politicians of all stripes love to talk endlessly about their devotion to the U.S. middle class,

but what does that mean? Does a middle class exist? What happens to the middle class under capitalism?

And what was Karl Marx's theory of classes?

We need a new system. 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 realizable, but an imperative necessity. Deepening unemployment, a looming wave of evictions, massive and widening inequality, there's no denying it.

Capitalism is in crisis and capitalism is the crisis.

We are happy to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us again for our regular weekly segment

where we talk about the biggest stories related to the economy.

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if you enjoy listening to the show. Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization

Democracy at Work and the author of many books, the latest being The Sickness is the System

when capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself. You can check out his work at R.D. Wolf, that's

R.D.W.O.L.F.com. Professor Wolfe, welcome back. Thank you. Glad to be here, Brian.

Richard Wolf, let's start first with the idea of the middle class. You know, for a long time,

certainly when I was growing up, you know,

the term working class and certainly the term capitalist class never appeared in any mainstream

media. It certainly didn't appear in school. Everything was about the middle class. America was one

giant middle class. There were some people who were poor, unfortunately. But soon enough, they too would be part of the great middle class. There were some people who were poor, unfortunately, but soon enough,

...