Richard D. Wolff

Some heterodox economists (e.g., Steve Keen and Michael Hudson) explain our economic crisis in terms of the over-growth and domination of the FIRE sector, which extracts "rents" from individuals and businesses, inhibiting both consumer spending power and investment in the growth of industry. So, industrial capitalism is suffering from the same sort of exploitation by the FIRE sector as workers. I.e., the crisis is basically a debt crisis and the solution that naturally follows from this analysis is to wipe out the debt, write it down, forgive it, etc. The Marxian analysis of the crisis that you propose, as I understand it, is focused on the exploitation of workers by capitalists in the work place. I.e., it is basically a crisis generated within the production centers of industrial capitalism, and the solution is to democratize the workplace. How are these two analyses related to one another? Are these separate crises, each following its own logic? Does industrial capitalism give rise to or enable the FIRE sector's over-growth and exploitation, even against its own interests?