Richard D. Wolff

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"The emerging new always both frightens and inspires the fading old. History is that unity of opposites. Sharp-edged rejections of what is new clash with enthusiastic celebrations of it. The old gets pushed away even as bitter denials of that reality surge. The emerging new world economy displays just such contradictions. Four major developments can illustrate them and underscore their interactions..."

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"Capitalism’s defining class struggle has always been that between the employer and employee classes. And the victory of the latter ends that dichotomous organization of workplaces (factories, offices, and stores) that grounds and defines capitalism’s class structures and struggles. Indeed, the victory of the employee class could thus finally close the sequence of all those dichotomous class structures (master/slave and lord/serf)."

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"For decades, wealth and income have been redistributed upward—with minimal protest by the working classes who were harmed by that redistribution. During 2022, working classes in many countries were no longer willing to defer their needs in the wake of that redistribution. Labor militancy, unionization, and strikes have all been renewed with remarkable energy and enthusiasm. Increasing numbers of workers are unwilling to wait and see whether or not long sluggish center-left and center-right governments and parties would do anything adequate to change the deepening inequalities, instabilities, and injustices of contemporary capitalism."

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"Most of what passes as “the economic policy we need now” is really pleading by a self-interested employer class. Raising interest rates to fight inflation is the big example these days. Among the forms and fields of class struggle, debunking economic policies’ claims of being class neutral is an ongoing battle."

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"Class warfare lies behind how many politicians, mass media, and academics explain the economic problems requiring the solutions that their policies offer."

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"As capitalism sinks into ever deeper trouble, it is time to topple false Gods as part of the process of finding our way to better institutions, and indeed to a better system."

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"As usual, the profit-driven concerns of big business and their result—a remarkably selective historical amnesia—fuel the silence about alternative anti-inflation policies. So too do the right-wing ideological blinders that now constrict U.S. politics. Yet, policy alternatives always exist, no matter how desperately partisans promoting one policy seek to obliterate debate and discussion of others... I will present three other anti-inflation policies that do not entail interest rate increases—there are many more—that could and should be part of today’s policy discussions. All have precedents in U.S. history." 

Article by Richard D. Wolff

"The socialist left now, as during earlier centuries, advocates for an economic system that does not yet exist in any nation. However, the socialist left does so with the knowledge of what happened to those experiments in socialism that turned out to be and still are forms of state capitalism. Hopefully, 21st-century socialism will not need to repeat those experiments."

Article by Richard Wolff

"Global warfare (“world wars”) accompanied the globalization of capitalism and its profit motive. The war in Ukraine is the latest chapter in the history of capitalism, empire, and war."

Article by Richard Wolff

"Which way U.S. politics will go depends less on the two parties or their disconnected rhetoric. What matters far more are the actualities of U.S. capitalism as the U.S. empire continues to decline and U.S. capitalism’s accumulated problems worsen."