Latest Releases
Global Capitalism: June 2015 Monthly Update
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church, these programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this June...
More →Global Capitalism: May 2015 Monthly Update
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church, these programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Prof. Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For May 13th...
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Economic Update: Children, Capitalism, Family Values?
Updates on Alberta election, Kansas closes schools early, Gallup polls on unequal US wealth and on average work weeks over 40 hours, Uber and markets, ignorance about USSR economy. Response to listeners on...
More →Economic Update: Capitalism’s Other Side
This episode of Economic Update includes updates on the May Day holiday, the Baltimore uprising, the Nepal earthquake and poverty, Varoufakis vs repression, Bud Light pushing beer by endangering women and responses to listeners' questions on varieties of coops, plus an Interview with Prof. Yahya Madra on Turkey, Capitalism, and Islam!
More →Economic Update: Capitalism and War
In this edition of Economic Update we will examine the potential impacts of the UK elections, the economic crisis' long-term effects, how Kansas demonizes the poor and the mustard-ketchup economic war. We’ll also have responses to listeners’ questions on child-support economics and US car production moving to Mexico.
More →Economic Update: Honest Economics
This edition of Economic Update include updates on: Bernanke's new big-bucks finance job, how GM is avoiding billions in victims' claims for faulty ignitions, how a Seattle capitalist raised all of his employees salaries to a $70k/yr, Americans' self-delusion on inequality, how private profit is trumping public policy and anti-student-debt activism...
More →Economic Update: The Worker Co-Op Alternative
In this edition of Economic Update, we take a look at inadequate unemployment insurance, where Ted Cruz's campaign money is coming from, a law that’s giving domestic workers real benefits and who’s demonizing the poor. We also hear responses to listener questions on the California drought and the US medical system's experiments on real people.
More →Global Capitalism: April 2015 Monthly Update
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church, these programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this April 8...
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Scapegoat Economics 2015
As economic crises, declines and dislocations increasingly hurt or threaten people around the globe, they provoke questions. How are we to understand the forces that produced the 2008 crisis, the crisis itself, with its quick bailouts and stimulus programs, and now the debts, austerity policies and deepening economic inequalities that do not go away? Economies this troubled force people to think and react. Some resign themselves to "hard times" as if they were natural events. Some pursue individual strategies trying to escape the troubles. Some mobilize to fight whoever they blame for it all. Many are drawn to scapegoating, usually encouraged by politicians and parties seeking electoral advantages.
More →Economic Change and Personal Life Crises
This episode of Economic Update features a look into the car parts industry, why and how German courts cut Uber, how Russia's economy is growing despite economic sanctions, why there’s no recovery in declining teaching positions in the US for new PhDs...
More →Global Capitalism: March 2015 Monthly Update
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church.
The program began with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Prof. Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this March 11...
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Jubilee, Denial and Beyond
Thousands of years ago, various religions developed an idea some called “jubilee.” It entailed the acts of canceling or reversing income and/or wealth inequalities (especially of land holdings and debts) that had developed in their societies. Often, jubilees were stipulated to occur periodically every 49 years, more or less. The point was not to change the socio-economic system; it was rather to redistribute property and then restart the same system again as a way to preserve it. Variations of the jubilee idea have survived and occasionally surfaced into public discourse ever since.
More →WPFW FM 89.3 Interviews Prof. Wolff
Prof. Wolff talks to David Rabin of WPFW, a Pacifica station in Washington, DC about his recent Truthout article on a class analysis of the lessons we need to learn from past revolutions.
More →Community Progressive Radio Interviews Prof.
CPR News interviews Prof. Wolff about the current situation in Greece, Syriza and the economic issues facing Europe.
More →Class, Change and Revolution
The winds of change are blowing harder. The crisis since 2007 has renewed criticism of capitalism, but pressure for change has built far longer than that. So it is time to draw some lessons from the major social changes of the past and apply them now. One of the most important lessons concerns class. How activists see and act on today's class system can make social movements more effective now than in the past - as a brief historical review can show.
More →Global Capitalism: February 2015 Monthly Update
“The Economics of a New Year”
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church, these programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this February 4, 2015...
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Richard Wolff on the Greek Crisis, Austerity and a Post-Capitalist Future
In the following interview, New School professor and economist Richard Wolff provides his analysis of the causes of the economic crisis in Greece and in the eurozone, debunks claims that the Greek economy is recovering and offers his proposal for what a post-capitalist future could look like for Greece and the world.
More →Global Capitalism: January 2015 Monthly Update
“The Economics of a New Year”
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church, these programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Prof. Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this January 14...
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Going Beyond Private Versus Public
The new, more Republican Congress may "privatize" the United States Postal Service: dismantle the public enterprise and turn mail services over to private enterprises. Such a privatization would mimic what the US military has done with part of its activities and what many states and cities did with utilities, transport systems and schools...
More →The Political Economy of Austerity Now
Government austerity for the masses (raising taxes and cutting public services) is becoming the issue shaping politics in western Europe, north America, and Japan. In the US, austerity turned millions away from the polls where before they supported an Obama who promised changes from such policies. So Republicans will control Congress and conflicts over austerity will accelerate. In Europe, from Ireland's Sinn Fein to Spain's Podemos to Greece's Syriza, we see challenges to a shaken, wounded political status quo...
More →The Wages of Global Capitalism
Wage growth in the world slowed to an average of 2 percent in 2013. That was less than in 2012 and far less than the pre-crisis rate of 3 percent. Starker still were the differences between wage growth in the "developed world" (chiefly Western Europe, North America and Japan) and wage growth in the major "emerging growth" countries, chiefly China.
More →Costs of Global Capitalism
The International Labor Organization (ILO) just released a report on December 5, 2014 (http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_324645/lang--en/index.htm) sharply exposing what the development of global capitalism means and costs. Here are its key conclusions:
More →System Change, or There and Back Again: Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism
Societies today where capitalist economic systems prevail confront government gridlock. Facing serious and deepening economic problems, even when their leaders can...
More →The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Failures of Actually Existing Economic Systems
Hype went wild coming into last week's 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. "Freedom" had been achieved. The German Democratic Republic (GDR)...
More →Young Democratic Socialists: Interview With Professor Richard Wolff
YDS National Organizer Betsy Avila recently sat down withRichard Wolff, Professor of Economics and visiting professor at The New School in New York...
More →Four-Day Workweeks: Change for the Better?
Changes in the capitalist system's operating procedures, rules and regulations are always presented as if they were in everyone's interest, a kind of "everybody wins" social progress. The changes usually turn out to be mostly or entirely in capitalists' interests since they run their system that way. Are we surprised and shocked?
More →Socialism and Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises
Global capitalism has huge problems coping with the second worst collapse in its history. Its extreme and deepening inequalities have provoked millions to question and challenge capitalism. Yet socialists of all sorts now find it more difficult than ever to make effective criticisms and offer alternatives that inspire.
More →Capitalism’s Deeper Problem
Recent press reports refer to troubling price increases for such assets as real estate, government bonds, companies targeted for acquisition and artwork. A New York Times front-page headline read “The Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything Bubble.”
More →Giant Corporations, Giant Failures
General Motors recently released the report it commissioned from the huge Jenner & Block law firm. The latter's chairman, Anton Valukas, investigated how and why GM failed - for over 10 years - to recall cars it produced while knowing they had defective ignition switches. The eventual recall of 2.6 million Chevrolet...
More →Better than Redistributing Income
Widening gaps between rich and poor, the top 1% and the rest, are heating up debates, struggles and recriminations over redistributing income. Should governments' taxing, spending, and regulatory powers redistribute income from the wealthy to others, and if so, how exactly? As opinions and feelings polarize, political conflicts sharpen.
More →Why No Sustained Protests (Yet)?
The organized post-1945 destruction of the New Deal coalition - unionists, socialists and communists - and the failure to replace those organizations help explain the muted reaction to the bailouts, austerity and other anti-democratic policies pursuedby US governments at all levels.
More →The Progressive Interview
Richard Wolff has emerged as one of the most prominent progressive economists in America. He appears on Free Speech TV, Link TV, and Pacifica Radio, and has been a repeat guest on Bill Moyers’s program, as well as appearing on Charlie Rose’s show...
More →Interview with RoosterGNN: Is Capitalism Digging Its Own Grave?
NEW YORK CITY, U.S.A. The economic crisis of 2008 has shown the dark side of capitalism. Due to irresponsibility and risky behavior at the most powerful financial institutions...
More →Who needs a Boss?
If you happen to be looking for your morning coffee near Golden Gate Park and the bright red storefront of the Arizmendi Bakery attracts your attention, congratulations. You have found what the readers of The San Francisco Bay Guardian, a local alt-weekly, deem the city’s best bakery. But it has another, less obvious, distinction. Of the $3.50 you hand over for a latte (plus $2.75 for the signature sourdough croissant)...
More →Dialogos Radio Interviews Professor Wolff
An interview with renowned economist Richard Wolff, discussing the current economic situation in Greece, Europe and the United States, plus his proposal for moving on to a new, postcapitalist system. In English. Aired March 20-21, 2014.
More →Obama’s Economic Significance
President Obama's proven reliability as outsider president extraordinaire - putting a disarming smiley face on capitalism's depredations - is his administration's economic significance.
More →Enterprise Structure Is Key to the Shape of a Post-Capitalist Future
Richard Wolff talks about "The Shape of a Post-Capitalist Future," his entry in the new anthology Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA, and his conviction that making the transition from capitalism to socialism requires a deliberate critique of capitalist workplace organization.
More →A Lesson From Chattanooga
“…we’re outraged by politicians and outside special interest groups interfering…” – UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams
More →Political Corruption and Capitalism
Nearly daily, mass media report political corruption across the world. Government bureaucrats, from local to national to international, are exposed for having abused their offices for personal gain. That gain is usually financial, but can involve...
More →Economic Prosperity and Economic Democracy: The Worker Co-Op Solution
Workers' self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) are a response to capitalism's failure to deliver economic prosperity and socialism's failure to deliver economic democracy.
More →Capitalism and Democracy: Year-End Lessons
2013 drove home a basic lesson: US capitalism's economic leaders and their politicians now regularly ignore majority opinions and preferences. For example, polls showed overwhelming popular support for higher taxes on the rich with lower taxes on the rest of us and for reversing the nation's deepening economic inequalities. Yet Republicans and Democrats, including President Obama, raised payroll taxes sharply on January 1, 2013. Those taxes are regressive; they take a smaller percentage of your income the higher your income is above $113,700 per year. Raising the payroll tax increased economic inequality across 2013.
More →Welcome to Econ… A Q&A with Richard Wolff
Recently, through an e-mail exchange I was able to ask Richard Wolff a few questions about economics and alternatives to capitalism. Dr. Wolff is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst...
More →Capitalism and Unemployment
Capitalism as a system seems incapable of solving its unemployment problem. It keeps generating long-term joblessness, punctuated by spikes of recurring short-term extreme joblessness. The system's leaders cannot solve or overcome the problem...
More →The Great Austerity Shell Game
Barack Obama speaking in March 2013 about the sequester, the automatic spending cuts mandated by Congress. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
More →US Political Dysfunction and Capitalism’s Withdrawal
After 200 years of concentrating its centers in western Europe, north America, and Japan, capitalism is moving most of its centers elsewhere and especially to China, India, Brazil and so on. This movement poses immense problems of transition at both poles. The classic problems of early, rapid capitalist industrialization are obvious daily in the new centers. What we learn about early capitalism when we read Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Maxim Gorky and Jack London, we see now again in the new centers.
More →US Politics' True Bipartisan Consensus: Capitalism is Untouchable
The economic aim of both major US political parties is, in the end, the same: to protect and reinforce the capitalist system.
More →Capitalism Works (or Not) for Me
Curators of New York City’s annual arts festival called us a couple of months ago. Would we be interested in having a public discussion with the artist, Steve Lambert, whose work was a major part of this year’s festival? The festival’s title is “Crossing the Line 2013,” and Lambert’s large neon-lighted installation (9 feet by 20 feet by 7 feet) says “Capitalism Works for Me.” Observers can respond by pressing either a “True” or “False” button.
More →What GOP-Tea Party Risks With Block of New New Deal
Many Germans in the years before 1933 dismissed the little man with the mustache: He could never take power, let alone keep it. Tzarist Russia’s elites thought the small social democratic party posed little threat. Batista’s minions ridiculed the lawyer and his friends...
More →Recovery hype: American Capitalism's Weapon of Mass Distraction
From President Obama on down, defenders of the status quo insist that the US economy has "recovered" or "is recovering". Some actually see the world that way. They inhabit, imagine they inhabit, or plan to soon inhabit the world of the infamous top 1%. Others simply seek security in life by loyally repeating whatever that 1% is saying.
More →Organized Labor's Decline in the US Is Well-Known. But What Drove It?
Organized labor's decline in the US over the past half century is well-known; what drove that decline, less so. The New Deal's enemies – big business, Republicans, conservatives – had...
More →Detroit's Decline Is a Distinctively Capitalist Failure
A Catalan translation of this article is available at Espai Fàbrica.
Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.
More →How Capitalism's Great Relocation Pauperized America's 'Middle Class'
Detroit's struggle with bankruptcy might find some relief, or at least distraction, by presenting its desperate economic and social conditions as a tourist attraction. "Visit Detroit," today's advertisement might begin, "see your region's future here and now: the streets...
More →Capitalism, Democracy, and Elections
Capitalism and real democracy never had much to do with one another. In contrast, formal voting in elections has worked nicely for capitalism. After all, elections have rarely posed, let alone decided, the question of capitalism: whether voters prefer it or an alternative economic system. Capitalists have successfully kept elections focused elsewhere, on non-systemic questions and choices. That success enabled them first to equate democracy with elections and then to celebrate elections in capitalist countries as proof of their democracy. Of course, even elections were and are allowed only outside capitalist enterprises. Democratic elections inside them -- where employees are the majority -- never happen.
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