Richard Wolff: Can Capitalism Be Reformed?
Professor Richard Wolff is the greatest American Marxist economist of all time. He’s 80 or so now, but unlike our President, still has all his wits. I think you’ll also agree he does not look his age. When I say I’m a Wolffian socialist, I mean I support the kind of American socialism calling for democracy in the workplace that is advocated by Richard Wolff. It’s socialism, but a truly democratic socialism very similar to what Marx originally envisioned. Again, in my opinion.
In this video, Richard Wolff explains why reforming capitalism never works permanently, and why I think it must be destroyed and replaced by something better, something where the majority of us actually have the power to decide how we work and how we live.
I haven't watched this video yet but I wish to comment a bit anyway.
I feel that capitalism as an economic model comes with an inherent cancer stemming from its acceptance of greed as a primary incentive.
Using a mega scale to illustrate my point:
There are only so many resources, (capital) to be had on our planet.
Capitalism encourages folks to find methods to gain more of these resources than their neighbors.
This inequality leads to those who would normally need those resources to come up short while those who dip excessively into extra of these resources to have more than needed.
If you consider this notion well beyond all likelihood, one person could in theory hoarde and control ALL of the resources on our planet while everyone else starves.
That is the cancer I see inherent in capitalism. I see no method for the bulk of the citizenry living under capitalism to avoid where they become controlled by those few with the most resources.
To sum up using my version of something Star Trek's Mr. Spock once said; "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one."
Capitalism calls it "incentive" but IMO the notion of "incentive capitalism" has what Mr. Spock said absoltely backwards.
Thanks for reading
At one time I thought capitalism could be reformed,but I don’t anymore.The system will never accept permanent Scandinavian style social democracy,which seems to be the only firm of government that works.