Richard D. Wolff

This essay originally appeared at roarmag.org

Creating the space for and allowing the Bolivarian Revolution to flourish is perhaps the most important achievement of Venezuela’s Chavista government — but can it survive the current crisis?

This article originally appeared at Truthout.org and Roar Magazine.

Like much else in economies, finance both enhances the economy's growth and development and undermines it. The balance between these contradictory effects depends on all the other aspects of an economy and society and how they all influence financial contradictions. From its first entrance into the economy -- that part of society concerned with the production and...READ MORE

This article originally appeared at Roarmag.org

Rosa Luxemburg’s great work displays extraordinary merits. First, she explained key dimensions of the capitalism of her time in an exemplary application of Marxian economics. Second, she integrated foreign trade and imperialism into economic theory further and with more insight than most economists including Marx had yet done. Third, she showed the powerful insights available by using Marx’s basic value and price concepts: a remarkable testimony to the usefulness of the labor theory of value. Finally, she linked her theoretical work to the strategic concerns and debates of the workers’ movements of her time. She took sides with an open honesty rarely equaled since among economic theorists who sell themselves instead by pretending to be “scientists above politics.”