Is creating a more equitable distribution of wealth the most important single issue of our time?
July 07, 2017
Dear Professor Wolff, I often find myself asking: if I could change one major feature of our country or economy, that would benefit the maximum number of people to the maximum extent, what would it be? I keep coming back to the idea that taking money away from billionaires and distributing it to people in the lower income brackets would go a long way towards making our country more fair in many ways, beyond simply economic concerns. Redistributing wealth taken from billionaires would obviously reduce hunger and lack of access to medical care among people with low incomes. But could it also have more far reaching implications like reducing the influence of powerful interest groups and lobbyists on government decisions? Reducing crime by creating more stable homes and better opportunities for inner city and low income youth? Boost cash-flow for small businesses on Main Street because the masses of people have more disposable income? Stimulate creativity and innovation by reducing stress and exhaustion in those currently working them selves to the bone to make ends meet? Create more time for private citizens to become politically involved to influence government and make decisions that are in the interest of working people and not corporate profits? Of course there are many ways to create policy that would redistribute wealth from the top down. My question is not about how to redistribute wealth, but simply: if wealth was distributed much more equally than it currently is in the United States, would that create profound, deep and far reaching change that would greatly benefit the lives of millions of people?
AA comments inaccurate
July 07, 2017
Unfortunately, because I love this show, commentary about AA was seriously flawed. "Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety." This is why the AA program has succeeded for the decades it has existed. Also what is called "13th stepping" in AA is not a term you want to use on your radio program ever again for any reason. Very derogatory. Every group should (and do) pay rent. AA declines outside contributions from anyone/anything as it would interfere with the primary purpose. The reason it is successful is because it is focused on helping people that need help. If those people go on to do something that helps society, that's fantastic. AA should never be derailed from its primary purpose as it would harm the program and ruin so many lives. The Traditions associated with the AA program where established through trial and error because many people had similar thoughts to yours in the early days. That's why they need to be followed strictly. I love this show and this was really disheartening commentary.
Richard Wolff posted an official response
I am grateful that you appreciate the show. I am not clear on your criticism, however. The point Dr Fraad sought to make was not in any way to challenge the focus of AA and other AA-type programs on sobriety. It was rather, first, to appreciate that and its relative success versus other efforts to deal with the addiction problems of modern capitalism. Only secondarily did Dr Fraad seek to offer an additional way that AA and AA-type programs could help achieve sobriety: namely by including social changes that could also help to achieve that same goal. I regret that this point of hers somehow disheartened you.
Cold Fusion & Politicians
July 07, 2017
With cold fusion in the hands of politicians, would there be a need for the working class people?
How can an amoral non-sentient economic system be at fault for anything?
July 07, 2017
Mr. Wolff, would you have a small discussion with me? A friend told me about you and recommended I read/listen/watch you on FB & uTube. Though my circumstancs give the lie, I am a capitalist,, progressive and a rational man. I would like to ask if you consider it possible to separate capitalism, a completely amoral system for creating wealth, a blameless tool, from the fools, tricksters and frauds that are perpetrated by people upon people and the system? I shudder when I hear people blame the system of capitalism, the best we've ever designed for creating wealth, rather than blame the people. It's why we have regulations, rules and laws: to keep people from hurting each other. If we could understand that people are to blame for all the ills of whatever we have. When people lived by barter, was it the barter system that was bad, or was it the people who abused bartering that were bad, not the system of barter. Capitalism is no different other than offering greater opportunity for both good and bad. The system doesn't know the difference. Capitalism is not sentient. If I could beg five minutes of your time to respond to me, I'd be grateful.
Richard Wolff posted an official response
I'd be glad to offer more than 5 minutes. My response is to see your posing of "the system vs the people" as rather like the ancient question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Systems shape people and vice-versa in a continuous dialectic in which both poles are transformed. Thus I dont "blame" the people more or less than the system as that would make no sense to me. What I am doing is reacting to how the society I live in handles, grasps, interprets its problems (e.g., poverty, instability, inequality, injustice, catastrophic wars, ecological self-destruction, and so on). By and large, with few exceptions, blame is what we have and that blame is overwhelmingly focused on every possible contributing factor other than the capitalist system. Throughout capitalism's history - and especially since the beginning of the Cold War after World War 2 - criticism of capitalism has been taboo, a socially unacceptable critical response to capitalism. Thus the vast majority of theorists, politicians, academics, journalists, etc have seen that their careers, personal lives, even their physical safety and civil liberties were at risk to the extent that they and their work included the workings of the capitalist system among the important causes of contemporary social problems. I stress he ways in which capitalism contributes to, shapes, and often exacerbates urgent social problems chiefly to offset the now deeply embedded taboo of others who need to ignore, deny, or downplay capitalism's roles.
Last point: the dialectic of people and economic system is contradictory and always has been; it pushes both poles in different directions at the same time. As this dialectic interacts with all the other parts of society (politics, culture, nature, and so on) we get human history in which economic systems (the barter you mention but also slavery, feudalism, capitalism and so on) get born, evolve over time, and eventually die to be replaced by another system interacting with people and so on. In that historical process, we critics of an historical moment and the economic system it includes - just as, in different ways, the celebrators of each historical moment - play a small, non-negligible role in how it all plays out. The paragraph above summarizes the role I hope to be able to play.
What are your views on the pro's and con's of consumer co-ops vs worker co-ops?
July 06, 2017
The UK Co-operative group is probably an example of one of the most successful and long lived consumer co-operative, with 60k+ employees and has been operating sine 1844. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group PS: I have absolutely no connection with the UK Co-op, just thought they make an interesting example.
Richard Wolff posted an official response
Consumer coops are valuable and useful as steps in a process, initial steps often that teach those who build and use such coops about the multi-level economic, cultural, personal, and other benefits of such community efforts. My hope has always been that they can and will serve as steps toward recognizing (1) all the other areas of life where community, collectivity, and solidarity have been systematically constricted and distorted by capitalism especially, and (2) what can be done within capitalism to move beyond it to a system that much more allows, fosters, encourages and rewards community, collectivity and solidarity.
As an economist who has come to appreciate the centrality of the workplace alongside the household and other crucial social sites, I have devoted my efforts to analyzing and promoting the cooperative organization of production itself as a crucially necessary alternative to and movement beyond the employer-employee dichotomy emblematic of capitalism. My goal would be to make consumer and worker coops supporters of one another's existence and growth.
Oliver's Market in Santa Rosa, CA just became asn employee owned coop
July 06, 2017
6261700.PDF, 6261701.PDF
Did you consider to join Quora for a questions session?
July 06, 2017
quora.com
I would like to recommend Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains. Thanks
July 05, 2017
Richard Wolff posted an official response
Thank you.
What does workplace democracy look like in nonprofit organizations?
July 05, 2017
Workers coops are a good solution for employees in the private sector. But 10% of U.S. workers are employed by nonprofit organizations, where there is nothing to own. Inequality and poor treatment of workers is not confined to the private sector. What would workplace democracy look like at these organizations, and how do we get there?
What is connection between the crisis of financial capitalism and industrial capitalism?
July 05, 2017
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?
Is Socialism inextricably related with Dictatorship?
July 05, 2017
In my country, People's Republic of China, folks like me can do some tricks and circumvent the firewall and watch your inspiring videos and have a more comprehensive and rational sense of Marx's theories. But most of the people can't do that, despite the fact that the Communist Party of China claims to be the successor of Marx and Lenin. The fact that the Americans fear so greatly such terms is probably because they have witnessed the horrible consequences of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Red China: concentration of power, the purge, limited freedom of speech etc. I wonder how it got to this and if there is a way out? Does the answer lie in a further developed "productive forces"? And is there a chance for China to democratize its workplace, and hopefully, the political regime?
I dig u Richard Wolff!! But quit dragging your feet on #MMT!! We need you!!!!
July 04, 2017
An Indigenous Economic Model
July 04, 2017
Recorded in San Luis Obispo, CA on February 02, 2017.
The existing economic system in most countries is a kind of state capitalism. It produces enormous inequalities. Its extraction practices are environmentally destructive. Perhaps indigenous models provide a viable alternative. Chief Seattle was a Susquamish chief in what is now Washington State. He reportedly made these observations in an 1854 letter to U.S. President Pierce: “How can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect.” And he warned: “Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.”
https://www.alternativeradio.org/collections/spk_roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/products/ortr002
role of the working class and class struggle in the society
July 04, 2017
Marxists are told that the role of the working class in the society of the advanced capitalist countries is diminishing as there are less manufacturing jobs and more jobs in service sector and the size of the working class is shrinking due to automation. Marxists in the so-called third world countries are often told that there is no working class as these countries depend on exporting row materials like oil and most of the manufactured goods are imported. We are told that the class struggle is not the main struggle in the society and therefore Marxism is becoming obsolete. What is your response?
Richard Wolff posted an official response
These criticisms suggest that the critics have a very poor grasp of what Marx argued. In Marx's Capital, he focuses his analysis on the core relationship of modern capitalism, that between employer and employee in producing commodities for sale in markets. He explicitly includes BOTH "goods" and "services" when they take the form of commodities emerging from an employer/employee relationship in production. Therefore, that some modern economies display a transition from goods to services productions say NOTHING about the relevance of capitalism or Marx's critique of capitalism so long as the employer/employee relationship governs the production of the goods and services.
The same logic applies to the specific nature of the commodities (i.e. whether they are oil or other "raw materials"). Once again, if they are brought out of the ground, transported, more or less "processed" by means of enterprises whose organization of production is built on the employer/employee relationship, they are capitalist commodities and the workers engaged in producing them are what Marx meant by working class just as much as are workers producing capitalist commodities in the forms of manufactured goods, services, etc.
The problem in the US today is not that there are critiques of Marx and Marxism around; good critiques could and would stimulate debates, self-searching and thereby progress for Marxism (as good critiques do for any body of thought). The problem is that an entire generation of Americans has gone through a college and university system whose fear of Marx, Marxism, and Marxist professors precluded that generation from having proper instruction in Marx's theory. Their critiques - now that capitalism's contradictions have revived interest in Marx and Marxism - are thus poorly grounded (I am being polite) in a theory they have never had to learn.
Could you explain the petrodollar and how it relates to the US economy and US foreign policy?
July 03, 2017
What are the implications of the US being the world's reserve currency? Do you think the petrodollar explains the US's support for the status quo on climate change?