Richard D. Wolff

Economic Issues of the Upcoming US Elections

[S9 E26]

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on pay inequalities for CEOs VS average workers, the economics of mega-mergers, billionaires' idea of “charity”, the economic consequences of...READ MORE

[S9 E25]

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff follows up with part two of his in-depth analyses of the USSR and anti-capitalist governments by providing (1) an overview of China's economic...READ MORE

[S9 E23]

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on U.S. church membership and its tax subsidies, Toyota and Merkel slam U.S. economic nationalism, 40 U.S. states sue...READ MORE

[S9 E22] 

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the three basic kinds of socialism as anti-capitalist ideologies grow in the U.S. and more people are looking toward socialist alternatives. Prof. Wolff lays out the importance of...READ MORE

This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org.

Special thanks to Aydın ÖRDEK, member of Executive Board of Mulkiye Center for Education, for providing the Turkish translation.

Çeviri: Ekin Keskin*

Kapitalizm kendisini sürekli olarak daha büyük bir eşitsizliğe, istikrarsızlığa ve adaletsizliğe sürüklerken, kapitalizmi eleştirenler çoğalıyor. Kapitalizmin endişeli savunucuları iki şekilde tepki veriyor. Birçoğu eleştirileri önemsemiyor. Ne de olsa, kapitalizm uzun zamandır var ve daha önce de iniş çıkışlar yaşadı. Eleştirenler, hayal kırıklıklarına rağmen çok az bir değişim olması nedeniyle eleştirilerin sönümleneceğini tahmin ediyor veya umuyorlar. Şikâyet edenler ise sadece kaybedenler. Kazananlar kesinlikle sistemi ileriye taşıyacaklar. Kapitalizm savunucularının bir kısmı da basitçe kapitalizmin bir alternatifinin olmadığı konusunda ısrar ediyor, bu yüzden eleştiriler anlamsız hale geliyor.

Authors: Richard D. Wolff and Ian J. Seda-Irizarry

Richard D. Wolff (RDW): As a professor of economics, all my adult life I’ve had to struggle with a difficult sad fact about economics education in colleges and universities in the United States for the last half century. Because of the Cold-war, because of the years of struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the previous way of teaching of economics, which included the presentation of alternative theories, were repressed. Instead economics got narrowed to a very simple orthodoxy that excluded everything basically critical of capitalism. Capitalism, “economics” taught, was the greatest economic system since sliced bread, indeed the “optimum” imaginable. There were no alternatives worth studying from which one could learn. For example, Marxism, as the most developed critique of capitalism in the world, was simply excluded from 99% of all economics curriculum, as it remains today. It is an extraordinarily narrow orthodoxy.

This article originally appeared at Counterpunch.org

Whatever distractions candidates promote to win voters, some underlying issues will wield their influence on 2020 election outcomes in any case. The biggest of these are the historically accumulated anger and betrayal felt by millions of working class Americans. Since the 1970s, their relative position within income and wealth distributions has declined. Real wages stagnated while workers’ rising productivity made ever more profits for employers, widening inequality. That alone depressed the class, but US society is structured to add many political, cultural, and social demotions onto those whose relative economic position declines.

[S9 E21]

This special edition of "Economic Update" is devoted to Understanding Marxism, the title of a short new book just published by Democracy at Work. Today's program, like the book, explains...READ MORE

[S9 E20]

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the college admissions scandal in the U.S., how lobbyists reflect and worsen inequality, North and South Carolina teachers’ strike for...READ MORE