Why Profit is Theft
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode Walter Smolarek and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss how wage theft is rampant across the United States -- Workers are sent to jail for theft, but under capitalism corporate executives have impunity to steal on a massive scale. They also discuss why socialists believe that in fact all wages are a form of theft.
Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can check out his work at rdwolff.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wage theft, the illegal withholding of workers' wages by their employers, is rampant across the |
| 0:07.5 | United States. A new report shows that the government recovered over $3 billion in stolen wages |
| 0:13.6 | between 2017 and 2020, but the total amount taken by bosses is vastly higher. Workers are sent to jail for theft, but under capitalism, |
| 0:23.6 | corporate executives have impunity for theft on a massive scale. |
| 0:28.6 | We need a new system. We need a new society. We need to demand that which may have sounded |
| 0:34.8 | impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only realizable, |
| 0:39.3 | but an imperative necessity. Deepening unemployment, a looming wave of evictions, massive and widening inequality, |
| 1:09.0 | there's no denying it. Capitalism is in crisis and capitalism |
| 1:13.5 | is the crisis. We are very excited to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us for a regular weekly |
| 1:19.0 | segment where we discuss the biggest stories relating to the economy, the state of the working |
| 1:24.1 | class, and the crimes of big business. I'm Walter Smilerick, |
| 1:27.8 | filling in for Brian Becker. The Socialist Program brings you content three days a week, |
| 1:32.5 | thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com slash the Socialist Program. We appreciate all |
| 1:38.5 | of your support and encourage you to become a patron today if you enjoy listening to the show. |
| 1:43.9 | Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the Organization Democracy at Work and the author of many |
| 1:48.6 | books, the latest being The Sickness is the System, when capitalism fails to save us |
| 1:54.1 | from pandemics or itself, and a new hard copy edition of Professor Wolf's book Understanding |
| 1:59.2 | Marxism has been released, which features a new |
| 2:01.7 | lengthy introduction, which strengthens the case for why Marxism is worth understanding. You can check out |
| 2:07.5 | all of his work at R.D.Wolf.com. Professor Wolf, the Economic Policy Institute put out a report |
| 2:17.0 | recently titled more Than Three Billion |
| 2:19.2 | Dollars in Stolen Wages, Recovered for Workers Between 2017 and 2020. |
... |
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