Capitalism in Crisis: Why Karl Marx Is Still Right!
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2021
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian speaks with Prof. Richard Wolff about Marx and the Marxist analysis of the fundamental features of capitalism. Marx's assessment of the laws of capitalism were written more than 150 years ago, but they are spot on in their description of modern day capitalism and explain why millions of people are turning toward socialism with a renewed interest in Marx.
Richard Wolff is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many books, the latest being "The System is the Sickness: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The stock market hit record heights in 2020, and so did the misery for working class and poor people in the tens of millions. |
| 0:12.7 | We need a new system. We need a new society. We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only real it, capitalism is in crisis. a looming wave of evictions, massive and widening inequality. |
| 0:55.2 | There's no denying it. |
| 0:56.3 | Capitalism isn't crisis and capitalism is the crisis. |
| 1:02.0 | We are excited to have Professor Richard Wolf join us for a regular weekly segment |
| 1:06.2 | where we discuss the biggest stories relating to the economy, the state of the working class, the crimes of |
| 1:12.9 | big business. And we talk about how the economy can be reconstituted on a new basis so that the |
| 1:20.5 | needs of people and the planet come before profit. Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization |
| 1:27.0 | Democracy at Work, and he is the |
| 1:29.6 | author of many books, the latest being, The System is the Sickness when Capitalism Fails to |
| 1:35.9 | save us from pandemics or itself. Check out his work at R.D. Wolf, that's R-D-O-L-F-F dot com. Professor Wolf, welcome back. |
| 1:47.6 | Thank you very much. Happy to be here. Thank you for joining. Richard, there's so much to talk about, |
| 1:53.0 | you know, last week when we talked about democracy and capitalism and or the lack thereof, you made mention of the fact that, you know, |
| 2:05.5 | most people spend a good part of their lives, at least they're waking hours at work. |
| 2:11.2 | And while we're at work, we don't live in a democracy. We live in a system where we have no rights, no rights to speak out |
| 2:19.9 | at least, unless we have a union perhaps, in which case we have some rights. |
| 2:25.4 | Really, really interesting that workers in the high tech sector, the Google workers in particular |
| 2:31.9 | have formed a union and, you know, these are higher paid |
| 2:36.8 | workers or at least higher paid for now. There may be a rapid deskilling of that workforce such that |
| 2:43.6 | the same thing that happened to auto workers and steel workers will eventually happen to high |
| 2:48.7 | tech workers too, meaning their wages will be driven down |
| 2:52.2 | and their living standards driven down. |
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