The economic crisis, now officially 3.5 years old, has no end in sight. With over 15 million unemployed people and millions of foreclosed homes, the median price of homes has resumed falling for the last several months. Most states, cities and towns are losing tax revenues and cutting desperately needed services. Exhausted and over-indebted workers face long-term declines in jobs, wages, and working conditions. Extreme social pressures are beginning to provoke  typically extreme reactions across the nation. After massive bailouts of huge financial companies failed to end the crisis, new financial regulations promise similar failures.

 

Meanwhile, the immense social costs of the crisis make ever more people question the underlying economic system that regularly visits large and small crises upon us. Wolff’s presentation argues for a new long-term solution and a new strategy for labor to achieve that solution. The centerpiece of that solution is a reorganization of enterprise, one that makes employees into their own employers in new kinds of cooperative enterprises. He explains why that is necessary and how it might be achieved.

 

Sponsors of the talk include Rainbow Bookstore, Immigrant Workers Union of Madison, and Peregrine Forum