Richard D. Wolff

This article originally appeared at Truthout.org

Once again, private capitalism's contradictions, flaws and weaknesses threaten its own existence. READ MORE

(Photo: Ivan Kashinsky / The New York Times)

This article originally appeared at Truthout.org

Capitalism has a long, ugly history of scapegoating immigrants. The pattern has been repeated often. For example, British capitalism's drive to empire helped force the Irish, as colonial subjects, to emigrate. Miserable colonial conditions, including horrific famines, drove many Irish to labor for capitalists in England at wages lower than English workers had won. English workers raged against and clashed with the Irish immigrants more than they struggled against the colonial system that had brought them.

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 Truthout.org.

As global capitalism staggers painfully, unevenly and dangerously in the wake of its 2008 collapse, its critics divide into two broad camps. One commits to fixing or reforming a capitalism that has somehow lost its way. The other finds capitalism irreparably inadequate and seeks transition to a new and different system. The two camps see many of the same faults: how capitalism relentlessly deepens inequalities of income, wealth, power and access to culture; capitalism's instability (those socially costly cycles it never managed to prevent); and its consequent injustices. Sometimes the two camps can ally and work together. However, at other times -- such as now -- the camps become more wary of, disaffected from, and competitive with one another. Adding complexity these days, the critics favoring system change are also redefining -- for potential recruits and for themselves -- the new system they seek.

This article originally appeared at Truth-out.org.

Mark Karlin: Let's start with the a statement from the preface of your book: "Questioning the capitalist system, let alone discussing system change, simply does not occur to mainstream academics and the journalists and politicians they trained. Such discourses are repressed." How is an open public discussion of capitalism stifled?   

This article originally appeared at Truth-out.org.

People have always chosen among different co-existing economic theories to understand the world and to act within it. Who chooses which theory, consciously or not, shapes world history. Disagreements over Brexit emerged partly from different ways of understanding the British economy and its relation to Europe. Donald Trump's support grows partly out of economic theories different from those used by supporters of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. The last century's global politics swirled around quite different theories of the difference between capitalism and socialism. Political struggles often reflect clashing economic theories and political strategies often include making one theory dominant and marginalizing or silencing others.

This article originally appeared at Truthout.org

Nearly 30 years ago, many capitalists were celebrating what political scientist Francis Fukuyama called the "ultimate victory of the VCR": where consumerism sank communism. However, they failed to calculate the effects of this consumerism on the environment. They also failed to predict how the public would start to tire of a situation in which a very small percentage of capitalists are reaping all the benefits while the rest of us are sinking deeper and deeper into debt, poverty and powerlessness.

This article originally appeared at Truthout.org

Capitalism's supporters use and benefit from a racism whose practice and consequences should be blamed on capitalism itself.

"Racism" is so often applied to US prison statistics and policing; to data on differences in employment, housing, wealth and income distributions, college enrollments, film awards, and so much more; and to hardening hostilities toward immigration. At the same time, racism is so often condemned -- at least in mainstream media, dominant political circles and most intellectual and academic institutions. Racism's persistence where the capitalist economic system prevails raises the question of the connection between capitalism and racism.  READ MORE

This article originally appeared at Truthout.org

Since the moment protests broke out in Ferguson in the summer of 2014, commentators - supportive and otherwise - have asked when and how the movement for black lives would channel its rebellious energy into policy. Last week, leading voices in that movement made...READ MORE