The Alarm Action

Hello it's Jeff O it's me Matt and Amber and joining us this week is Professor Richard Wolf. How you doing? Fine, glad to be here. Professor Wolf. How did you, what was your road to Damascus moment coming to Mark's your Saul Paul moment?

Well I think it was partly my family my father and mother were refugees from Europe came here United States they went away from World War II and when I was born my father was pushing a wheelbarrow in the youngstown Ohio sheet and tube steel company. He had been a lawyer in Europe but when he came here that counted for nothing. So he was lucky to get any job and he got a job as a steel worker.

And the rest of his life was the denial of being able to do what he had wanted to do. And I think in one honest way that shaped me to understand that the world can treat you really badly and you have to try to understand that.

And if you can think about it when I used to talk with my father and ask him you know what do you think about what's going on. He kind of tutored me an understanding that if the world had been organized differently there wouldn't have been Nazis and there wouldn't have been war and there wouldn't have been refugees and there wouldn't have been.

And I could see I couldn't put in the words then but I could see that the way he got through the traumas of his life.

Was by understanding telling a story to explain why it happened was almost a kind of therapy for him almost a way of coping and did he talk about these and explicitly political terms yes he did.

And I think he came to politics because he needed to explain this for example his sister died in Auschwitz. Okay. That's a problem you got a cope with what what does that mean picked up off a street of Paris and whisked off and never saw again.

He had to come to terms and the way he did that I mean to deal with that horror I mean how do you do that. He used his head he told the story he made an explanation.

And I think I'm a teacher in part because making an explanation I could see in my father was his way of coping with life.

So part of my coming to Marx was I began to ask the question why is the society worked the way it does I did it in high school I began I continued in college I certainly wasn't a Marxist there I didn't like it.

Um.

Did you study economics and no I took one as a freshman I took one course in economics I thought this was the dumbest nonsense I had ever heard I couldn't believe the teacher I thought was a joke and I was waiting for the punch line but it never came.

It was all these lines and graphs I had been a mathematics student I wasn't intimidated by the lines in the graphs but this was childish what was being said he made no sense at all.

I never took another course in college in economics I kept away from it like it was a disease you know I didn't want to anyone here there I majored in history because I know I could study I mean history is a story that's right it's the story that's right and I could and history is economic history and political history and cultural history can do whatever you want that was exactly what I wanted to study.

But the more I studied the more I understood if you don't understand what's going on in the economy you're missing a major part of the story and my teachers didn't didn't deal with it they didn't handle it so I'm a little bit also shaped my Damascus by the kid who can't get the cookies out of the jar you know they become very attractive.

So if the teachers are avoiding the economic story they're avoiding the conflict between employers and employees master slave lord serves if all of that is kind of swept under the rug which it was when I was going to school.

Then it became even more interesting for me why am I being kept from this why am I not being told about this and I had enough people I could ask who gave me a book to read or an article to read and I began to figure out toward the end of college.

That we were not being taught what was the most important and interesting stuff and once you're into that you find Marx sooner or later you find Marx.

And then once you sort of walk through that door and like the mid that in your mind the missing part of that story falls into place like what was it like what was missing and then what was articulated by coming to Marx that excited you're interested to do.

The basic thing was a that what goes on in the economy how people make a living is a crucial part of who they are what they think about how they relate to other people and within that there's a crucial part which has to do with conflict between the employer and the employee and all of that and I wasn't being told anything I was actually being told that there's a wonderful

perfect arrangement in which the interest of the worker and the interest of the employer are the same and they're working together and they're all getting a fair cut of what they do together it's a happy happy store this made no sense to me at all.

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