This is a book of long interviews with Richard D. Wolff by David Barsamian.
The answers and discussions are long, but the book is short. Better yet, it is amazingly comprehensive and clear.
Wolff goes beyond Keynesianism--though he is perfectly familiar with it. He makes plain that FDR saved capitalism in the U.S. by (a) enacting legislation to rein in the unchecked destructiveness of capitalism, (b) enacting legislation to soften the hardships the Depression had wrought--Social Security and Unemployment Compensation, (c) forcing the 1% to pay for all this with tax hikes on wealth and corporations--he threatened the rich that if they didn't pay for this, the Unions, communists, and socialists (then very strong) would take it anyway and given them a much worse deal, and, most important, (d) direct government job-creation, since the "market" wasn't doing it.
He recommends the last two (c and d) again--only this time directing direct government hiring toward green energy, weatherizing homes and offices, daycare and eldercare. But he goes way beyond this.
Wolff says that it is in the nature of capitalists, since they are out to maximize profits at all costs, to fight tenaciously against any regulation or any softening of workers' plights. They have largely been successful in this, particularly in the last 30 years--lowering taxes markedly on the wealthy and on corporations, throwing out Glass-Steagall and other regulations, offshoring, union-busting, and so on--all of which have essentially brought us to the Great Recession we are in now.
To combat this, he says, we not only need direct government employment to re-start demand, but we need an entire change away from the capitalist structure of business. Corporations are controlled by 15-20 people who have complete say over what everyone is paid, what will be produced, how it will be produced, where it will be done. This gives them incentives to trash workers, the environment, regulations, and even their own companies just before bailing out with golden parachutes.
What is needed instead, says Wolff, is complete worker-control. Instead of a board that is detached from all production and consequences, every worker should be enlisted into the structure and control of companies. As he puts it, you go to work Mon.-Thurs. and do your job, then on Friday, you and every other worker meet in council and decide how the business shall be run.
This way, an elite group does not dominate, and those who actually work and actually have to live with consequences make the decisions.
In short: economic democracy.
Wolff is terrific on explaining the current (crazy) tax structure, the current (woefully inadequate) minimum wage and unemployment arrangements, the wastefulness of military spending, and much else.
He says that the so-called socialism of the U.S.S.R. and Mao's China were really just state capitalism, and did not allow worker control, and so replicated the same problems as capitalism.
He also says--what is transparently true--that political democracy without economic democracy will fail, because economic power will buy elections.
He is heartened by the Occupy Movement because it places the economy, and capitalism (a sacred cow), on the table for discussion, and because it is experimenting with actual democracy, as opposed to the sham democracy we have with bought elections.
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- Nob DylanReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2019
The Wolff is at Capitalism's door!
