expressed by attacking them as “counter-productive”).Actually, it’s the system, President Obama
Global capitalism’s deterioration is fast outrunning the disorganized, uncoordinated patchwork of too-little-too-late government “programs.” Nothing illustrates this sorry spectacle better than the twists and turns of U.S. monetary policy to be executed by the Federal Reserve, and Congress’s just-passed “stimulus” program, about to be enacted by the Obama administration.
Too big to fail, too big to be privately owned
Richard Wolff speaks to Paul Jay about the troubled auto industry in the United States. He says the important question right now is whether the bondholders will be willing to give up their share for foreign shareholders and make the sacrifices necessary to make American auto companies survive. If they refuse, as many of them claim they will, then the only option will be bankruptcy. He also says that both GM and Chrysler are going to give their largely worthless shares to the fund for health-care programs insuring their workers.
