The following is a Truthout interview with Richard D. Wolff about
Capitalism's Crisis Deepens.
Mark Karlin: Let's start with the a statement from the preface of your
book: "Questioning the capitalist system, let alone discussing system
change, simply
does not occur to mainstream academics and the journalists and
politicians they trained. Such discourses are repressed." How is an
open public discussion
of capitalism stifled?
Richard D. Wolff: What economic theory Americans learn comes mostly -
directly or indirectly - from college and university teachers: their
classes, the
textbooks they write, the journalists and politicians shaped by them,
etc. The substance of the mainstream economics delivered in these ways
is this: economics
is a basic science that explains how the economy works. By "the
economy" is meant modern capitalism as if (1) nothing else, no other
system, was of interest
today (other than for historians) and (2) no alternative ways of
theorizing, thinking about economies, exist or are worth considering.
Indeed, most mainstream
textbooks have the word "economics" in their title as if no
differentiating adjective (such as neoclassical or Marxist etc.) needs
to be added to let readers
know which among alternative theories was being used by the author.
The mode of repressing critical theories of capitalism and serious and
sustained discussions
of alternative systems in the US is chiefly by acting as though such
theories and alternatives are not there. Denial rather than critical
confrontation
and debate is the norm.
Most non-economists only have a rather vague notion of capitalism. In
the US, for the sake of argument, let's state that most Americans
associate capitalism
with freedom. Does capitalism actually have anything to do with
ensuring a free society?
Richard D. Wolff. (Photo: Don Usner)
Richard D. Wolff. (Photo: Don Usner)Capitalism usually overthrew its
predecessor system (often feudalism, sometimes slavery or still
others) violently
and accompanied by slogans of "freedom" as in the French revolution's
"liberte, egalite, fraternite" or Lincoln's "Emancipation
Proclamation." Capitalism
represented itself as freeing serfs, slaves, etc. Freedom became
capitalism's self-celebration which it largely remains. Yet the
reality of capitalism
is different from its celebratory self-image. The mass of employees
are not free inside capitalist enterprises to participate in the
decisions that affect
their lives (e.g., what the enterprise will produce, what technology
it will use, where production will occur, and what will be done with
the profit workers'
efforts help to produce). In their exclusion from such decisions,
modern capitalism's employees resemble slaves and serfs. Yes,
parliaments, universal
suffrage, etc. have accompanied capitalism - an advance over serfdom
and slavery. Yet even that advance has been largely undermined by the
influence of
the highly unequally distributed wealth and income that capitalism has
everywhere generated.
Even the Scandinavian countries that Bernie Sanders touts as socialist
are actually blended economies. What is your reaction to using, let's
say Sweden,
as a model economy that is capitalistic with elements of socialism,
such as a larger percentage of the Gross Domestic Product going toward
the common good
and greater union involvement in corporations? Clearly, the
Scandinavian nations lean more toward capitalism than a Marxist model
of socialism.
Socialism, as a broad tradition of anti-capitalism early split between
(1) those socialists who wanted a private capitalism (privately owned
and operated
enterprises plus markets) coupled with a large role for governmental
economic intervention (regulation, taxation, social welfare spending,
etc.) and (2)
those socialists who wanted a much more thorough-going rejection of
private capitalism such as those who often took the name communist
(state-owned enterprises
plus state planning) or those who equated socialism with the
democratization of enterprise organization (conversion of enterprises
into worker cooperatives).
Scandinavian socialism is entirely of the first kind. It is a
capitalism with a human or humane face via government economic
intervention. Scandinavian
countries have so far avoided both the classic communist version of
socialism and the socialist reorganization of productive enterprises
into worker cooperatives.
In summary form, what do you say to every candidate who ran for
president as a Democrat or Republican -- with the exception of Bernie
Sanders (who was
not running as an orthodox socialist, but still promoted dramatic
change in our economic structure) -- who argue that incremental change
in capitalism
and Wall Street is all that is necessary to lead the US into greater
prosperity and more jobs?
For at least the last 30 years, the mass of Americans has seen
stagnant real wages even as labor productivity rose steadily, losses
of job benefits and
security, reduced public services, and a political system increasingly
corrupted and compromised by inequalities of wealth and income.
Incremental changes
in capitalism and Wall Street accompanied every step of these declines
for most Americans. Promises that those incremental changes would work
to the benefit
of most Americans have proven to be false. To believe them now is to
have learned nothing from the last 35 years of the nation's history.
In this presidential election, there has been very little talk about
poverty. How is poverty an inevitable by-product of capitalism?
Doesn't this make
all these charitable drives "to eliminate poverty" disingenuous
because it cannot be eliminated in a capitalistic system?
Poverty has always accompanied capitalism (as Thomas Piketty's work
documents yet again). As an economic system, it has proven to be as
successful in producing
wealth at one pole as it is in producing poverty at the other.
Periodic "rediscoveries of" and campaigns against poverty have not
changed that. Capitalism's
defenders, having long promoted the system as the means to overcome
both absolute and relative poverty (i.e. to be an equalizing system),
now change their
tune. They either abandon equality as a social good or goal or else
try to avoid discussing poverty altogether.
Why do you see another economic implosion, as we saw in 2008, as
inevitable under the current capitalistic economic order in the US?
While "inevitable" is not a word or concept I use, my sense of what
has happened in and to the US economy sees reason to believe another
2008-like implosion
is quite likely. The reason is this: no real changes have been made in
US or global capitalism. Corporate capitalism proved strong enough and
its critics
weak enough to enable the imposition of austerities as the chief
policy response everywhere. So the speeding train of capitalism is
"back on track," resuming
its rush toward stone walls of excess debt, stagnant mass incomes,
capital relocating overseas, etc. The too-big-to-fail and the
too-unequal-to-be-sustained
have only become bigger and more unequal. The ominous sense of
impending implosion reverberates throughout the national politics and
culture.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without
permission.
MARK KARLIN
Mark Karlin is the editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout. He served as
editor and publisher of BuzzFlash for 10 years before joining Truthout
in 2010. BuzzFlash
has won four Project Censored Awards. Karlin writes a commentary five
days a week for BuzzFlash, as well as articles (ranging from the
failed "war on drugs"
to reviews relating to political art) for Truthout. He also interviews
authors and filmmakers whose works are featured in Truthout's
Progressive Picks
of the Week. Before linking with Truthout, Karlin conducted interviews
with cultural figures, political progressives and innovative advocates
on a weekly
basis for 10 years. He authored many columns about the lies propagated
to launch the Iraq War.