• About
  • Documentary Films
  • Index
  • Nota bene
  • Protect and Serve
  • Readings

Lumpenproletariat

~ free speech

Lumpenproletariat

Tag Archives: Dr. Richard David Wolff (b. 1942)

Child Slave Labour Case of Mali and Ivory Coast Production of Nestlé and Cargill Products

24 Fri Mar 2017

Posted by ztnh in Africa, Anti-Capitalism, Ivory Coast, Mali

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bloomberg Financial News, Dr. Richard David Wolff (b. 1942), Economic Update, KPFA, Marxian economics, Pacifica Radio Network, transcript

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—On this week’s edition of free speech radio’s (and Free Speech TV’s) Economic Update, Professor of Economics Dr. Richard Wolff has reported that production of cocoa products by Nestlé and Cargill has exploited child labour and slave labour in Mali and Ivory Coast.  Dr. Wolff cited the well-known Bloomberg Financial News service for this disturbing news update of modern capitalist modes of production.  Escaped slaves, or former child workers, sought legal counsel and filed the case of Doe v. Nestle SA, 05-cv-05133, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).  However, the federal judge has sided with the corporations despite evidence of corporate malfeasance or criminality.  This is the second time the judge has dismissed this case, this time arguing that the escaped slaves failed to prove that the slavery was planned from the U.S., such that the case might fall within U.S. jurisdiction.  This narrow logic sets a terrible precedent, which makes it easier for corporations to claim plausible deniability in future when corporations are found to engage, directly or through subcontractors, in labour abuses, child labour, or slavery.  Saliently, The U.S. Department of Labor actually publishes a yearly report containing a List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor issued by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs.  (The December 2014 updated edition of the report listed a total of 74 countries and 136 goods.)  Listen (and/or download) here. [1]

Messina

***

ECONOMIC UPDATE—[24 MAR 2017]

[Introduction by Dr. Richard Wolff omitted by scribe]

[Economic Updates omitted by scribe, except for the news report on child/slave labour.]  (c. 11:16)

DR. RICHARD WOLFF:  “This last week, or actually March 10th to be exact, also set an interesting precedent, that is so interesting that my guess is you don’t know much about it.  So, I can bring it to your attention.  This has to do with a judge in Los Angeles, who decided that two famous food companies—Nestlé, that is perhaps best known as cocoa and chocolate products, and Cargill.  These are two monster corporations, major players in the world of mega-corps in the food business.

“And they had gotten themselves into trouble because it turns out that, in Mali and the Ivory Coast, the countries from which most of the cocoa comes, that goes into the chocolate, that we eat, that Nestlé and Cargill process.  It turns out that many of the people working in the cocoa fields are children.  It turns out that many of them are slaves.  That’s right—children bought and sold between Mali and the Ivory Coast in Africa.

“So, to your wonderment, is there still slavery in Africa?  The answer is an unqualified, absolutely YES.

More than one million children—

“Just as background:

—some as young as five pick cocoa pods, and then crack them open in the Ivory Coast and perform other manual labour under sometimes hazardous conditions. 

“This is the restrained language of the Bloomberg Financial News Service.  No radical sheet here screaming about a crime.  This is very okay language.

“Six of them found a lawyer—that’s six child slaves.  And they told the following story.  They were

taken to the Ivory Coast from Mali.  They were sold to plantations in the 1990s.  They worked 14 hours a day under armed guard without pay six days a week.  They slept on floors of locked rooms, were given only food scraps.  Those trying to escape were severely beaten [etcetera, etcetera].

“If this sounds familiar, it is.  These are the stories of slavery, that one has heard, if one has not been asleep, only it happens now.  And, so, a few of these ex-slaves got a lawyer and brought suit in the United States claiming that Nestlé and Cargill knowingly did business with, provided funding for, the local authorities, who were running this slave labour operation.  (c. 14:32)

“These companies were stunned.  Both of these, Nestlé and Cargill recently—and that is in recent years—set up offices to monitor and to be concerned about corporate responsibility.  And they were proud and advertised their corporate responsibility programme.  And they insisted that they had nothing to do with it, that they shouldn’t be brought up with this, that this wasn’t their responsibility; they didn’t buy or sell these slaves, the usual.

“The corporation’s defence persuaded the judge.  So, why am I telling you about this sad outcome, in which these abused children were unable to find justice in an American court?  The reason is:  I want you to understand the logic of the judge and of the victorious corporate lawyers.  They wanted the judge to rule the way he did, they argued, because, if he didn’t, then it would mean that corporations would have no reason to set up corporate responsibility offices because it wouldn’t work.  It wouldn’t protect them from such lawsuits.

“I found this amazing.  The corporate responsibility programme clearly didn’t prevent these companies from engaging in business with people doing slave labour, about which these companies, of course, had to know.  It didn’t work, these corporate responsibility programmes, very well.  Did they?

“So, if the court found against these companies, and they stopped doing it, what difference would it make?  Extraordinary the way legal reasoning sometimes works.  Extraordinary what is going on in the United States, in our court system, and the way we earn the money, we believe we need as as society.”  (c. 17:04)

[snip]  (c. 59:59)

Learn more at ECONOMIC UPDATE.

***

[26 MAR 2017]

[Last modified at 23:56 PST on 6 APR 2017]

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Share this:

  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...

Economist Dr. Richard Wolff On Basic Economic Theory from a Comparative Perspective, as a Corrective for the Intellectual Dishonesty Built Into Most American Economics Curricula

24 Fri Feb 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Theory, Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Education, Global Labour Movement, History of Economic Theory, Marxian Theory (Marxism), Philosophy of Education, Political Economy, Worker Self-Directed Enterprises

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Dr. Richard David Wolff (b. 1942), Economic Update, heterodox economics, Keynesian economics, KPFA, laissez faire, Lord John Maynard Keynes 1st Baron Keynes CB FBA (1883–1946), Lord Robert Skidelsky (b. 1939), Marxian economics, MMT, neoclassical economics, Pacifica Radio Network, Post-Keynesian economics, Robert Jacob Alexander Baron Skidelsky FBA (b. 1939), transcript, UMKC heterodox economics

usdayofrageLUMPENPROLETARIAT—On free speech radio’s Economic Update, host and heterodox economist, Dr. Richard D. Wolff discussed various economics topics, as he does every week.  And, this week, Dr. Wolff devoted the second half hour of the broadcast to breaking us out of the dominant ruling class/Wall Street paradigm of economics, which we are all force-fed in most economics textbooks in most American schools, colleges, and universities, and which permeates our newspapers, our radio, TV, and internet news reports.  Thankfully, there is more than one way to approach the economy and questions of economics.

The dominant version of economic theory (dominant, in terms of geographic footprint, not intellectual superiority), which saturates, at least, the English-speaking (and Western) world is known as neoclassical economics, which is merely one theoretical approach to economics.  By contrast, heterodox economics considers alternative approaches to economic theory and practice from a comparative perspective.  The New School (where Dr. Richard Wolff currently teaches) and the UMKC Department of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (where your author studied) are two examples of the few heterodox economics departments in the USA, which offer a comparative approach to economics.  Most economics departments around the nation are modeled after the conservative/neoclassical Chicago school of economics.  Indeed, the Chicago school has essentially colonised most economics departments around the nation and stifled alternative perspectives, such as Marxian economics (which has been suppressed and even criminalised), Keynesian economics (which has been co-opted by neoclassical economics), Post-Keynesian economics (which has sought to remain true to the original spirit of Keynes‘ work), and institutional economics (which has sought alternative ways of viewing the economy, from broader perspectives beyond simply money, business, finance, and trade).

As a result of the stifling hegemony of neoclassical economics, the field of economics has been rendered deliberately abstruse, opaque, dull and uninteresting, and completely removed from all human/social context by an overly mathematised and rigid adherence to neoclassical assumptions.  The interesting professors of economics employ a comparative approach and make real-world connections, such as Dr. John Henry, who taught us at UMKC, among other things, about the History of Economic Theory (or, somewhat derogatorily, the History of Economic Thought) as well as microeconomic analysis.  Another interesting, indeed awesome, UMKC professor of economics was Dr. Fred Lee, who was respected for his level of knowledge and vast reading.  Dr. Fred Lee was always one of my favorite participants at UMKC economics presentations because he didn’t mince words and he always called it like he saw it.  He was very outspoken and very passionate about heterodox economics and socioeconomic justice.  Indeed, if memory serves me, Dr. Lee coined the name heterodox economics.  For economics professors, who are not confined within neoclassical dogma, economic theory must always be first and foremost descriptive before prescriptive.  Notably, Dr. Henry also taught Post-Keynesian economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton, who continues to teach the world, as do other MMT advocates, how our money system works and why the government can afford to spend for public purpose, such as effectively ending involuntary unemployment through an MMT-based job guarantee programme.

It’s a shame that the American people are not taught to understand their own economy and economic system, or how the two-party system of Democrats and Republicans locks in place a capitalist system, which is misunderstood and confounded by myths, perpetuated by bad, or narrow and dogmatic, economics curricula.  But our U.S. Constitution encourages us to speak freely and for each one to teach one, and to help our neighbors survive and prosper.  That’s where the politics of education come in, which might involve base human drives, such as ego and greed, but also altruism and a deeper underlying philosophy of education.  Even Pope Francis uttered a few years ago, “Injustice is not invincible.”  To help us better understand our world, Dr. Richard Wolff disabuses us of many harmful myths regarding our economy, economics and economic theory, and how those economic myths harm our working class lives. [1]  Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Economic Update.]

Economic UpdateECONOMIC UPDATE—[24 FEB 2017]

[A critique of the working conditions and pay scales of so-called ‘adjunct’ professors at post-secondary educational institutions.]

[KPFA paid-staff member Mitch Jeserich appeals for KPFA listener-sponsorship, membership, and support in the context of KPFA’s Winter Fund Drive (February 2017).]

[A brief comparative analysis of wealth inequality around the world.]

[KPFA paid-staff member Mitch Jeserich appeals for KPFA listener-sponsorship, membership, and support in the context of KPFA’s Winter Fund Drive (February 2017).]  (c. 31:51)

On basic economic theory, from a comparative perspective.

DR. RICHARD WOLFF:  “Okay.  Much of the time, that remains for me today, is going to be used to talk about economic theory.  Don’t worry.  This is not gonna be an abstruse lesson of the sort you might get in a bad class in a bad school.  I’m gonna try to make it clear.  And I’m gonna try to make it interesting.  But we have to deal with this.  (c. 31:58)

“Economics is not like fixing a car.  If you wanna fix a car, you go to a place where they teach you:

This is the carburetor. This is the engine. This is how it works. This is how it breaks down. And this is how you fix it, when it breaks down, so that it works again.

“Things are kind of understood.  They’re fairly universal, car engines being what they are.  And, so, you can become a mechanic and a skilled worker by learning how the engine is put together, what goes wrong, and how to fix it.  Economics is not like that.  (c. 32:56)

“What do I mean?  The economy is part of the mystery of how human beings interact with one another.  You know other parts of that mystery because we all confront those mysteries.

Why do I find that person attractive, rather than the other one?

Why did I marry him, or her, rather than that other one?

Why am I friends with this person, but not with the other one?

“These are mysteries of relationships.  And we spend much of our time trying to figure them out.  And we make progress.  We learn how or why, at least part of how or why we [for example] marry the way we do, and we have friendships the way we do, and this job works for us, and that one doesn’t, and this neighborhood is attractive, and that one isn’t, etcetera.  (c. 33:47)

“Well, the economy is like that.  We don’t experience the economy in the same way.  If you are the head of a big corporation, you do not experience the economy in the same way, that a person does, who drives a truck.  If you’re a farmer, you do not experience the economy the way you do, if you’re an office worker.  You don’t.  And that’s not a fault or a failure.  That’s the way the world is.

“But it’s even more complicated.  If you were educated in certain ways, you were taught to think about the economy in certain ways.  And if someone else taught you with a very different approach, then you learned that approach.  It turns out that economic systems are understood, and experienced, differently by different people.  And it has always been that way, just like human beings understand love, sex, friendship, and all the other relationships in life in very different ways.  And, indeed, one of the fascinating and interesting things about life is to encounter, to discover other ways of looking at the world.  It will change us.

“If I look at it one way, and I encounter a person, who looks at it in a different [way], my perspective will be changed.  I will now be more sensitive.  I will understand, even if I don’t agree with other ways of thinking about the world.  It’s a little bit like discovering that there are other kinds of food preparation, than the one you grew up with.  You don’t have to like them as well; but they’re interesting; they’re tasty.  From time to time, you would like to taste it again.  So, here in New York, one restaurant offers sushi and one restaurant Tex-Mex and another restaurant Chinese food and so on.  And people in New York love that about this city, that you can literally go to a different corner of the world whenever you want to taste how differently human beings have understood the relationship between us and the food we eat.  (c. 36:08)

“So, let’s do the economics.  How do we get into it?  Well, I give that a lot of thought because, when I teach economics, I teach it in what we call a comparative perspective.  I don’t teach economics as if it were carburetor or car engine studies.  The economy isn’t a thing, that it works in this and this way, that we can learn and figure out how to fix.  That makes economics boring, mechanical, and technical, when what is exciting about it is precisely how differently [for example] people eat.  Imagine, if I gave you a course about food, and all I talked about was how you cook the hamburger, here’s how you cook the french fries, and, therefore, here’s how you make food.  Eventually, you’d figure out that that isn’t about food.  That’s about one kind of food.  And you don’t want to be limited to just that kind.  You want to, at least, know what the other ones are. (c. 37:19)

“It would be as if I taught you a course on religion, but the only religion I told you about was, let’s say, uh, Unitarian Universalist religion.  After a while, you’d say to me:  Look, I’m perfectly happy learning about Unitarians and Universalists. But aren’t there other religions, too? Like Roman Catholicism or Muslim religion or Jewish religion? Or and-so-on-and-so-on?  You want to understand that people engage with divinity, God, the spiritual, if you like, in different ways, just like they engage with food in different ways.  Well, friends, your education is narrow, stunted, and inadequate, if you think economics is one way to go.  (c. 38:10)

“Now, why do I stress that?  Because that’s how it’s taught in the United States.  And that’s how it’s been taught for most of the last 50 years.  We do not admit to most of our students in most of our colleges and universities that there are alternative ways of understanding what an economy is, how it works, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it.  There are multiple ways of doing that, just like there are multiple ways of dancing or singing or eating or dressing or praying or anything else, particularly anything else that really matters in life.  And our economy matters, just like our eating matters and our religions matter and so on.  (c. 38:57)

“So, I am now, in the time that I have, going to try to address the different ways you can understand the economy.  One last reason, before I do it, why: because economics has been so narrowly taught in the United States, because only one way of thinking about it dominates almost to the exclusion—not quite, but almost to the exclusion—of other ways.  Our economic leadership in companies, in the government, has been poor.

“We have had, for example, [an economic] crash in 1929, a terrible [economic] crash, that gave us [an economic] depression—that’s what it’s called—that lasted eleven years, roughly, from ’29 to ’41.  One of the reasons we had that terrible crash is we didn’t have the insight, the understanding, to see it coming.  We didn’t understand, once it came, why it was there.  And we didn’t understand real well what to do about it, which is why it lasted eleven horrible years.

“And did we, at least, learn after that?  Not really very well. [3]  The narrowness of our economics prevented us from asking, and answering, crucial questions.  And that’s part of the reason why, in 2008, capitalism in the United States and beyond crashed again.  And, once again, the profession didn’t see it coming. [4]  And, once again, when it hit, they didn’t understand why.  And, once again, they couldn’t fix it, which is why here we are, eight years, nine years later, in 2017, a crash that happened in 2008, and we’re still, most of us, living with the consequences, the terribly damaging consequences.  That should have been more than enough evidence to suggest that the way we were teaching, studying, learning, and using economics was inadequate, was too narrow, missed too much.  But it didn’t.

“It didn’t.  And that’s because there are reasons why we teach what we teach, even though it doesn’t work very well.  A dangerous way to run your society.  But it’s the one, that has dominated in our society.”  (c. 41:38)

[KPFA paid-staff member Mitch Jeserich appeals for KPFA listener-sponsorship, membership, and support in the context of KPFA’s Winter Fund Drive (February 2017).] (c. 43:18)

DR. RICHARD WOLFF:  “So, what is that way?  [What is that single, narrow, way in which economics is taught at most schools, colleges, and universities in the United States?]  It’s called neoclassical economics.  We don’t have enough time to go into why it has this funny name.  But it does.  That’s a matter of the history of how it arose.  And, in this view, capitalism is a magnificent economic system.  Neoclassical economics is not neutral about capitalism.  It loves capitalism.  It doesn’t just love capitalism.  But it loves a particular kind of capitalism; it’s the kind with very little government intervention in the economy. [5]  Indeed, from a neoclassical perspective:

All we want from the government is to make sure that nobody interferes with this beautiful system called capitalism, a system, which is perfect, which rewards everybody in proportion to what they contribute.  If you’re rich it’s ‘cos you contributed a lot.  If you’re poor, it’s because you haven’t.

“It’s very morally loaded this way.

It’s a system, in which what gets produced is what everybody wants.  So, it’s kind of fair.  It’s kind of responsive.  It’s consumer-oriented, if you like that language.  It’s a system, that’s self-healing.  If anything goes wrong, it fixes itself.  You don’t need the government to come in.  You just let it be. [6]  Let the private individual buy and sell—buy the goods and services, that he or she wants—sell whatever they have to contribute to production, their labour (if that’s all they have) or some capital (if they have some wealth) or their land (if they own some).  You contribute what you wish and have.  And you get in proportion to what you contribute.  Fairsies, you might call it.  A wonderful system, that is the best way to organise an economy, that the world has ever achieved.  And, therefore, it should be celebrated, which is what neoclassical economics does.  And it should not be interfered with, which is the message, that neoclassical economics gives to the journalists, who write about the economy, to the politicians, that run the government, and to the leaders, who own and operate the enterprise.  (c. 45:50)

Neoclassical teaches: The private economy is what should dominate, is the best thing, that could happen, should be left alone, and works perfectly.  Nobody has anything to complain about.  Your income is your reward for what you contribute.  Don’t complain.  If you want more, contribute more.  And, if you don’t have more to contribute—you don’t have more labour you could do; if you don’t have more capital, you could offer; if you don’t have more land, you could make available—then, it’s your fault.  And you have to live with whatever rewards you get for what contribution you make.  (c. 46:26)

“This [i.e., neoclassical economics, or pro-capitalist dogma] is a celebratory system.  This is what is taught in American colleges and universities 95% of the time.  5%, not quite.  I’m gonna get to that in a minute.  But this is what is taught.  Therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised that journalists, when they write about economics, write as if we live in this wonderful system, that works really beautifully; and that the government should keep its hands off; and nobody should break the rules; and, if there’s a problem, the market, the system will solve it itself.

“And you shouldn’t be surprised if corporate leaders love this because it says they’re in charge of an enterprise, which can do everything it wants.  The government is not gonna interfere because that would only make things bad.  This is what the people, who run the society, want.  Politicians are told to think like this.  That’s why you can hear politicians so often saying these weird things, like:

Let the market decide.

Let the private enterprise system work its way out.

“These [neoclassicals or capitalists] are people, who believe this [economic mythology].  And, after all, they were taught it over and over again.  They got it from their newspapers and TV.  They get it from their political leaders.  Of course, they believe it.  (c. 47:47)

“But is this the only way to look at the economy?  And the answer is an absolute, unqualified, no, no, no.

“To imagine that this is the only way to understand an economy is the same thing as imagining that the only way to have a meal is to eat hamburgers and french fries, or the only way to pray is in the manner of the Unitarians and Universalists.  It is to misunderstand a part of the story for the whole story.  And that does you no service and is no complement to your smarts.  (c. 48:26)

GrantKeynes“So, here we go.  Here’s the first alternative [to neoclassical economic theory or capitalist ideology].  The first alternative is called Keynesian economics [7], named after John Maynard Keynes, a British economics professor at Cambridge University, who in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s looked around him and said:

I see a quarter of the people unemployed.  I see poverty and misery all around me.  Don’t tell me capitalism is a wonderful system, that works beautifully, that produces wealth, prosperity, economic growth, that gives everybody what they deserve.  Stop it!  You’re describing an economy, that may be a utopian dream you may have.  But it does not describe and, therefore, it is not gonna help us fix an economy, that is clearly not working well.

“This was a bombshell for many.  This was a man, John Maynard Keynes, who had been an accomplished practitioner of neoclassical economics, but who was realistic about what he saw in the Britain of his time, which was as devastated by the Great Depression as the United States was.  And he said:

Capitalism, private enterprise, markets, left to themselves can and, here, clearly have produced social and economic disasters, crashes, poverty, unemployment, misery, inequality, economic instability.

“Should I go on?  And Mr. Keynes didn’t waste a minute.  He developed an explanation for how private enterprise capitalism can produce these disasters and what should be done about it.  And, to make a long story short, he said there were mechanisms, normal and natural to capitalism, that could and regularly would produce economic horror stories, disasters, failures, miseries, inefficiencies, depressions.  And the solution, he said, was for the government to step in.  Systematically, the government should pump money into the economy when it turned down to build it up again, that the government should, when the private sector wasn’t spending enough money to keep people in their jobs working and producing, well, then, the government should step in.  It didn’t even matter to Keynes.  (c. 51:15)

Buy anything you want.  Take in each other’s laundry.  Build national parks.  Do whatever it is, that has to be done.  Keep people working by having the government buy whatever it thinks might be useful to build.  But the government has to come in, otherwise capitalism self-destructs.

“This is a very different economic theory.  Most schools in the United States don’t teach it.  And, if they do teach it, they have one or two faculty doing that, everybody else is parroting the old neoclassical song and dance.  But is Keynesian the only alternative?  Not at all.  (c. 51:58)

marx_and_engels“The third big one: Marxian economics.  And here’s the big difference about it.  Neoclassical economics celebrates private capitalism.  Keynesian economics says private capitalism is good, but only if it’s controlled, regulated, supplemented by government intervention.  Otherwise, the bad parts of it drown out the good parts of it.  But Keynesian economics likes capitalism.  It just likes it with a heavy dose of government involvement, which freaks out the neoclassicals, who don’t want any government.  And, so, that’s been the debate between them—more or less government, more or less government intervention.  (c. 52:35)

“Marxian economics: completely different.  For Marxian economics, the problem isn’t more or less government.  The problem is capitalism, itself.  This system of organising production, so that a tiny group of people at the top, the board of directors, make all the decisions; and the mass of employees do what their told.  That, for Marxists, is the problem.  You have an undemocratic economic system.  And it undermines democracy everywhere else.  You have a system, that gives a small number of people the dominant say.  They’ll make the system work for them and not for everybody else.  And that’s why you get the inequality, that we talked about in the first half of today’s programme. (c. 53:24)

“No, no, no.  The Marxian argument is:

You have to change the economic system at the foundation. You have to, finally, bring democracy to the workplace.  All the workers together, collectively and democratically, decide what happens in the enterprise, not a handful of shareholders, not a handful of board of directors elected by the shareholders.  No, no, no.

The autocracy, the non-representative nature of the leadership of enterprises, that’s the core problem.  And that has to be fixed.  Otherwise, you will have recessions and depressions and crashes.  The government coming in, as Mr. Keynes proposed, wasn’t enough to stop us from having another crash in 2008, not having learned what the Marxists want us to see, which is the Crash of the 1930s was also a problem of the underlying system.

“Why would a country like ours be this way?  Why would we continue to teach one way of thinking, when it hasn’t worked real well and the alternatives are obvious?  And the answer is: fear.

“For 50 years, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union made Americans fearful about the Soviet Union.  It talked about Marxism.  So, they [i.e., the Americans] didn’t want to talk about that at all.  If you talked about it, you lost your career; you lost your job; you were in trouble.  A little bit like James Joyce trying to write his novel.  He was censored.  You were pushed away.  It’s a tragedy.  It’s intellectually dishonest.  It’s a tragedy for our country.  We need all the insights and all the theoretical avenues available to our people to solve our problems.  Shutting us out of two of the three major theories in the world today is self-destructive.  It’s only done to fearfully support the status quo, what the corporations now like.

They are not the problem.  It’s the government intervention.  It’s this.  It’s something else.  It’s immigrants.  But it’s not the system, itself.

“Thank you for your attention.  Thank you for your partnership.  I look forward to speaking with you again next week.”  (c. 55:53)

[Economic Update theme music comes in momentarily]

[KPFA paid-staff member Mitch Jeserich, then, closed out the broadcast with appeals for KPFA listener-sponsorship, membership, and support in the context of KPFA’s Winter Fund Drive (February 2017).]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at ECONOMIC UPDATE.

***

[1]  Unfortunately, Dr. Richard Wolff seems to perpetuate at least one myth, the myth that federal taxes pay for federal government spending.  Dr. Wolff seems to deliberately avoid informing the public about MMT.

[2]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Economic Update, this one-hour broadcast hosted by Dr. Richard Wolff, Friday, 24 FEB 2017, 10:00 PST.

[3]  After the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was triggered by the economic crash of 1929, Keynesian policies prevailed, which involved increased government interventions to attempt to stabilise the economy.  These economic reforms, however, meant reductions in the extreme wealth accumulation of the ruling classes.  In other words economic reforms, in the context of economic collapse, invariably mean restraints on unbridled financial, business, and labour relations; and such restraints are restraints on capitalism, which are restraints on profit motive.  The ruling classes prefer inequality because obscene wealth depends on obscene poverty.  As the celebrated abolitionist (and former slave) Frederick Douglass presciently articulated:

Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will.  Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

During the mid-20th century, ruling class elites, with their well-funded think tanks and connections, eventually managed to undermine Keynesian reforms and usher in a conservative backlash to progressive politics.  By the late 1970s, neoclassical economics struck back in the forms of right-wing elections of President Ronald Reagan (in the USA) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (in the UK).  Then, we saw the rise of Wall Street, reflected in Oliver Stone’s 1987 blockbuster movie.  At the same time as neoclassical economics was restoring and galvanising its stifling hegemony over the discipline of economics, the ostensibly liberal, or progressive, Democratic Party (USA) was effectively co-opting labour unions and turning them into ‘Gomperist’ business unions.  Such unions today, which are most unions, narrowly focus on individual work site issues, shirk their working class solidarity, and ignore broader societal and political issues, whilst remaining predominantly loyal to the Democratic Party, despite the Democratic Party’s unresponsiveness to working class issues.  Indeed, unions have even lost their legal right to engage in wildcat strikes or general strikes, especially since the passage of the anti-labour Taft-Hartley Act, which labour leaders called the “slave labour bill“.  Even President Truman had to admit that the anti-labour Taft-Hartley Act was a “dangerous intrusion on free speech”, which would “conflict with important principles of our democratic society.”

Today, the fire of organised labour is almost entirely extinguished in the USA; and it poses no political resistance to the anti-working class abuses of capitalism.  And heterodox economics has lost almost all influence in American government and institutions.  Dr. Stephanie Kelton (former chair of the Economics Department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, or UMKC, and one of your author’s former economics professors) is an exception, as she was hired by Senator Bernie Sanders to work as chief economist, first, in the Senate Minority Budget Committee, then, on his campaign trail.  Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders wasn’t as courageous as FDR was in backing economic reforms to remedy the economic hazards of capitalism.  If Bernie Sanders had been courageous, he would have allowed Dr. Stephanie Kelton to lend her expertise on the campaign trail to explain to the American people, for example, how an MMT-based job guarantee programme could provide real jobs to a faltering economy, stimulate a depressed economy, and even end involuntary unemployment as we know it.  The ideas are out there, only they are being suppressed, not only by the corporate media, but even, apparently, by the cowardice of our ostensible political heroes.  (Even Dr. Richard Wolff seems to refuse to speak honestly about MMT, or even mention it.  He continues, for example, to perpetuate the economic myth that taxes pay for federal government spending, as if the USA’s monetary system (or money system) were still on the gold standard.  It’s impossible to imagine that Dr. Wolff isn’t informed about MMT, as he is personal friends with faculty members at UMKC.  But, then, who knows?  We’ll have to reach out to him and ask.)

As far as economists not having had the foresight to see the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008 coming down the pike, as Dr. Richard Wolff points out, we observe that heterodox economists, such as Dr. Hyman Minsky, did provide very cogent analyses and clear warnings of the cyclical economic disasters, which are produced by capitalist modes of production.  For example, see Dr. Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, in which Minsky argued that a key mechanism, which pushes an economy towards crisis is the accumulation of debt by the non-government sector.  Minsky identified three types of borrowers, which contribute to the accumulation of insolvent debt: hedge borrowers, speculative borrowers, and Ponzi borrowers.  As one of my UMKC economics professors, Dr. L. Randall Wray (himself, a graduate student of Dr. Hyman Minsky) taught us, the only thing, which prevented Dr. Minsky from a more accurate prediction of the Global Financial Crisis, was that nobody counted on such a high degree of creativity, which the financial sector would engage in to extend the Ponzi phase of the so-called business cycle.

We can also look back to the work of heterodox economist Dr. Abba Lerner and his theory of functional finance, which is based on effective demand principles and chartalism.  It states that government should finance itself to meet explicit goals, such as taming the so-called business cycle, achieving full employment, ensuring economic growth, and low inflation.

Lerner’s ideas were most heavily in use during the Post-World War II economic expansion, when they became the basis for most textbook presentations of Keynesian economics and the basis for policy.  Thus, when Keynesian policy came under fire in the late ’60s and early ’70s, it was Lerner’s idea of functional finance, which most people were attacking.  During the post-war period, U.S. unemployment reached a low of 2.9% in 1953 when the inflation rate averaged at 1.1%.

Other economists, such as Dr. L. Randall Wray (UMKC), Dr. Michael Hudson (UMKC), and others have also written critically about the inevitable economic boom-and-crash cycles, which result in widening inequality and worsened economic instability.  What all economists, left of center, agree on is the fact that capitalism demands, at the very least, strong government interventions to prevent mass unemployment and economic misery.  That is the opposite of the laissez faire, or let it be, approach of neoclassical, or free market fundamentalist, economics.  The more radical economists admit, as Dr. Michael Hudson often does, that all economies are planned.  That means that capitalist economic crises are expected and allowed to happen, such as the USA’s subprime mortgage crisis, which caused millions of people to lose their homes, their jobs, and their life savings, but which allowed bankers and profiteers to capture a greater share of wealth.  It’s true, all economies are planned, as Dr. Hudson reminds us, the only questions are:  Will the economy be planned by private for-profit banks and Wall Street for ruling class interests?  Or will the economy be planned by Main Street for working class interests?

[4]  Again, we recall exceptions to the general rule that economists didn’t see the Global Financial Crisis coming, such as Dr. Hyman Minsky and the relevance of his work around financial theory.  In the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis of the late 2000s, The New Yorker labelled the subprime mortgage crisis “the Minsky Moment“.

[5]  Again, here we come to the neoclassical economic principle of laissez-faire economics, which ostensibly argues for very little government intervention in the economy.  Of course, this is only a symbolic principle on the part of neoclassical economists.  They don’t really mean laissez-faire.

To wave the banner of laissez-faire economics, or free market economics, is to make it easier for neoclassical economics to saturate the minds of the public and popular notions about economics.  The unassuming non-economist will readily associate popular buzz words, such as free market and the invisible hand and laissez faire capitalism, with notions of liberty and freedom, if only freedom to choose what one can afford.  But, in actuality, this politically conservative economic principle of laissez-faire economics, where the government is supposed to stay out of the economy, really, is only meant to apply to government interventions, which may help or improve working class interests.  As we saw with the huge government bail-outs of Wall Street interests in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, making insolvent institutions whole again, resuscitating them to life as zombie banks.  So, what is actually meant by laissez-faire economics is: no government interventions on behalf of the working classes, only for the capitalist asset-owning classes.

It’s important to keep in mind that, when we hear pro-capitalist arguments about keeping the government out of the economy, we cannot overlook the many ways in which government intervenes to safeguard the interests of the ruling capitalist classes.

[6]  Dr. Richard Wolff uses the words, let it be, which is a common American translation of laissez-faire, as in laissez-faire economics, or neoclassical economics.  Laissez-faire is an alternative spelling of the French, laissez faire, which means let it be or leave it be, or which literally translates to let do.

[7]  Students of economics will find, today, that Keynesian economics has been largely supplanted by Post-Keynesian economics, at least at the leading edge of heterodox economics.  As economic historian Lord Robert Skidelsky (whom your author has met occasionally around the UMKC campus as well as attended his presentations) argues, the post-Keynesian school has remained closest to the spirit of Keynes’ original work.  Lord Skidelsky, a British economic historian of Russian origin, is the author of a major, award-winning, three-volume biography of British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946).  Lord Skidelsky is, perhaps, the most authoritative biographer of Keynes.

***

[1 MAR 2017]

[Last modified at 07:41 PST on 8 MAR 2017]

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Share this:

  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...

Heterodox Economist Dr. Richard Wolff On the Philosophy of Hegel

17 Fri Feb 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Civic Engagement (Activism), Democratic Party (USA), Dr. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Philosophy, Political Science, Worker Self-Directed Enterprises

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

CNN, Donald John Trump (b. 1946), Dr. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Dr. Richard David Wolff (b. 1942), Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi BA (b. 1940), San Francisco Bay Area, Switchback Brewing Co. (Burlington VT), Trevor Hill (NYU student)

hegel_portrait_by_schlesinger_1831LUMPENPROLETARIAT—GONZO:  Whilst studying heterodox (and neoclassical) economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (which houses one of the USA’s most radical economics departments), one of the most influential philosophers, which came up in many discussions with graduate students around campus, is Hegel.  In a special supplemental broadcast of free speech radio’s Economic Update, economist professor Dr. Richard Wolff has improvised a second hour of programming to expand the weekly hour-long broadcast (and pick up the slack for the absent sports-and-politics show The Collision). [1]  Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

***

ECONOMIC UPDATE—[17 FEB 2017; 12:00 PST]  [musical break:  instrumental, ‘Eastern’ jazz ensemble] 

[KPFA announcement:  KPFA meetings are posted on KPFA Event Calendar at least a few days in advance, etc.  Submit email to meetings@kpfa.org to receive correspondence regarding KPFA’s democratic governance structure, by which KPFA listener-supporters are the owner-operators of the local and national free speech Pacifica Radio Network.]  (c. 2:30) 

[Economic Update theme music:  John Lee Hooker and Santana]  (c. 3:30)

[Dr. Richard Wolff’s opening remarks.]

DR. RICHARD WOLFF:  “Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly programme devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our incomes, our debts, those coming down the road to confront us, and those already changing the lives of our children.

“I’m your host, Richard Wolff.  I’ve been a professor of economics all my adult life.  And, currently, I teach at the New School University in New York City.

Weekly Economics News Updates

[Switchback Brewery (Burlington, Vermont) became a Worker Self-Directed Enterprise (or workers’ cooperative), upon the coming retirement of the two founding members, who decided to democratise the workplace by transferring their shares to the workers.  Three cheers for Switchback Brewery for bringing democracy to the workplace!]  (c. 7:40)

[snip]

[Next segment, on Trump administration and profiteers, coal corporations, and coal workers (coal miners).]  (c. 15:13)

[snip]

Democratic Party Apologia for Anti-democratic Capitalism

DR. RICHARD WOLFF:  “Well, an interesting thing happened a week, or so, ago.  It was captured on video; and, so, it became a kind of viral story.  And it is one, that I want to comment on, in case you missed it.

“A young man at a town hall organised by the network CNN had a confrontation, a very mild and polite one, between a young college student, Trevor Hill, and the leader, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, from the Bay Area in California.  Young Mr. Hill cited a poll taken last spring by Harvard University‘s Institute of Politics.  And it showed that a random sample of young Americans from the ages of 18 to 29—not just Democrats or anything, but a random collection—no longer support the system of capitalism.  They are, either, in favour of socialism or have serious doubts and criticisms of capitalism.

“And young Mr. Hill‘s question to Nancy Pelosi was:

Are the Democrats, your party, Ms. Pelosi, willing to move to the left to accommodate, to respond to, to reflect the views of the young people that are, of course, growing into the majority of American people with the passage of time?

“Nancy Pelosi‘s response was very quick.  And I’m going to quote it to you.  Quote:

Well, I thank you for your question.

“She said and, then, continuing—her words:

But I have to say we’re capitalist.  And that’s just the way it is.

“End of quotation.  I think Mrs. Pelosi is quite right.  The Democratic Party is capitalist, in the sense that it accepts, supports, endorses, encourages—all that kind of word—the capitalist economic system, that is dominant here in the United States.  And, in that way, the Democratic Party is exactly like the Republican Party, which feels the same way about the capitalist system.  And I mean all of the Republican Party—the George Bush type of Republican Party, the Paul Ryan type of Republican Party, and the Donald Trump type of Republican Party.  Indeed, all three of those names—Bush, Ryan, Trump—are, themselves, capitalists.  And, so, it’s hardly surprising.  (c. 18:35)

“But this raises a question.

What does it say about a society, like the United States, that the two major parties, that completely and absolutely dominate the federal government—the state government and, basically, most local governments in the United States—that these two parties have no substantial difference about the capitalist system?  That the leaders of both parties would respond just as Mrs. Pelosi did, by saying: Of course, we’re capitalist.  And that’s just the way it is.

“Here’s what it tells you.  There is no opposition to capitalism in the United States, that takes a political form.  We know from the Harvard poll, that Trevor Hill quoted that there’s lots of opposition to capitalism in the society.  We know that millions of people voted for Bernie Sanders, who described himself as a democratic socialist.  So, we know that there’s widespread feelings, views, attitudes, that are critical of capitalism, and that would like a better or different economic system in its place. [2]

“So, here’s what we’ve got:  A society with grave doubts, widespread criticism of capitalism, but it lacks any political party able, or willing, to express, to organise, to mobilise that perspective.  And that makes the United States different from most capitalist economies.  That is, most other countries, in which the capitalist system prevails—because in most other countries, where capitalism prevails, there are political parties, that are critical of capitalism, opposed to capitalism, pursuing other systems—they are stronger in some countries and weaker in others.  They carry names, like socialist, communist, anti-capitalist, and so on.  But the United States lacks a political party, that could put forward a critique of capitalism and a programme for moving to another system.  And, yet, there’s every evidence that, if such a party emerged, and if it positioned itself that way, it would have, very quickly, a very sizable constituency, as young Trevor Hill and his question clearly implied.  (c. 21:46)

Trevor Hill (NYU student) challenging Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi [3]

“It makes one wonder whether the absence of such an anti-capitalist political party in the United States really has very little to do with the population’s feelings, views, needs, or desires, and a great deal to do with the concerted effort by Republicans and Democrats to avoid any competition from such a party.

“Please keep that in mind the next time you hear a leading Republican and/or Democrat give one of those July 4th speeches about the virtues of competition, please keep in mind how those very same people, have been and, continue to do everything in their power to avoid, repress, suppress, anything and everything, that moves in the direction of producing a party, that would respect and reflect huge anti-capitalist political perspectives.  That’s what was behind the squelching of the Occupy Wall Street movement under Obama.  That was, likewise, the squelching of Bernie Sanders movement by the Clinton part of the Democratic Party, of which Mrs. Pelosi was a leading, and is a leading, member.  It is important to keep that in mind.  (c. 23:39)

A critique of the financial advisor industry in the context of eroded, pillaged, and stolen pension systems

“Our next update has to do with a move by the Trump administration this last week to direct the Labor Department to review an Obama administration rule governing financial advisors.  Let me explain.

[snip]  (c. 29:00)

Statistics show immigrants actually increase value of property and community

[Statistics valorise immigrant communities.]  [snip]  (c. 31:00)

[Next, Dr. Richard Wolff appealed to listeners to ‘please share Economic Update and its content’ with their friends and family, on their social media, blogs, websites, and their local free speech radio and TV stations, and so on.  Dr. Wolff encouraged listeners, as he does regularly, to also partner with Economic Update to help inform and educate the public on questions of economics and ‘the economic dimensions of our lives’.  (Economic Update began broadcasting in March of 2011.)]  (c. 37:20)

On Hegel’s Concept of Slave and Master

DR. RICHARD WOLFF:  “Alright.  I wanna turn to an unusually philosophic subject for the first of our major discussions.  And I wanna begin by reminding you, if you’re not familiar with it and I’m explaining it, perhaps, for the first time.

“A remarkable piece of philosophic reflection by, perhaps, the greatest German philosopher ever.  His name was Hegel—H-E-G-E-L.  And, perhaps, the most famous thing he ever wrote—and he wrote quite a bit—and much of it has been extremely influential in the history of the world over the last few centuries.  But one of the most important pieces he wrote was called The Dialectic of the Master and the Slave.  And it was an exploration, a few pages long—it’s not very difficult—about the relationship between master and slave because he felt that it had not been properly understood.  And he wanted to explain how he understood it.  (c. 38:34)

“His idea is fundamentally simple, that the mistake has been to imagine that because the master dominates the slave that the line of dependency is one direction: The slave depends on the master. The master orders, controls, directs, literally owns the slave. The master is active. The slave is passive. The master controls. The slave is dependent.

“The point Hegel wants to make is that this is only a one-sided perspective.  It turns out, it runs the other way, too.  What I mean is that the master is dependent on the slave, also.  And here’s how it works.  Precisely because the master can get the slave to do virtually everything he needs, because that’s what a slave means—that the slave is so dependent, the slave is so subordinate, the slave is so slavish—that the master can compel the slave to do everything, and in so doing the master becomes dependent on the slave doing everything for him.  And, thereby, the very mastery of the slave makes the master the slave of the slave, the slave of his own dependence on the slave.  Or, to say the same thing as simply as I know how, the line of dependency runs both ways.

“The illusion of the master, that he is in charge, is smashed the minute the slave declares he’s not gonna do it anymore.  He refuses to continue to be a slave, whereupon the master discovers his dependence on the slave.  And, in that act of rebellion, the slave confronts what Hegel is teaching, that the dependence runs both ways, that the slave and the master are caught in a relationship they both depend on.  (c. 41:20)

“Now, why do I talk about this?  Because it gives us an insight into how capitalism, among other systems, works.  Let’s show you that.  The capitalist needs the worker.  But the capitalist also dominates the worker.  The capitalist decides whether the worker he employs has a job or not.  That’s an enormous power.  The capitalist pays the worker, or not.  The capitalist profits from the worker.  The worker is dependent for income, for the work, for his or her position in the world, ability to feed their children.  The dependence of the worker on the capitalist can appear to be one-sided, can appear to be slavish in many respects.  And many workers have felt that.  And, indeed, the capitalist acts in a dominating way towards the employee all the time.  Let me just give you the two big examples.  (c. 42:45)

“Capitalists are forever trying to replace workers with machines, to get rid of the worker, to save having to pay the worker any wage by replacing the costly worker with a less costly computer or a less costly, at least in the long run, robot.  The capitalist is always, in a way, threatening the worker with unemployment by having the worker replaced with a machine. [4]

“Likewise, the worker is threatened by his or her employer because the employer has the power, as an employer, to relocate production. [5]  That is, to move it.  To move it where?  For example, where wages are lower—threaten your job by moving to China or India or Brazil or Mexico.  There’s another way that a capitalist can threaten your job.  If he chooses not to move the production to another country to catch the low wages there, he can bring the low-wage people here—immigration—and get away with paying them less money for the work, that he would have had to pay a native-born person here.  (c. 44:15)

“So, capitalists are always squeezing, threatening, calculating, conniving, to save on labour costs, which threaten the worker.  The system compels capitalists to do that.  They are competing with other capitalists, who are doing it.  So, they have to also.  They depend on profits to stay in business.  And profits can be enhanced by automating your workers or relocating to lower wages.  But here comes, now, the other side, that Hegel alerts us to look for.

“The more successful the employer is replacing workers with machines, so he doesn’t have to pay those workers wages anymore, moving production out of the country—firing the workers here in the United States, for example, and hiring ‘less expensive’ workers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or where ever—the more the capitalist does that, the more he is forced to confront his dependency, as a capitalist on the workers because, having cut the wages or removed the wages of workers, they lack the ability to buy.  To buy what?  To buy what the capitalist has to sell, if he’s going to stay in business.  (c. 45:47)

“Herein lies what Hegel would call the contradiction—the two-way relationship of dependence.  The worker depends on the capitalist, to be sure, like the master depends on the slave.  But the master—excuse me.  The slave depends on the master.  That’s how the worker depends on the capitalist.  But the reverse also holds.  The capitalist depends on the worker.  He depends on workers to produce whatever it is he has to sell.  But he also depends on workers to buy what it is he has to sell.  And, if they cannot, or if they do not, then the capitalist is as destroyed, as a capitalist, as the master would be destroyed if the slaves were unable or unwilling to work.

“And, you know, it runs the other way.  Workers know, in some sense, even if they can’t say it in so many words, that that capitalist depends on them, that in a way they have the upper hand, even if it seems that the capitalist does.  How workers have the upper hand?  How do workers make capitalists depend on them?  Well, let’s quickly review.  (c. 47:13)

“First of all, the workers are the majority.  The capitalists are the minority, as it was with masters and slaves.  And workers long ago struggled to get universal suffrage, to be able to vote, to make political leadership, at least, subject to [the democratic principle of] one person, one vote.  And that gives the masses the power, through the vote, to confront the masters, the employers.  And workers use that power, often to choose someone from government, that the employers were at best neutral about or very skeptical about.  That’s what the workers in England did when they voted to leave the European Union.  And that’s what many workers did in this country when they voted for Mr. Trump after the business establishment made it clear they were, at best, of mixed minds about him. [6]  (c. 48:25)

“Here’s another way, that capitalists depend on workers.  The vast bulk of the police and the army, the enforcers of the rules of capitalism, are working people.  They are not, themselves, capitalists.  And, so, the capitalists depend on the army functioning the way they want, and the police functioning the way they want.  That’s a dependence of the capitalist on the powers of enforcement, that are workers.  But, I’m not done.

“Here’s another way workers reveal the dependence of the capitalist.  They can go on strike.  They can say to the capitalist:  We won’t work. And, you know what, Mr. Capitalist? You don’t make any money. You don’t make any profit. You depend on us, therefore, for your survival, rather like a master depends on the slave, who he has enslaved to do everything for that master. So, it turns out, the capitalist depends on the worker.  (c. 49:40)

“And, then, there’s that last little item, that historically needs to be included.  Workers can sabotage the production process.  And, here, the way to explain it is to give you the history of the word.  Sabotage comes from the French word, sabot—S-A-B-O-T.  And that was the word for the wooden shoes, that people in northern France and northern Europe used to wear.  Some still do.  And, when workers were angry at their capitalist employers, they were known—secretly and quietly—to throw one of their wooden shoes into the machinery in the factory and, thereby, to commit sabotage.  In other words, it’s another way to remind the capitalist that he isn’t in charge altogether, that he depends on the workers, too.  (c. 50:42)

“Well, what’s the message, and the lesson, of Hegel‘s teaching?  Master and slave, therefore, is not the master in control and the slave altogether dependent.  The dependency runs both ways—between the lord and the serf in feudalism, the same truism.  And, now, between capitalist and worker, the same two-way dependency.  Well, what happens in this system is that you have two choices.  You can continue the endless conflict, the endless struggle—master trying in every way to dominate, control, and profit from the slave; and the slave finding ways to use the dependence of the master to relieve their suffering, to impose costs on the master; and the same back and forth between lord and serf; and the same back and forth between employer and employee.  (c. 51:49)

“The struggle can last forever and take up your whole life.  Or you can try to make a resolution, what Hegel would call a synthesis of the two opposites.  Solve the problem of endless conflict between master and slave—lord and serf, capitalist employer and worker/employee—by overcoming that relationship.  And what that means, in economics, is a democratic worker cooperative.  Make the workers, both, the employer and the employee.  End the struggle between two people, two groups, each dependent on, and trying to overcome at the same time, this dependency and not recognising that they were locked into a relationship and that the escape from the dependency and the endless struggle requires fundamentally changing the relationship.

“That’s why, as far back as ancient slave society and throughout the history of feudalism and throughout the history of capitalism, human beings have tried to escape from those tensions, those oppositions, those contradictory struggles, to form cooperatives, to produce goods in a collective way, that did not pit master-slave, lord-serf, and employer-employee.  They did it in religious orders, when nuns and monks would work collectively to produce what the nunnery or the monastery needed.  Farmers did it in conditions where a collective effort struck them as making more sense than continuing in the endless struggle of the opposites. (c. 54:02)

“Hegel’s teaching is a way to understand, both, what ails us in a conflict-ridden economic system and where the escape, the future, the better economic system lies.  It lies with an overcoming of the contradictions, what beleaguer slavery, feudalism, and capitalism.  It lies with the democratisation of a cooperative community organisation of work together with the same kind of democratic community organisation of the residential neighborhoods and communities where we live. (c. 54:55)

On parallels between the Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis

“In the time, that remains today, which isn’t a great deal, I wanted also to draw your attention to a certain parallel between the 1930s, when capitalism crashed after 1929’s [economic] collapse, and our current period, a period after the second-worst crash.  We can learn something about what’s happening to us now by looking carefully at what happened the last time the economic system in which we live broke down badly.

[snip]  (c. 59:59)

Learn more at ECONOMIC UPDATE.

***

[1]  The Collision, a sports and politics show, which normally airs on free speech radio KPFA (and, likely, other free speech radio or Pacifica Radio stations throughout the USA) failed to file their weekly broadcast.  So, Dr. Richard Wolff seems to have improvised a second hour of Economic Update.

(Dr. Richard Wolff was a doctoral advisor to one of my professors at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), Dr. Erik Olsen, who teaches Marxian economics and Urban Economics.  During the spring semester of 2015, since I often cited Dr. Wolff in class, Dr. Olsen invited me to a party at his house, which was going to host Dr. Wolff during the fall semester of 2015.  Unfortunately, I was graduating in May of 2015.  So, I wouldn’t get a chance to ask Dr. Wolff why he perpetuates the myth that the federal government taxes the public in order to raise funds for public spending.  It seems Dr. Richard Wolff refuses to acknowledge modern money theory (MMT), which is taught at heterodox economics departments, such as UMKC.  MMT reminds us that the USA operates a sovereign monetary system, which means that the USA can afford to spend without fiscal constraints, including for instituting a job guarantee programme, which can effectively end involuntary unemployment as we know it.  It seems Dr. Wolff’s preoccupation with bashing capitalist modes of production causes him to engage in intellectual dishonesty by perpetuating myths about taxation and our monetary system, by refusing to honestly inform the people about how government spending really works and by refusing to dispel myths about our monetary system (or federal money system).)

[2]  The institution and implementation of modern monetary theory (MMT) policies in the federal government, such as a federal job guarantee programme, which could end involuntary unemployment as we know it, could function as economically emancipatory institutions for the working classes as well as subversive to capitalist modes of production.

[3]  Trevor Hill asks an unscripted and sincere question of Nancy Pelosi:

“Nancy Pelosi Desperately Defends Capitalist at Town Hall” posted to YouTube (12 FEB 2017) by Democratize the Media

In the video above, posted by Democratize the Media, our narrator seems either too excited to smoothly deliver his analysis; or, perhaps, he is persevering despite a challenging speech impediment.  But, be patient friends, the young man offers a very sincere and heartfelt, yet clearheaded, analysis of this notable moment in capitalist history.  Essentially, most everything the narrator says is consistent with a quality university education in economics.  And, if one watches Mrs. Pelosi’s response in its entirety, it’s quite amazing how easily an undergraduate student is able to completely throw her off her game.  Imagine if a critical undergrad student of heterodox economics or a graduate student or a radical economics professor (with an ounce of courage) was allowed to go HAM on Mrs. Pelosi in a Town Hall, with follow up questions and all.  Wow.  All we can say is that defenders of capitalist modes of production have an indefensible position.  It’s a mathematical fact that capitalism produces widening inequality.  If there’s one thing I learned at university, it is that fact.

In the video below, we can see Trevor Hill’s entire question as well as Mrs. Pelosi’s entire, pathetic and nonsensical, response.

“Nancy Pelosi Dodges the Only Progressive Question” posted to YouTube (1 FEB 2017) by Dey Dey

[4]  Of course, here, we wonder why Dr. Richard Wolff never mentions an MMT-based job guarantee programme.  I do know that some of my Marxian friends in the graduate department of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (and other heterodox economics departments) are so opposed to capitalism, as well they should be, that they view the job guarantee programme as a form of saving capitalism, or extending the life of zombie capitalism, which has already shown itself to have failed society and the world repeatedly, but which is only propped up with artificial and temporary stop-gap measures, such as bailing out failed banks, rather than nationalising them.  (Incidentally, the U.S. government essentially nationalised the major banks temporarily in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis; only, this fact was downplayed by officials and the corporate media.)

However, it’s difficult not to view as a permanent federal job guarantee programme as educational, consciousness-raising for the public, and emancipatory for the working classes, who would come to understand that the federal government can use modern money for public purpose, such as ending involuntary unemployment as we know it.

[5]  Also see issues of globalisation from above versus globalisation from below, as well as the wage race to the bottom.  An excellent introductory reading is Flat Broke in the Free Market: How globalization fleeced working people (2013) by Jon Jeter.

[6]  A common argument posed by political analysts has explained Mr. Trump’s electoral success in terms of his ability to feign a working class populist posture, which Mrs. Clinton was unable to do as a categorically establishment candidate.  (Although, we acknowledge that Trump lost the people’s vote, but won the vote of the outdated and anti-democratic Electoral College.)  Nevertheless, Donald Trump appeared to be an outsider to many working class voters, especially those with a right-wing political orientation; but news reports have indicated that Trump did meet with establishment elites prior to his acceptance by the Republican Party bosses.  This helps explain why Trump’s cabinet picks largely consist of establishment Republicans, including many Bush operatives.  And, of course, it’s widely understood that Trump would have never been able to overcome the working class populism of Senator Bernie Sanders, had Sanders garnered the Democratic presidential nomination (or had the courage or political conviction to run as a socialist, Green, or independent candidate).  But the Democratic Party, through cheating and fraud, insured that Sanders never had a chance to win the Democratic Primary election.

For more on the deceptive working class populism of President Donald J. Trump, see, for example:

  • “The Dangerous Deception Called ‘The Trump Presidency'” by Dr. F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 30 NOV 2016.
  • “Workers of the USA fooled by Trump” by dfmese1, Daily KOS, 4 DEC 2016.
  • “Guns and Butter Presents The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy (2016)” by Messina, Lumpenproletariat, 7 DEC 2016.
  • “Hey, White Working Class, Donald Trump Is Already Screwing You Over” by Joy-Ann Reid, The Daily Beast, 8 DEC 2016.

***

[19 FEB 2017]

[Last modified at 07:42 PST on 1 MAR 2017]

 

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Share this:

  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
%d bloggers like this: