Upcoming Event
New York, NY, 66 West 12th Street, Room 510
February 10, 2010 - 18:00 - 20:00
Join Professor Richard Wolff for a screening of his film "Capitalism Hits the Fan" followed by a Q&A. Professor Wolff will be happy to signed his newly released book of the same title if you bring a copy. They are available for purchase at any Barnes and Nobles in the city.
Watch as Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in...
Articles
Rising Income Inequality in the US: Divisive, Depressing, and Dangerous
The gap between annual incomes of the top 10 per cent of US citizens and what the other 90 per cent gets has been widening sharply for the last 30 years. The nation's economic development has been increasingly divisive. Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, a leading expert, summarizes the facts on his website, from which the graph below is gratefully taken. This graph shows how the top 10 per cent of income earners in the US took home, after the 1970s, an ever more outsized share of the total national income.
The so-called Crisis in Greece
2010 marks year #3 of this crisis in global capitalism. This is a systemic crisis with extreme symptoms in different places at different times: now Icelandic banks, then US homeowners being foreclosed, now Mexico losing emigrants’ remittances, then Greece’s government bonds, and so on. Capitalist hegemony cannot admit or deal with the disease of capitalism as a system. Instead, the focus shifts from symptom to symptom to press local institutions to shift the costs of crisis onto workers.
Capitalism’s systemic crisis is no mystery.
Taking Over the Enterprise
We are overdue for a new strategy. Labor and the Left are at low points in long declines. One cause has been adherence to a failed strategy. We need to acknowledge that reality and answer two linked questions. First, what part of getting into this situation was our own doing? Second, what changes in labor’s and the Left’s strategy could revive the two groups and rebuild their coalition into a powerful political force? To answer the first question: labor’s and the Left’s strategic attitude toward capitalism undermined both partners and their coalition.
Transitions between Economic Systems
The transition out of feudalism to capitalism in Europe, mostly from the 17th to the 19th centuries, took multiple forms. It was uneven as well, happening in different ways at different rates in different places. Marx studied that transition's various dimensions because they offered valuable lessons for the different transition he was interested in: out of capitalism to socialism and communism. One such lesson needs restatement now.
One hour interview: the Crisis, Public Education, and their Social Impacts
Published on December 22, 2009AUDIO
Richard Wolff speaks with Jeff Farias on his radio show broadcasted by Roots Up Radio. As this book shows, we must now ask basic questions about capitalism as a system that has now convulsed the world economy into two great depressions in 75 years (and countless lesser crises, recession, and cycles in between). The book’s essays engage the long-overdue public discussion about basic structural changes and systemic alternatives needed not only to fix today’s broken economy but to prevent future crises.
Psychology and Economy Discussion at Brecht Forum
Published on December 15, 2009AUDIO
This disussion between Dr. Harriet Fraad and Professor Richard Wolff focuses on how the continued economic deterioration (credit crisis, rising food and energy prices, falling home prices, looming recession, fiscal crises of states and cities, etc.) is interacting with the psychological stresses and strains of US life today (isolation, loneliness, anxiety, depression, violence, child neglect, etc.). The discussion explores whether a potentially explosive convergence of economic and psychological crises is now under way. Oregon Counters Massachusetts
The stunning win of a Republican novice in the Massachusetts Senate race to replace Ted Kennedy is well known. It is being interpreted as a sign of Obama's fading popularity and also as a sign that the US electorate wants more right-of-center policy. To show the flaw in thinking that right-wing answers to the economic crisis are the only popular option, consider the results of the January 26, 2010 referendum in Oregon. That referendum's 1.2 million voters decisively passed Measures 66 and 67 by margins of over 53 to 46.
Labor Movement?
The 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States (and especially Tables 574 to 650), published by the US Census Bureau, provides many statistics that can update understanding of today's working class and possibilities of its movement. The Abstract counts 154 million people as members of the US labor force in 2008. Of these, 129 million were wage and salary earners (the rest were self-employed), and roughly 15-20 million held managerial or supervisory positions.
Economic Crisis Savages Public Education
Capitalist crises, especially severe ones, are case studies in that system's social costs. Because the dutifully conservative economics profession rarely studies such cases, let's do just that here by focusing on how the current capitalist crisis is damaging public education. Deteriorating schools leave scars lasting for many years. They undercut the quality of the skills and knowledge of the next generation in their individual capacities as workers, citizens, friends, parents, and so on.
Interview on "Truth Driven Thinking" with Steve Gibson WKZO radio
Published on December 7, 2009AUDIO
Interview with Steve Gibson of Truth Driven Thinking and WKZO radio
