Richard D. Wolff

Unemployment is not merely an unfortunate flaw in the capitalist system that can be corrected by taxing the rich, as you suggested in your closing remarks last week, professor. Unemployment is a structural feature of capitalism which disciplines the workforce and drives wages down in order to maximize profits, thus reproducing the capitalist class and the overall system. The only viable alternative is for a democratic mode of production to generate its own surplus to create new jobs in democratic enterprise, thus reproducing economic democracy.