Richard D. Wolff

First of all, I saw the recent spate of interviews you did with Stuart "ass" Varney on FOXX, and I congratulate you for not popping that pretentious twit in the mouth for referring to you or anyone with a Marxist message as a "pinko-communist-bed-wetter." Although I would love to ascribe his behavior to that of the masses who still do not "trust" socialism, because of its Lenin-associations with that term, and because of America's seeming black-out history of not discussing the subject for the last 70 years or so, however he seemed to want to egg you on to make you over-react. He also didn't seem to really LISTEN to a thing you said, about restructuring the economy, so that it could benefit all, instead of just the chosen cash-over-loaded...few. Again, is that just a historic response to the topic at hand? Stuart Varney in particular? Or, Foxx news' heads telling him to try to discredit you at every turn, so you don't get, you know, too wide an audience to spread your nasty ideas about socialism and Marxism? In any case, I think it's great you got the exposure, and went on the show so you could reach quite possibly, the largest group of Capitalists, and entrenched thinkers the country has to offer. Now, to my question, do you think it did any good? Are you getting the sense that people are listening to you, and getting the message? Varney has had you on now, what? 3x in the last month? Someone apparently wants to hear what you have to say, sarcasm and biting commentary, not withstanding.

I'm still somewhat confused. For example, I spend 3 days a week, every summer, playing music in a restaurant for 20 an hour. So as I understand it, I've entered a contract in which I sell my labour power to an employer. The employer "consumes" the purchased labor power by setting me- the worker - to perform the laboring activity (play the piano) alongside/with tools, equipment, and raw materials (a piano). Does surplus value exists in this case? Is there a distinction between the surplus value of labour power producing intangible services vs. labour power producing tangible product and how can it be measured? How is this purchase of labour power different from that of a capitalist? And lastly, would there be a necessary change in such purchase of labour power in an alternative mode of production, ei a worker coop? Original question: http://www.rdwolff.com/johnlock/can_you_explain_the_difference_between_labour_and_labour_power?recruiter_id=82586

What are the reasons are behind this idea?

Hello Prof. Wolff, My question is this: how can employers be incentivized (positively or negatively) to pay their employees fairer or even living wages? If some kind of government interaction were enacted, it would need to be not so Keynesian as taxing employers to re-distribute wealth. Our right wing would kill any plan like that, and people on the left should liberate themselves from needing government help, and better yet, liberating themselves from having to borrow so much money. Could a compromise of A) state/federal government(s) assessing what a true living wage is & enacting it through the Department of Labor & B) deterring employers from reducing force out of retaliation to updated wage standards be plausible? The companies are winning right now, and with unemployment so low (more income tax being paid) the government is in a way winning, but working people are stuck. Thanks, for what you do!

I was wondering what you think about "Red Vienna", a political phenomenon that happened in Vienna, Austria during the early 20th century (1919-1934). It was a time when the Austrian Social Democratic Party won overwhelmingly the elections in the Vienna state government and began instituting radical reform. Unlike most social democrats, it didn't try to just put a "human face to capitalism", it tried to institute an actual transition to socialism via massive public ownership of housing and industry and giving democratic control to the workers, from housing to health care to industry, etc. They were never defeated in elections, they were destroyed in a civil war where fascists and conservatives violently ousted them. It seems to defy the traditional "Leninist" view that social democracy never goes anywhere beyond capitalism and also seems to defy social democrats who think they can't go anywhere further. Was wondering your thoughts on all this.

I am still working through this. Every line brings thoughts to mind. E.g. "The proportion of individuals who reported searching for a job in the past four weeks ... most notable for younger households (those age 45 and less), for whom the proportion of job seekers shot up from 22.7% in March to 28.2%." And here I employ sarcasm ... with unemployment so low and so many workers too discouraged to look for work, why are 20% people under 45 reported to be looking for work? Either more people are without employment than indicated OR most people just have jobs that suck! https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/research/2017/an170821

I have been following your by your many presentations on YouTube but would love to be in one of your meeting. Thanks for the great work. Leston

I recently watched the Aug 11 episode of Democracy at Work, which had a short analysis of the $3B Wisconsin subsidies for Foxconn. The $3B subsidy is over a 15 year period so the number of ($50k/yr plus 30% benefits) jobs that this $3B would provide is only around 3,000. Still I think a solid argument, but not has large as indicated in the analysis in the video. Foxconn claims ultimately 13K jobs, but direct investment by Wisconsin into needed areas of infrastructure improvement alone would be a much more productive use of $3B and would probably produce indirect supporting jobs as well. Plus I doubt that the ecological and environmental impacts that Foxconn will produce as well as other externalities are calculated in the business case (Wisconsin and/or other states and countries will pay for that damage).

Noam Chomsky often mentions how the works of Adam Smith and the works of Classical Liberalism in general are almost always misinterpreted. He says that Adam Smith's use of "invisible hand" in Wealth of Nations is actually an argument AGAINST what we would now call neoliberalism. He also says that modern libertarianism is "radically opposed" to Classical Liberalism, and that Adam Smith was in favor of regulation as long as it benefited the "working man." This is interesting because it seems the left and right both agree that Classical Liberalism is synonymous with Capitalism. Do you agree? Are the works of Classical Liberalism and Adam Smith grossly misinterpreted? Here is the reference for my title: https://youtu.be/8mxp_wgFWQo?t=1m30s Here he is talking about the "invisible hand": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaZORYaygo0

I've been thinking about how to build an economic system to replace capitalism and I've turned to the Proudhonian libertarian socialist inspired alternative commonly known as anarchosyndicalism or worker coops. A self-sufficient ecosystem of federated coops (of all kinds), could, if made incompatible and inimical to the capitalist system, replace it. However, even with socialized property, and socialized intellectual property, it is expected that some coops will produce more than others, and without a centralized or coercively regulated system, with a free system, some coops would outproduce others, have better marketing, location, or otherwise achieve competitive advantages that would then create inequalities. The best case scenario, means those inequalities are negligible, but those would likely be compounded by the effect it would have on the commodity prices, making coops that produce more, have cheaper products, which would then be favored by demand, and then this supply and demand dynamic could make a successful coop undermine and vanquish the competiton (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). This could, however, snowball into the concentration of wealth into an area that would then out-compete coops in other areas, creating regional inequalities, etc. Also, when commonly funded services (education, healthcare, security, justice, art, culture, banking, roads, etc) are accounted for, even if they are sustained by contributions proportional to production, some coops could potentially opt to lessen their contributions to counterbalance, achieve or pursue competitive advantages, thereby preventing such services from improving or even causing them to contract. Essentially, my fear is that market dynamics would eventually erode the basis of this anti-capitalist society. Is there a mechanism to avoid such a fate that doesn't fall into the trap of a bureaucratic distribution system?

Hello. First off, I want to say thank you for what you do, professor. I'm wondering why TLC/FHV drivers can't simply put their own app out that (ideally) wouldn't take ANY commission. It's my understanding that there is no exclusivity with drivers and platforms (Uber, Lyft, Juno, car service base and etc); meaning an Uber driver is a Lyft driver and a Juno driver all at once. Juno is an interesting story because it got sold for $200,000,000 to Gett and only lived in the market for one year. They just gave out $50 phones to drivers that were already driving with Uber and Lyft and only charged them 10% commission (compared to Uber and Lyft's 20%.) This movement of "for the drivers" was its own selling point to the both drivers and passengers. You hardly seen any ads for Juno but they sold for a lot of money in a short period of time because of their share of the marketplace that they carved through that mantra. So my question: why can't the workforce recognize that they physically own the market and create their own app that can offer the driver the whole 100%? In a competition sense, $1,000,000 to build a GPS app that processes credit cards (ie Uber Lyft etc) doesn't seem like much to bring the antedote to the scam that these "ride-sharing" hustle bring along. Sounds like it can be even crowd-sourced. No other company would be able to compete. True P2P.

The Disconnect between Trumps earlier position on Afghanistan and what he is doing now can not go unnoticed by anyone. IS this all simply "War as for-profit Business" OR is their ANY real strategic end-game for anyone? Surely to God people see that more Billions and more bloodshed here will have the same effect it has had since Bush 43? OR, is there more to this?

I am entering the medical field and want to work as a physician with purpose. I was wondering about the logistics of health insurance cooperatives and how effective they are at providing cheap care for low-income communities. How does one go about making one of these coops happen?

According to economist Benjamin Ward if you assume a homo oeconomicus, who wants to maximize his income, and that workers get not only a standard salary, but a bit more/less if the company makes a profit/loss, you have the problem that if there's high demand and the company makes a profit, if it takes on additional workers the profit has to be shared by more people. The other way around, if the demand is low and the company is operating at a loss, it would be logical to take on more workers to share the loss among more people. So this incentive is very counter-productive. Coincidentally the Yugoslavian economy consistently had problems with high unemployment. Is there a causal relationship? How large is the practical impact of the problem described above?

Steve Banon claims to be an "Economic Nationalist" rather than a White Nationalist. What is Economic Nationalism?