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This is a video (part of a series) recommended by two of our most dependable resident political critics, Thomas Baldwin and Eric Schechter, active participants in TGP’s Facebook group.
—Branford Perry, Associate Editor for Social Media ops.
Published on Mar 12, 2015
Global Capitalism: Monthly Economic Update
Richard D. Wolff
Wednesday, March 11, 2015 at 7:30pm
“As Wealth and Income Inequalities Deepen, the System Undermines Itself” Judson Memorial Church Assembly Hall 239 Thompson Street at
Washington Square, Manhattan
Co-sponsored by Democracy at Work, Left Forum, and Judson Memorial Church
These programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. For this March 11, these will include:
1. Global Economic Inequality: the Basic Numbers, Causes and Consequences
2. Reform versus Revolution: the System was always the Problem
3. How and Why 21st Century Socialism Must Differ from Past Socialisms
…….
Professor Wolff’s Website: www.rdwolff.com
Professor Wolff’s Podcast: http://www.truth-out.org/economic-upd…
RELATED & RECOMMENDED
Understanding Real World Economics & American Capitalism by Patrice Greanville
An excerpt from this article:
The crux of the matter, as ME makes clear, is that,
[T]he only type of truly sustainable economic system is a steady-state system and capitalism cannot operate in a steady-state environment any more that a polar bear can survive on a vegetarian diet…This is because ongoing growth is not merely an aspiration of corporations operating with outdated assumptions; it is a systemic requirement. (Emphasis mine)
To the impartial observer the poverty of bourgeois economics is pretty much irrefutable. It cannot offer any better solutions to the great issues facing humanity in the 21st century than it did in the 20th and 19th centuries. The promises of a lasting prosperity on the basis of “an administrated capitalism” using the toolbox of Keynesianism came crashing down with the end of the postwar “Long Boom” in the 1970s, and the onset of stagflation. Today all that really remains is a melange of Friedmanism and military Keynesianism, without which the system could not possibly survive. Endless war is not only grotesquely profitable to the weapons manufacturers and associated constituencies, it is indispensable to the viability of the modern capitalist state, and essential to the new global empire. Meanwhile, the noose keeps tightening around the system’s neck. Automation will go on erasing jobs in all continents (China already has more than 100 million effectively unemployed) until the ultimate absurdity of the system will be revealed to all: a handful of people will produce a mountain of goods that only a handful of plutocrats can consume. The rest will be simply “superfluous” to the capitalist logic.
Capitalism has always drowned and faltered on its unjust social relations. The outrageously lopsided way it distributes income, the product of society, continually augmented by advances in technology, is a contradiction that has no economic answers because it is really a question of power, a question of politics. The constant elimination of jobs by automation, and their hemorrhage toward cheap-labor zones cannot be “cured” by job training programs or even better education for all (as Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich, the main evangelist for this pseudo-solution, used to preach). An advanced degree is no guarantee of employment in a job market that has no need for 100,000 applicants with such uber-credentials. The drift toward authoritarianism cannot be arrested, only slowed down or momentarily interrupted given the essentially undemocratic nature of the system. As we said earlier, living with capitalism is like living with a sociopath in the room, a maniac who bears constant watching.
In a recent article, my colleague Susan Rosenthal wrote:
By 2000, U.S. workers took half the time to produce all the goods and services they produced in 1973. If the benefits of this rise in productivity had been shared, most Americans could be enjoying a four-hour work day, or a six-month work year, or they could be taking off every other year from work with no loss of pay. (See, Globalization: Theirs or Ours?)