Global Capitalism: A Marxist Critique of Capitalism for 2024 [May 2024]
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- Опубликовано: 7 май 2024
- Global Capitalism
Richard D. Wolff
Wednesday, May 8, 14, 2024 at 7:30 PM
This lecture will also be available on the Democracy at Work RUclips channel; look for the most recent video on the "Global Capitalism" Playlist. It will also be published on our website: www.democracyatwork.info.
A Marxist Critique of Capitalism for 2024
- Core Issues: Labor, Surplus, Exploitation
- Inequality and Injustice
- Instability: Cycles and Crises
- Alternatives to Capitalism
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work and Left Forum
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I can't thank DRW enough because I've found out that I was miseducated on Marxism and Capitalism . Thanks to him, I've been re-educating myself.
Yeah, that's what happens when you have no clue what the words mean in the
first place and someone tells you you are wrong, and you believe them.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. It's just not the strength of the ignorant
Ignore the troll. Dr Wolff helped open my eyes as well. It is mad to remember the crap I believed before.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Yeah, Michael Hudson is such an idiot, I can't believe anybody
listens to him when he corrects Wolff.
Wolff is a lying idiot debunked by just looking up refutations of his Marxist nonsense. It takes seconds to do.
Hey J, is there any difference between Michael Hudson and Prof W? Somehow i remember you saying that Prof W would never have a discussion with Michael Hudson who pretty much agrees with Prof Wolffs critique. I assume you like Michael Hudson, I do.
Thank you so much, Prof. Wolff, for reminding us of these simple and profound truths ! For many years, you have been a beacon showing the way to a better future.
Thank you profesor Wolff.
Thank you for the comedy 😂
The truth is CAPITALISM IS THE BEST FORM OF SOCIALISM, as capitalism is economic financial power in the the hands of people. Capitalism is REAL DEMOCRACY not leftist communist marxist systems which are all run by a elite clique who have political power (politburo) and they decide who gets to produce what and who will consume / buy what and at what price. *In FREE MARKET FREE ENTERPRISE CAPITALISM with fair-go merit based laws, it is the people who decide what good are produced and sold and at what price, by the people's market PEOPLE"S DEMAND and people's producing capacity PEOPLE"S SUPPLY.* But the old rich ex nobility and ex royals and their puppies in politics do not like real democracy. So they have "democracy now' type channels to subvert the people away from real democracy and economic power. Hope i made sense to someone !
@@flavioc5389 Go away and keep your ignorant ways
A big hug for you for the person you are and the work you do Prof Wolf
Even after a massive clearcutting operation, Amerikans still couldn't see the forest through the trees.
Yup. Decades of intense brainwashing would tend to do that to (almost) anyone - ESPECIALLY if they are not all that bright to begin with...
I love Dr. Wolff, he always angers me to the point where I must go to the gym. A true revolutionary and hero of the people.
i'd say you Sir have lost you mind's abilities a bit, when you start loving (or hating) the person who is presenting a position/logic/idea/opinion.
@@aMutantMind This is NOT a matter of opinion, it's one of FACT. You'd do well to learn the difference...
@@aMutantMind I suggest you look up the meaning "figure of speach"
@@nicadi2005 A FACT is only your opinion, and THE FACT that you call an opinion a FACT is also only your opinion, in other words, you just said some nice sounding but very meaningless words. I see all this FACT and OPINION bs all the time from madrasa branded islamists too. YAWN ❗
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Rejected, what i said STANDS !
Huxley encapsulated capitalism well IMO
“ perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes. "
Aldous Huxley
Very sad...the inability to distinguish an "ism" from an "archy"..
You highlighting the natural progression from serfdom to slavery to capitalism (then finally, to fascism) is beautiful.
Actually your progression is both incorrect and incomplete.
That would be ( government ) slavery, ( government ) serfdom ( not government ) capitalism ( government ) socialism ( government ) fascism
@@jgalt308 you’re silly for that. You truly believe that capitalism is an organization of the economy that is NOT controlled by the government? Who set up the tax code that rewards mega corporations and billionaires? It wasn’t me, and something tells me it wasn’t you either. Who then determines where the taxes are directed to and more importantly where they DON’T? Who restricts the bodily autonomy of people who can give birth? Not the doctors, not the people, but the government. Who determines whether or not we go to war in order to defend our way of organizing the economy? YOUR assessment of capitalism is incorrect and incomplete to just say “(not government)” is demonstrably false, ACTUALLY🤓
@@unluckypants6459 So you have no argument with government being the source of all of the above.
I would agree with a single exception...that in the U.S. it is an unconstitutional, criminal government...
and that applies to the tax laws and everything else you mention.
This has nothing to do with 'capitalism"...
Michael Hudson: fortunately, I’ve written all about this in my book, Killing the Host. What is Capitalism? What we have today is not the capitalism that we had either When Richard and I went to school or in the 19th century, the kind of capitalism that everyone was talking about in the 19th century, both from Adam Smith and Ricardo through Marx and everyone else, was industrial capitalism.
The whole idea was that when they talked about capital, they were talking about industrial capital. They weren’t talking about land or rent, they weren’t talking about monopolies, they weren’t talking about finance. ( Marx ) Discussed this in volumes two and three. But he said, I don’t have to talk about rent and monopolies in finance. Industrial capitalism is going to get rid of that in order to become a low-cost economy and in order to compete with other economies.
Because the good thing about capitalism is it’s evolving into socialism, that in order to be a successful industrial economy, you need government to start by investing in infrastructure. And then after you get rid of free lunch, rent, unearned income and real estate, rent, monopoly rent and finance, then you can get rid of exploitation. Finally, in the last fight between industrial employer and wage earner, what he was writing about, what everyone else had already written about various forms of economic rent, he was talking about that.
So I agree...government has always been the problem...and in this case...it became a problem when it discarded
the constitution completely and became criminal. ( 1939 )
@@unluckypants6459 Let's see...frist response was deleted......so we'll try another one.
The word you are looking for is "economy"...not "capitalism"...the government drove that out too.
And all the things you mention ARE because of the government...which has been operating unconstitutionally and criminally
since 1939.
Michael Hudson: fortunately, I’ve written all about this in my book, Killing the Host. What is Capitalism? What we have today is not the capitalism that we had either When Richard and I went to school or in the 19th century, the kind of capitalism that everyone was talking about in the 19th century, both from Adam Smith and Ricardo through Marx and everyone else, was industrial capitalism.
The whole idea was that when they talked about capital, they were talking about industrial capital. They weren’t talking about land or rent, they weren’t talking about monopolies, they weren’t talking about finance. ( Marx ) Discussed this in volumes two and three. But he said, I don’t have to talk about rent and monopolies in finance. Industrial capitalism is going to get rid of that in order to become a low-cost economy and in order to compete with other economies.
Because the good thing about capitalism is it’s evolving into socialism, that in order to be a successful industrial economy, you need government to start by investing in infrastructure. And then after you get rid of free lunch, rent, unearned income and real estate, rent, monopoly rent and finance, then you can get rid of exploitation. Finally, in the last fight between industrial employer and wage earner, what he was writing about, what everyone else had already written about various forms of economic rent, he was talking about that.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Capitalism is not a synonym for government...it was a threat to it, hence the description ( not government )
@@unluckypants6459capitalism is not when the government does stuff you don’t like dumbnuts. Capitalism has nothing to do with government
Excellent episode
Thank you very much
💙💙👍💙💙
💯Thank you Prof Wolff 🙏for your persistence, but I don’t think enough people are getting it yet, hopefully soon.
Well, they definitely don't want to "pay" to get it.
If this doesn’t wake up the most of us, I think we just not smart enough, brave enough, hungry enough to do anything for ourselves, so, America, we are doomed.
Sad but true...
Americans are walking around like zombies in a bad movie and have chosen to be ignorant about the world and its people and culture. Just where your government wants you.
It already feels too late…
Never too late, maybe just too old,.
Thank goodness, the world is just changing every second, we , too, deserve a second chance.
or stop with the doomerspeak and get organized
Спасибо за труды Вам!
Outstanding presentation Prof. Wolff, we owe you a debt of gratitude for your contribution, time and energy, that is simply too great to ever be truly repaid. 👏
Yes, convincing people they are "exploited victims" is not without its drawbacks.
Now what can we practically do to change the system beyond capitalism? We need an integrated network of support to build local worker co-ops and bring back the Commons. See Library Socialism for more on that. For an integrated network of support, that's still in development, IMO, because there are many great technologies, organizations and platforms out there, but they lack a larger collaborative network that can link co-op communities together with best practices and supports they would need from time to time. Best leads I've found is One Small Town based on Contributionism. Some great elements and ideas also provided from "A Viable Society" talk that Peter Joseph gave and in his book, The New Human Rights Movement, but again, still waiting on the networked cooperative platform for us.
Thanks Dr. Wolfe for your commitment and Dedication to Freedom, Justice and educating the Masses. I’m a little slow in grasping big ideas, but quick to intuit what’s right. And your right! Thanks for simplifying things. Your a master teacher. 🙏🏾❤️✊🏾
Fitting for someone who can't do anything and never has.
You are so right!
And here I used to think that at Tombstone Pizza they had a huge "pie machine" that cranked out delicious "zas" with one employee.
Thanks again, Mr. Wolff, for sharing your wisdom and this analysis. They are much appreciated by this viewer and all of us here 😊
Great job comrade
I have been longing for this forever! I am involved in writing on similar notions in my own language and often end up hoping Dr Wolff would speak on this!
Great video. Thanks profesor Wolff.
As always, brilliant! Thank you.
The USA glory days are over full stop.
USA is rising above these communists. Slavery origins are not southerners Christians nor European founded. Truth is rising globally. Africans Stand united behind Americans especially Christian Africans globally
I hope Prof. Wolff mentions the tie food has with keeping labor under control. It is Springtime. I hope he urges everyone to plant some food. That way if labor needs to go on a prolonged economic strike, they will be less suseptable to food extrotion/withholding.
not really practical when most of the productive farmland are owned by business owner to produce cheap food than any individual can do. There must be a concerted effort by people to act together and bypass market to avoid big cooperation to some degree for your idea to work out as intended.
@@whensonzhou4174, what you say has been the story since the nobility confiscated the common lands centuries ago.
The concerted effort of which you speak is "labor needs to go on a prolonged economic strike". To avoid retaliation by big corporations, the masses must plant Victory Gardens in the Spring. If the masses do that, they won't get hungry and their children cry because of empty bellies, prompting the masses to accept a raw deal.
Instead, they hold out in a general economic strike to the very end. I guarantee you that if the masses refuse to provide their labor and purchasing power, in time, the money grubbers will come crawling on their knees begging labor to return.
Why? Because they would rather have some profit than zero profit. In fact, they would lose more than profit. They would lose a good part of the wealth they have today. Consider the chemical plants that dot the landscape in the Gulf States. All of them have processes that must be monitored constantly or they go "BOOM" with giant clouds of poisonous vapors. There are many processes in manufacturing and chemical plants that if people walked away, would break and cost the money grubbers a whole lot of money.
Labor has ultimate power. They now have to realize it. They have to use their power to gain what they deserve. Always remember, labor is the primary wealth producer. Nothing is mined, manufactured, harvested, or served without the hands and minds of labor. The money grubbers have what they have because of the labor force and because labor allows it. When labor denies its vital force, the economy crashes.
And don't think it would be easy. Corporations fear a general strike. They won't admit it, but they do. Labor and corporations would suffer because of a general strike. That's why labor must prepare first. It is Springtime. Plant some food.
Wow! I ❤ this guy.
Thank you so much M. Wolff, to you and your team, for articulating these terms in an clear and accessible way. I may have re-watched this episode 3 times. I know that it is possible to get lost in page after page of equations, but your explanations, with imagery and examples, for people who are completely new to all of this (talking about me here) are so very much appreciated. Thank you 🙏.
ALWAYS THE TRUTH and NOTHING BUT
It's just too bad that Richard Wolff always "forgets" to mention that the workers labor is worthless without the capital that the person who starts the business puts in:)
@@juniorgod321 They only have that capital in the first place because of the labor of others. If they didn’t the capital would have never existed. They need us more than we need them. Labor will outlast them one way or another
@@juniorgod321Capital without labor is just as worthless. A hammer that isn't hammering doesn't produce anything. The labor is always the most important factor. Labor produces the tools and equipment ("the capital") that the capitalist uses. It always begins with labor. Capital without labor doesn't produce anything.
@@juniorgod321 that problem is fixed when there is a community working towards a unified production, that is how human being have come to work together and survive stupid, you do not just accumulate capital and wealth out of nowhere, that is just a symptom of the malfunctioning system.... did you even listen to what the proff explained 🤦
@@juniorgod321 Spotted the wage slaver
Yes, fantastic explanation with consistency and clarity how the world economy and societies order works . Owning isn't as making. There is a huge difference. I agree with professor Richard Wolff!
Thank you very much for your good and sustainable effort to rise the awareness of the peoples about this fundamental issue
I would like to translate and explain your intervention to my Arabic fellow citizens.
M.Ali Berrada
Morocco
Marrakech
Thanks!
Thanks
Fantastic video ❤ thank you 👍
Super Overview!
The Marxian critique of capitalism is still valid today. I have not read the three volumes of Marx's Das Kapital, nor is it on my bucket list. All this makes me think of a line in the movie, "Cocktail:" "In all the world there are the hustlers and the workers. The workers never hustle and the hustlers never work."
Thank you for sharing
Perhaps Richard will touch on the fact that half America is owned by a small number of individuals, and most Americans own very little, a few thousand dollars at most....and many live in motor cars like their grandpa's did the 1930's , likè in of mice and men.
That is what happens when your government deliberately shuts down businesses in your country for months on end, ruining people’s livelihoods and destroying their life savings. Then it floods your country with millions of illegal immigrants, artificially raising home prices, draining public resources and taking the jobs that did come back.
Who could have predicted?
There are also millions of people across most major western nations who every day are queuing up on a street corner to wait for work, just like in the great depression. Has been growing ever since 2008 without end, in far larger numbers now than were ever seen in 1929, across far more western nations, do you see them all? the millions on their street corners every morning hoping for work off of a passing employer?
No, you don't, because technology allowed them all to be hidden so instead of being together communally on the street corner every day where their pains were shared amongst each other and their plight could not be ignored, they now sit individualised and isolated at home / in their cars, waiting for a text each morning to tell them if they have work that day.
"The gig economy, / 0 hours contracts" are nothing more than the 2024 equivalent of masses waiting on corners looking for work every day. We are all so very blind.
It sounds like you see the world the way it is.
thank you!
Thank you
Fantastics presentation!!
Thanks, professor
Obrigada, desde o Brasil.
Something to chew on…
McDonald’s USA
- Employee: $9.00/hr, no benefits
- Big Mac: $5.81
McDonald’s Denmark
- Employee: $22/hr, 6 weeks vacation, 1 year paid maternity leave, life insurance, pension
- Big Mac: $4.82
Tell us more about how raising the minimum wage would affect the cost of hamburgers.
citation please
@@user-cj2wz8sb1lthe Citation is on this channel.
Also Google. Prices are freely dicoverable, as are Denmark labour policy.
@@user-cj2wz8sb1l look it up
Wrong numbers, not adjusted for purchasing power or taxes.
Good point! How do you think they do it?
Good stuff.
When I took a first-year (entry level) Political Science course (POLS111) at Victoria University (Wellington, NZ), part of the course looked at Socialist/ Communist forms of governance (Peoples' Democracies). This course was a requirement for Bachelor of Commerce (Business Studies?) students. Apparently those types stayed away for that section of lectures. Too frightened, maybe?
No surprises there. But at least the University presented, in abbreviated form, as comprehensive a half-year primer course on politics as could have been expected. The second half year, POLS112, a far more challenging course, presented a whole range of political philosophical writing from Plato to Fritz Hayek. Karl Marx was in there, of course (I don't recall that Gracchus Babeuf was, but I found out about him later). That was the sort of intellectual honesty and rigour one could expect from tertiary education 40 years ago...
Teaching economics without mentioning Marx is like teaching economics without Keynes. Americans are taught to have a Pavlovian response to the words Marxism, Fascism, Socialism, Capitalism and Democracy. They will attack anyone who suggests that they need to learn any details about any of those terms. 😵
I was educated on Marxism and the critique of capitalism. I went to college in South America, where public universities are no strangers to Marxist analysis.
But I have never seen Marxism and capitalism contradictions as well and profoundly explained as by professor Wolf. He is an incredible educator, and I'm sure this one talk is one of the most powerful and clearest descriptions of the Marxist approach.
It is so powerful that it should be blared in public spaces everywhere!
You have been sold a load of bullshit.
@@ExPwner and you ate it
@@pedroghirottino I didn’t, because I am not a Marxist
@@ExPwner КГБ тебя запомнил.
a clear and concise masterclass
wow, best explanation of our economic system ever... not sure if I agree with his conclusion, but very good explanation.
Banks created capitalism exploiting white corporate men minorities and immigrants
I always look forward to your presentations but this one is in my opinion the most important one so far, put over in a way that anyone can understand. This should be shown on MSM (unlikely with the media owned and controlled by capitalists). I live in the UK and find many people who complain about the failure of social systems such as water supply, NHS, domestic power,& infrastructure cant be bothered to think for themselves and instead rely on the media for lies and pointing a finger in the wrong direction ie emigrants, ETC. If only people would realize the huge power we could have collectively to change thing for the better.
Mr Wolf, you have described quite accurately our current economies driven by our modern robber barons otherwise known as oligarchs. This isn't capitalism, it a perverted system intended to return to a system of corporate feudalism. Capitalism well regulated as what we experienced after WWII and until the Regan administration worked for everyone, building a large middle class never before seen anywhere. Today capitalism really only exists on a small scale in small businesses. Koch, Musk, Basos, and the others are oligarchs and the instability in our economic systems is created by these oligarchs for their benefit, not the fault of the system of a well regulated capitalism.
People on the right call every single professor and politician they don't like "Marxist" as a sort of slur, so I tend to assume those critics know nothing at all about Marxist theory. It's a shame because it is such a useful lens with which to view economic relations, even if we disagree over what we should do about the faults revealed by a Marxist analysis of the world economy. I always appreciate Prof. Wolff's clear presentation of the challenges we face as individuals living in an exploitative and unequal system.
In far right prooaganda, marxists are rich elitists bent on centralizing power and taking personal property. They don't mean actual marxist views, they don't know what that is.
Well said, at the very least Marxist critique is a fine lens to view the dominant system
Nah just the ones who actually peddle the debunked nonsense like Wolff does here
Most critiques from antimarx ppl rely on strawman arguments from ppl who don't know enough about what marx said to poke holes in it. They come off sounding like "don't read this, don't think about how the system works" or "everything works great, you're just mad because you lost at meritocracy".
@@drphosferrous Very well said.
Thanks for the fabulous commentary. Could we talk you into becoming a 3rd party candidate, so we`d have somebody to vote for?
Always remember, this guy Wolff is on record for declaring that "Competition causes monopoly, and monopoly causes competition"!!
When has he said that monopoly causes competition? Monopolies are the opposite of competition. If they are broken up through reactionary policies seeking to "fix" the problem of monopolization, then yes that would then lead to competition and then monopolizations. You're back where you started. That's what I've gathered by his lectures on the topic. Not sure where you heard him say that monopolies lead to competition. That's sort of contradictory unless you take into account Keynesian interventions.
ruclips.net/video/NDwgfiN-JS8/видео.html
@@eveningchaos1 Monopoly causes competition.
Similar and opposite words
From Oxford Languages
cause
noun
plural noun: causes
3rd person present: causes
make (something, especially something bad) happen.
Similar
bring about
give rise to
be the cause of
lead to
result in
create
begin
produce
generate
originate
engender
spawn
occasion
effect
bring to pass
bring on
precipitate
prompt
provoke
kindle
trigger
make happen
spark off
touch off
stir up
whip up
induce
inspire
promote
foster
beget
enkindle
effectuate
Wolff has said "employers raise prices because they can'"...the reason they can't is?????
This would be true of monopolies also...
Was Standard Oil a monopoly? How do we know this? Did they raise prices?
Why were they broken up?
Yeah this idiot honestly thinks that competition ends in monopoly because…well reasons!
@@eveningchaos1 So, what does monopoly cause? What did it cause?
What were the effects of the Standard Oil monopoly? Does Wolff get it right?
One moral take from this is read every book that is banned. Read them because they present knowledge that is kept hidden to avoid turning you into a rational thinking human being
I'm a 72 year old retired Brazilian teacher and appreciate very much your program. Greetings.
it's amazing how many people don't know the basics of marxian analysis .... all due to the propaganda of the employer class ... and will attack you for pointing out that you are being exploited as an employee ... people just don't want to admit they have been scammed
Very good insights. I studied politics science 40 years ago. It made Marxist seem like the movie 1984,
That was Orwell's intention I believe so the films are consistent with the author's intention. Of course later in life he was working with MI5 if not earlier as well.
It’s opened my eyes in a clear, straightforward way. I tried to read Marx, but found it quite complex.
Did you? I did not realize how traumatized I was by the anti-communism fervor I lived through growing up in the US until I noticed the fear I still have about that.
Of course Americans live in motor cars out of free choice.....I forgot...
@accordionthief
Marx was a materialist but also:
“The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
How do we organize labor so that it can be withheld during disputes. Any good books on this?
❤
❤ greetings from the Netherlands
Greetings to you from Pacific Coast, USA!
I would say the professor has a gift for making the economy easy to understand for the average person.... But somehow I don't think that's true, I think every professor has that gift..... He's just an honest guy that cares about fairness in the system. He has changed my way of looking at my labor.... For some reason I didn't think my labor was valuable, because I could easily be replaced at the job and after being fired hundreds of time you come to think that way.
We can and we should do better.
Old people feel the effects of crashes as well.
I was prevented from talking anything about Capitalism in my college thesis. I fear that is pretty much universal in US universities.
💙
Конкуренция...Лучший Алимп..честно!!!..нет...Гегемон не терпит ..конкуренции..Цена и качество!!!
❤❤
Professor Wolff, only one big detail, which affects the whole explanation of capitalism and particularly the lack of stability: NEOLIBERALISM
Neoliberalism, not classic capitalism, is what has weakened the democratic state (the government), eliminated or underfunded public services which were common in every capitalist society, and privatised as many aspects of human life as possible.
NEOLIBERALISM is the biggest current obstacle to collective prosperity and to the exercise of true democracy.
I would say the result of 40 to 50 years of neoliberalism has taken us to something that’s more accurately called “neo-feudalism”
I’ll say this, right before Marie Antoinette’s head was uninstalled, the French complained about difficulty in procuring food - just like Americans complain now.
yeah. that is so true. americans just don't get enough to eat.
@@user-cj2wz8sb1l definitely not enough quality food. Just things like Funyuns fudge rounds.
@@pokemercenary6511 definitely. i was in a grocery store the other day and it was just funyons and fudge rounds as far as the eye can see. people in socialist countries eat really well. that is why i am moving to mexico - so obrador can feed me properly.
@@pokemercenary6511 people are allowed to buy what they want to buy. but yes there is definitely no nutritious food in america. i was in wal-mart the other day and there was no nutritious food to be found. just funyons and fudge rounds as far as the eye can see. that is why i am moving to venezuela. so i can eat properly under TRUE socialism!
@@pokemercenary6511 people are allowed to buy what they want to buy. but yes there is definitely no nutritious food in america. i was in wal-mart the other day and there was no nutritious food to be found. just funyons and fudge rounds as far as the eye can see. that is why i am moving to venezuela. so i can eat properly under TRUE socialism!
Imagine if the professor got a dollar from every working person in America. That would add up to 132 million dollars. The professor would be a serious contender creating a new path for growth and development.
The thought that Capitalism is nothing more than collection of commodities relating to each other is a mind blowing revelation that challenges our basic premises of life right from the get go, why products should be commodities in the first place!
Commodities obscure the work process in society. Makes mysterious the role of industry, science and technology in a work process and obscures the material exchanges between humans and nature, a relation of perpetual transformation, and when the work process consists of 3 billion humans on the planet, transformation happens quick!
One commodity is the same as a any other commodity, so dissecting one commodity is all it takes to expose these general laws of capitalism is a challenging position. This means... Workers are bossed into making commodities every day from 9 to 5. A fixed period of time rules work, they have to make enough commodities that a profit motive becomes the end and aim of production, or there is no work at all, humanity is a hostage to a social condition.
Before this happened there wasn’t a social condition to work, a watch was a town crier or a church bell, a time element was not a social program all members of society would participate with. Before a time element came into the work process, if a thing had to be made, or food had to be harvested, it was done by slaves, serfs, artisans, but when the same work had to be done after a time element took over work, and how people harvested the soil and made coats, hats, shoes, clocks, guns, they had to become free people, before they can be hired as free workers, before slaves and serfs can become known as a family of tailors, milliners, clocksmiths, gunsmiths, their very sustenance has to be torn out from under them by means of economic conquest.
I enjoyed trying to understand your thoughts... You had me hooked on your first sentence,,, and your twist on time had me reread three times to understand where you are going with that... Check out Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel economic theory,,, "participatory economics"... If you haven't heard of it,,, I think you will find it interesting... Namaste...
So, what is the basic premise of life? If you are going to present a reasoned progression
that is consistent...and based on factual evidence, you should be able to state the
first one, no?
Of course, like most rhetoric seeking to end with their pre-determined conclusion, that
path to that conclusion is littered with "assumptions" that "everyone Knows" what all
the words mean and they are in complete agreement regarding that meaning.
Yet, avoidance of definition and linguistic precision is what you strive for...and produce.
56:21 How do we educate people on democracy? Decades of muddying its definition has made people lose sight of what it truly means. I'd argue that too many people are democratically illiterate.
It sounds so simple
I read the book "Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical", that you wrote with Stephen Resnick together and I found it very inspiring. I consider you a great educator. You did a great job at presenting Marxism to an American audiecence, that might be reluctant to Marxism. It may be, that coming from Germany, that our Marxist tradition is a little bit different, that there are some differences in interpretation between my own views and yours, but you do a great job at presenting Marxism at something useful and something that helps people to understand their ordinary daily lives from our perspective. We Marxists of the Wests often times have problems defending ourselves, because we're seen sometimes as a fringe political group as anachronistic outcasts, who wish the Soviet Union back. I'm forever graeteful, that you are a public voice, that helps to discharge that perception.
As somebody, who organised a course on Marxism at a university, I know how difficult it is to draw people in, to engage people in the discourse and to motivate people from many intellectual backgrounds. In that regard you are a little bit of a hero and I appreciate, that you didn't stop after your academic career to enlighten the American public.
I don't know if this comment will reach you, but I felt the need to say thank you, today!
Interesting, what are the diferentes that You find betwren the marxista german tradition and the american one?
@@juliansnei96 Of course there is no singular German Marxism, but I think that it is fair to say, that in Germany we spend more time to contextualize Marx with the German Idealism tradition. The impact of Althusserian structualism isn't as big, while Adorno and the Frankfurt school play a big role in intellectual discussion.
There are bigger trends. For example in Germany one of the more recent discussions of Marxism centers around a rereading of Das Kapital. This trend analyses Marx theory of value very closely and generates insights by looking at the first edition of "Das Kapital" for clues. Generally Althussers interpretation, that there was an epistemological break between Marx' early more humanist work and Marx' later theory is rejected. This means, that question of Marx' philosophy of nature and history (Alfred Schmidt) and alienation are discussed. Something like "Marxian Economics" for example would for example have a bad time in Germany as we don't see Marx' work as an economic theory amongst others, but as a critique of political theory as a whole.
Politically it is fair to say, that we're much more sceptical of any attempt to formulate a positive socialist program. Although we accept, that the point is to change the world, we as Marxists see our task in unveiling unfreedoms, whereever they lie, even within our own ranks. This however isn't universal. We have for example leading Marxist feminist theorists, who engage in developing collective ways of doing social research, that is tied by reconstructing recollections of how we reproduce in our actions our own conditions of unfreedom (Frigga Haug).
These traditions of course are also reactions to the regime of East Germany one side and the rapid anti-communism in West Germany, which lead to an extreme intellectualisation of Marxism. Thirdly the failure of the biggest organised workers' movement in stopping WWI and the failure of the revolution in 1918 plus the rise of Nazis lead to a rise of the study of Authoritarianism and antisemitism. Theories usually revolve around the alieneted subject. Marxism in that regard is interpretated as a continuation of the enlightenment project. Psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis play a big role.
Of course Germany isn't isolated from the developments in other countries and other countries are influenced by the German traditions, but I think it is fair to say, that these are some aspects, that are more deveopled in German Marxism than in other countries.
@@juliansnei96 Wolff begins his discussion of Marx with class struggle. This is the central theme of his work. He understands Marxian terms as a theory of the poltical struggle between the employee and the employer. Many Marxists in Germany don't begin with the economic struggle between classes.
They look intensively at the question of what it means that our social interactions and our interactions with nature appear in commodity form. This question for examples opens up discussions around "socialist societies" in which commodities still play a central role, although capitalist behaviour and relation are supressed. Class society and capital as a social relation may be the unfolding of the commodity form, however the starting point of analysis of Value knows nothing of it and many social forms of alienation and social ills therefore can be understood within the framework of Marxist critique of Capital even without referring to class struggle and class relations. This leads to different theories of culture for example, but also to different political consequences.
@@123456789987o Dr Gabriel Rockhill is a pretty good source for trying to differentiate between "Western Marxism" and "Eastern Marxism".
@@123456789987o Thanks for your long comments. Sorry for my long comment. I guess you're aware of this history but others are not.
You make no direct mention of Stalinism. As far as I know Adorno refused to address, let alone condemn the Moscow Trials even though he and other leading members of the Frankfurt School were quite aware of what was taking place in the Soviet Union. Althusser spent his entire life in the leadership of the Stalinist French Communist Party. Do the German Marxists you are referring to consider Stalinism a legitimate current in Marxism?
(This issue doesn't just affect Stalinism. Lenin wrote in mid 1917, before the revolution, "Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!")
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You say "Thirdly the failure of the biggest organised workers' movement in stopping WWI and the failure of the revolution in 1918 plus the rise of Nazis lead to a rise of the study of Authoritarianism and antisemitism." Please direct us to what works you are referring to because the statement makes no sense to me.
1. Why was August 1914 a "failure"? Wasn't it a "betrayal"? War was anticipated and at the congresses of the Second International at Stuttgart in 1907, Copenhagen in 1910 and Basel in 1912, and anti-war resolutions were passed. The Basel resolution reads, in part,
"This congress … calls upon the workers of all countries to oppose capitalist imperialism with the power of the international solidarity of the working class.” AND “It would be insane should governments not realize that the mere thought of the monstrosity of a world war would evoke the outrage and anger of the working class. The proletariat regards it as criminal if they be forced to shoot at one another in order to further the profits of capitalists and the ambitions of dynasties, or to honor secret diplomatic treaties.”
As I'm sure you're aware the leaderships of almost all the sections of the Second International voted for the war and backed their respective capitalist class. The exceptions were the Bolsheviks under Lenin and the Serbian section.
2. Wasn't the November 1918 revolution, which was followed by the January 1919 Spartacist Uprising, defeated in part because of the determination of the Social Democratic Party to prevent revolution, including ordering the arrest and summary execution of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The passive term "failure" implies there was no class struggle underway.
3. Finally in Germany 1930-1933 there is a similar issue but you mention only the "study of Authoritarianism and antisemitism". Has there been any study of the response to the "rise of the Nazis" by the leaderships of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the German Communist Party (KPD) and the trade unions?
In the November 1932 elections the Nazis lost 2 million votes compared to the July 1932 elections and the combined votes of the SPD and KPD was once again above the Nazi party vote. The Nazi party went into a crisis. On 30 January 1933 Hitler was legally appointed Chancellor with only two other Nazis in the cabinet. Why did the German capitalist class do this?
More importantly this was 11 years after the "March on Rome" and the appointment of Mussolini as Prime Minister and 7 years the Italian fascists had consolidated the dictatorship, banned all other parties arrested the leadership of the Italian Communist Party, including Gramsci. The danger of fascism was no mystery. From 1928 the KPD and the Comintern maintained that social-democrats were "social-fascists" and insisted there could be no United Front against the Nazis. The SPD were little better. After January 1933 as repression by force escalated by the SPD and KPD put forward that the regime would spontaneously fall apart and socialism would emerge. Some in the SPD even used the slogan "Nach Hitler, Kommen Wir!" ("After Hiter, we come!"). On April 1 the Comintern in Moscow made its first public statement which said in part: "The establishment of an open Fascist dictatorship, which destroys all democratic illusions among the masses, and frees them from the influence of the social-democrats, will hasten Germany's progress towards the proletarian revolution.” Later the Stalinists said the policies of the KPD had been entirely correct. Do the German Marxists today agree with this?
Just to finish on May Day 1933 there were mass marches of German workers organised by the trade unions, with government approval. The next day almost the entire trade union leadership was arrested. What do the German Marxists you're studying think of this?
we have to change the system
Tata has 4 airlines and all aren't profitable and flights cancelled because the workers not happy with the new wages because of consolidated.
Tata is an awful company that often seems to by loss making key national interest businesses to milk bailouts from the governments of nations for those and if/when the bailouts/"subsidies" stop it then pulls out and writes the enterprise off as a loss against its profits from its other businesses while taking all the equipment and IP of that business which it got for practically free thanks to generous bailouts and tax breaks.
one thing i know for sure, because richard wolff taught me - americans don't get enough to eat because of the free market.
Right. That’s why America has an obesity problem 😄
@@bluewater454 that is what i am saying. we are literally starving so bad it is estimated that about 20% of americans are prediabetic. diabetes is caused by people not getting enough to eat. richard De wolff has made me so smart.
Since almost half of the Americans are overweight, they eat more than enough and where Carl Marx ideas are tried, like North Korea, for example, people are starving!
12.8% of Americans faced food insecurity last year. A pretty large number for a nation with so much wealth and resources
@@Cheaken2 Food insecurity is a hell lot better than starvation, which is what happens everywhere where Marx ideas were put to the test!
Adam Smith's capitalism economy failed to complete with Karl Marx's socialism economy.
Adam imagine an utopia and they never work
Karl Marx was no German socialist a Jewish communist very different. Communists hide behind other peoples ethnicities to not get caught
I don't think it is practically possible that everybody has the same decision making power and gets equal benefits. If you're the founder or owner of a production company, would you do that?
For some companies it is even less.
They purchase products, they do nothing on them.
They sell them on a market and customers buy a price not a product.
i only have fair knowledge of economic systems , if you might hear me, i think that the main problem in Capitalism is that the rich keep getting richer with no boundary for their wealth expansion and that they can get away with the wealth they collect if they decided the shut down the market with no legal consequences at all, socialism on the other hand doesn't present any kind of incentive to encourage wealthy people to get engaged in the financial market. i think the the Islamic financial system might provide the correct answer on how to deal with different groups of people, although it is not implemented nowadays, it philosophy stand midway between socialism and capitalism. Islamic system encourage wealthy people via temptation and the fear of losing their wealth through taxation to participate in the investment and at the same time doesn't allow the rich to get richer with no boundaries . there are too many details in the Islamic financial system and there are many books about it. i am not so much expert about it but i like the philosophy of taxation in Islamic finance.
But where does the labor class get the capital to invest Prof Wolf. I'm not being condescending. I listened to your marxian speech with great interest.
From poor POC than can be exploited
Craig,, you're talking about floating capital, money, to get the businesses up and running right?
It's extremely hard to do that in a cutthroat capitalist system because even though a socialist business or a co-op can borrow money from a bank, obviously the interest is going to eat into the co-ops ability to do things for the rest of the community to get other co-ops on board with the marxian program... In other words even if all the workers at the co-op agree to take basically the same compensation, and add in the utilities resource cost municipal taxes and whatever,, the amount charged by whatever lending institution one had to float the business generally keeps marxian enterprises out of the American economic scene because that's not how Wall Street wants it....
There are some co-ops in the united states, I can't name any offhand but I realize that there are businesses that have somehow worked around these issues but these types of businesses have to run all sorts of gauntlets to stay in business...
Presently, they would go to a private capitalist owned bank and ask for a loan and if they had sufficient assets to begin with they might get it but even if they do they are instantly at massive disadvantage to any other capitalist in the market in their sector of the economy who has more means and better access to credit than they do.
A better way (as Corbyn wanted to do in the UK) is for public banks to be created that have the power of money creation but will ONLY lend to community projects and democratically owned and operated enterprises, on good long term low rates of interest the likes of which a privatised capitalist for profit bank could never match without going bankrupt.
@@Nine-Signs But,, what you're describing is basically socialism... But in true socialism, the economic system is not controlled by cutthroat capitalists who manipulate Capital initiative into projects and even national infrastructure of only the most profitable exploits... In theory,, the banks would work as you described what the British guy was proposing,, with floating Capital created to grease the wheels of industry and commerce, but interest would not be charged because the system would be run by people who are not directly manipulating floating capital, industrial capital and whatever else to always funnel a shitload of cash into their pockets... The entire system May operate at a loss, but as long as everything is being taken care of the supply of floating capital or currency is adjusted to keep people economically viable in an agricultural and industrial economy...
@@micnorton9487 All true, but in terms of presentation of an idea, I would say, when trying to spread a wider message on this, when you explain it to the masses as democracy at work where capitalism prevents it, and speak of the public banking system to provide for such vs the private extractive banking system, they are highly receptive and all ears.
When you explain it to them as socialism half of them put their children to bed early in horror ;o) such is the learned behaviours of western peoples over a lifetime of "capitalism and privatisation is good, all else be dragons" via the TV 24/7.
Why not use both? See which one wins?
The one that has always won.
42:50 There you have the answer… and root of all those things since this system exists.
Professor Wolff has a gift for breaking down economics to make the general population understand the destructive nature of Capitalism. He’s a brilliant man and someday I hope to be able to see one of his brilliant lectures.
He is a lying idiot. He knows nothing on economics and gets it wrong consistently. “Surplus value” and “exploitation” are debunked Marxist nonsense concepts.
@@ExPwner...YR MEDICAL DISNOSTIC:-PLEASE CHECK YRSELF INTO MENTAL ASYLUM ASAP .....😢😢😢😢😢😢😢
@@kennyyap9745 😂 nope
One of the main problems I have with Marxism is that ⬇
38:55 "no matter how big it gets it needs to get bigger - No matter how rich the employer gets in has to get richer"
Problem being the concept of the "rich" is purely a numbers game for *most Marxists rooted philosophies.
What I mean is that for some (in their ways of thinking) money: is something of 🚩*material value. The truth is that money is NOT substantial beyond its value in paper or in gold (even if backed by a physical material).
What money truly is, is a means to manipulate where the human capital of time goes into⏳. Do people build more construction materials for the giant pyramid of the rich; and do they have time left afterward to make their own houses or what not❓
The pyramid example is used to show historical frivolous EXTREME spending. The problem is the COST OF TIME. If a Rich person like Elon musk does not buy a Pyramid or 3 Houses like Bernie Sanders has - the question is where is the HUMAN Capital attached to the materials of his wealth? His Billions of dollars are more of a responsibility to do good when he has the power to - HOWEVER it is NOT a material wealth for the *most part.
What some Marxists get right: we must be warry of giving too much economic driving power to the ultra rich.
You get a wage to simplify the life of the 3 percent as well as, recoup their wages paid in the form of goods and services for the economics slaves..No longer does the master needs to supply the slaves with basic needs...
Good, but some parts are awfully slow. As if assuming the audience are slow learners or something...
"No other theory of how society works is as tabooed and banned as the Marxist approach." However writers of the 19th and 20th centuries have written about it a lot. Silvio Gesell wrote in the 20s "How was it that the Marxian theory of capital succeeded in ousting that of Proudhon and in giving sovereign sway to communistic socialism ? How is it that Marx and his theory are spoken of by every newspaper in the world ? Some have suggested as a reason the hopelessness, and the corresponding harmlessness, of the Marxian doctrine. "No capitalist is afraid of his theory, just as no capitalist is afraid of the Christian doctrine; it is therefore positively an advantage to capital to have Marx and Christ discussed as widely as possible, for Marx can never damage capital. But beware of Proudhon; better keep him out of sight and hearing!" Talk about suppressed works, even if it was praised by Keynes and Fisher, how many have even heard of Silvio Gesell who had a much better grasp on how the world works as did Frederick Soddy. "To allow money to become a source of revenue to private issuers is to create, first, a secret and illicit arm of the government and, last, a rival power strong enough ultimately to overthrow all other forms of government." We need to end capitalism's money system in favor of sovereign money. monetaryalliance.org
Michael Hudson: fortunately, I’ve written all about this in my book, Killing the Hopt. What is Capitalism? What we have today is not the capitalism that we had either When Richard and I went to school or in the 19th century, the kind of capitalism that everyone was talking about in the 19th century, both from Adam Smith and Ricardo through Marx and everyone else, was industrial capitalism.
The whole idea was that when they talked about capital, they were talking about industrial capital. They weren’t talking about land or rent, they weren’t talking about monopolies, they weren’t talking about finance. Discussed this in volumes two and three. But he said, I don’t have to talk about rent and monopolies in finance. Industrial capitalism is going to get rid of that in order to become a low-cost economy and in order to compete with other economies.
Because the good thing about capitalism is it’s evolving into socialism, that in order to be a successful industrial economy, you need government to start by investing in infrastructure. And then after you get rid of free lunch, rent, unearned income and real estate, rent, monopoly rent and finance, then you can get rid of exploitation. Finally, in the last fight between industrial employer and wage earner, what he was writing about, what everyone else had already written about various forms of economic rent, he was talking about that.
Well, the whole world seems to be going along the path of industrial capitalism, socialism and World War One. Socialism was the bad word. Everybody was using the Social Democratic Party. They were coming to power. Germany was socialist. America was not moving towards socialism. The left form of socialism was going to be worker socialism, but there was already socialism in terms of taking over the committee.
What Lenin involved amending the basic infrastructure that I talked about, the natural monopolies. So what happened at the World War? One of the United States won the war and not really supervised, not finance capitalism and the great disaster that the United States did, the poisoned the world economy and destroyed industrial capitalism occurred in the year that in 1913, the same year the income tax was developed by the Federal Reserve.
On the one hand, you had the income tax in America, only polling 1% of the people, but mainly the rich people who owned up real estate monopolies in finance. But you had the Federal Reserve saying we want to take the most important driver of capitalism, finance out of the hands of Treasury and put it in the hands of the commercial banks.
We’re going to start a central bank. Central bank is the fight of the monopolies against the government. And if we can control the central bank and we’re not going to let the Treasury official have any seat on the central bank board, we’re going to move the central banks out of Washington, into the financial center, into New York, Boston, Chicago, and we’re finally going to have a totally free market.
We’re going to get rid of government and everything that the government is doing and infrastructure to help people live inexpensively is the human right. We can now charge, and we can force them into debt, and we can control society and we can restore feudalism by a by means of the central bank taking the power of control away from government.
Now, if you’re asking what is China done, that is socialism with Chinese characteristics? Well, it’s socialism. What 19th century capital capitalist? The power of money creation and credit creation in the hands of the Bank of China does that the government, so that when China create credit is to actually build houses, then real estate, finance, industry, finance, industrial investment, not to finance corporate takeovers, not to create a financial bubble.
I mean, right now it’s trying to prevent another financial bubble.
Wolff must be doing a lot right if he conjured an Ayn Rand parody like thou.
Why do these Wolff sycophants insist on proving they can't read.?
Michael Hudson explains what capitalism is to Wolff and this m-r-n
thinks it's Ayn Rand.
Теперь давайте про настоящие Страны!!!!..
43:39
Why doesn't Richard feature more in British Left-Wing papers more?
He has a great way of putting across Marx's ideas in a simpler way.
I've read all of Captal quickly and Theories of Surplus Value but in my inimitable way still no expert ;(
I'd guess that the faux-left in the United Kingdom are just as dismissive of Professor Wolff and Marxian theory as the faux-left in the United States...
Because I am in Britain and we have... 2. The Canary, and the Communists.
Everything else is centre left at best, with the overwhelming bulk being centre right to right wing. Though by American standards centre left = Marx.
На Солнце ..все смотрят по.разному!!!!
The solution to capitalism is the abolition of private property and the creation of a classless society. This is what people in the Soviet Union tried to do and experimented in this way. This is what people here think to do, what we need to do in the future, taking into account the lessons of the USSR.
10:37 Bold of you to assume I'm wearing clothes or live in a home.
как пиарщик он ..крутой!!!
Come back for a longer conversation with Jimmy Dore, please!
The comments on that interview show Jimmy's audience is full of Dunning Kruger, cognitive dissonance and Stockholm Syndrome sufferers. Add in the willfully ignorant and the overwhelming majority of his audience had less than zero interest in learning anything about economics.
@@ronstephen-wy4ibjust like Richard Wolff and his audience
вы Фирма..Сообщите Королю!!!)))
а ..мы не пишем Книгу?
Dr. Wolff,
You are the most prominent living Marxist in the world. I'm glad to live with you in this century. Along with your living theory, I always keep in mind of these cardinal concepts; dialectical materialism which concerns the development of technology will later cause a change in the productive relationship as a super structure. The other is the theory of surplus value, which must stay with the labor value behind the free-and-equal exchange in the capitalist mode of production. As you Dr. mention somewhere that the democratic cooperative mode of production will replace the previous production in the future.
The relations of production do not change without revolution. Marx studied capitalism and Lenin added the revolutionary struggle of the working class. Therefore, Marxism-Leninism was formed.
@@Googlag Thanks for replying to my letter. I love Lenin, too. However, I would not agree to your idea that the sudden change in politics may cause a huge victim as we have been experiencing right now. While admitting what capitalists want more, we, workers must overcome the basic requests in accordance with the local capitalists and the local municipal government, which the democratic cooperative mode should be like, as far as I know. I am a Japanese educated in USA under Dr. Karl Niebyl . If you know about him, please let me know.
I give the same warning to the peoples of African nations and general southern and eastern nations. If all you do to change your fates is throw out mostly white western capitalists and their corporations and replace them with capitalists and corporations born of your own nations then in the fullness of time you will have sacrificed much to change absolutely nothing for most people.