@Nota Bene the work of socialists and labor unions, and the pressure they exerted on the capitalists with strikes, is how we got the at least moderately humane system of capitalism we have now (as at least compared the Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' depiction of capitalism, the capitalism we had in the 19th and early 20th century). Our problem today is that the labor movement has been completely eviscerated compared to what it was in the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, and even 60's. My point is that socialism was once strong in America, strong enough to seriously freak out our leaders and force concessions.
@@gfarrell80 I was exposed to a sympathetic view of communism/socialism at a young age, but I never really felt like I wanted to call myself a socialist until much later in life. I have come to think of our current consumerist capitalist society as a very sick system to live under. Often Americans think of our society as good because we aren't a third world country and because even poor people can usually afford a cellphone. But all of the wealth in the United states still hasn't provided healthcare or proper education for the masses and it all comes at the cost of exploiting even poorer people in poorer countries. People in America don't seem to understand how rich the 1% really is and it's sad. I don't think there's much (iif anything) worth saving about our current version of capitalism
Barry Allard As a teacher, naming a school like that could be an implicit capitalist tactic to attract richer, more educated families who know the genius of Steinbeck. They’ll move there, and unequal property taxes fund some schools more than others.
Capitalists speak of the "free market", yet never mention the captive labor market. Without resources, there is no alternative to exploitation. The capitalists know this. Their wage is inversely proportionate to desperation. The maintenance of a captive, desperate populace is necessary to the function of capitalism.
@@georgegates526 If I may quote of my favorite bands Protest the Hero (I think in the song Reverie): _Freedom is incarceration by a different name_ _I'm free to walk the streets but I'm financially detained_
And the capitalist ideological answer to this is that workers dont contribute to society like owners of businesses do, so thats why its fair.. well when capitalists inherit a lot of society's wealth, they can own the system and deny proper education/information to workers and feed most people propaganda while restricting their material/financial capacity, and then blame the workers for being responsible for the limits they the capitalists have imposed on them systemically since birth.
Greenspan, often conflated as gloating, but he states he wasn't, he's so monotone it's hard to tell if he was ever gloating or not, that worker job insecurity was reasons to low inflation even in the late 90's; at least why it job wages even in the late 90's early 2000's were largely flat across the board of sectors of industries. When I looked up what he said, it was actually a warning. But since he was in charge, they conflated he was gloating. I didn't see any gloat, rather it sounded more like mild concern about the future outlook of consumer demand: these fuckers are going to be too broke, more indebted, and willing to take lesser pay and thus unable to sustain consumer demand making the overall economy decline, not grow.
Excellent episode! I will be sharing this with friends and relatives that THINK they are pro-capitalism because they hold the "standard definition". I really like, too, how this episode stayed focused on just the ONE, crucial topic of the definition of capitalism. This video has been needed for a long time and I'm happy that it now exists.
Common definition: "free enterprise system," with "free markets." Bad definition, because all other systems have this and thus this definition does not distinguish capitalism from other things. Better definition: employer-employee relationship. A few people controlling a large group of people. A minority controlling a majority. Non-democratic.
@@davidross5525 the difference is that the owners of the economy control corporations instead of feudal lands. Corporations are a social abstraction that incorporates merchants and bankers into the fief system and allows for a theoretically infinite amount of subdivision of assets to the nobility. It is impossible to give land titles to loyal subjects and infinitum. Look at the British system: later nobels have fictitious land titles. Corporations and shareholding solves that.
Those are wrong definitions: as free market and enterprise can exist under any system even in the communism In the case of capitalism, I think we could say that this is a "free market for capital" where capital can be owned, freely sold, and produced. As in the feudal system, capital cannot be transferred from one person to another, and in the socialist or communist system capital cannot be owned by the individual. Slavery can easily coexist with any other system capitalism coexisted with capitalism and feudalism all the time and it exists even today.
David Ross But right above that he put employer-employee. That acknowledges itself the difference between feudalism and slavery by way of the relationship to production.
this is very insigtful. how can i follow you, blog/twitter/youtube? i need more of this type of reality perception. the free market is propaganda. corporations aren't democracy, they're tyranny.
Thy, prof Wolff, for the work you're doing. At the end, the most important is to educate and inform the ppl. You added to my personal growth. I was raised in, and believed strong in socialism. Saw the flaws in our society when i reached a few steps up the ladder. Tried to move things, but learned you either give up your moral beliefs, or get kicked down. I'm back down, but in a way richer thans before. Stay safe. You're doing a great work. Love from Belgium
Once again professor, I concur. I've recently begun my 60 first year on Earth. I have had these ideas in my head of which you speak, since I was 12. To anyone else who does not understand how simply you state the truth, to them I say: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
@@joyfullydreaded1371 Oh I know and agree. He deserves a bump from something like an appearance on Joe Rogan (as much as I hate that show). But he needs to break into that next level, the internet 'mainstream'. How do we get him there. These ideas ARE the future, and need to be heard, for sure. Oh and yes, Fuck Amazon.
Capitalism claims to champion "free markets" where the buyer and seller each have the ability to say "no" to a deal and walk away. The absurd hypocrisy of capitalism is that the "labor market" is anything but free. Who has the ability to say no? There are multiples of job seekers for any given job. If a person says no, the next person will say yes. If the government abolished the minimum wage, it would immediately go to 1¢ or even below $0 if you consider the possibility of people working to pay off debt forgoing wages in order to dedicate 100% of their wages to debt payments. People (labor) are not free to say no. There are no free markets in capitalism. All markets are derivatives of the labor market.
Indeed! I think Lassalle first conceptualized this in "the iron law of wages" to which Marx expands with some more detail/nuance. I'll add for anyone interested the reason for the last statement which is because of the labor theory of value which was agreed upon by all classical economists and is dismissed by neoclassical econ, noticeably without conceiving of a _different_ theory of value to undergird the class system (they do have a use-value thing but it makes no sense, especially as it pertains to the labor market as the base catalyst of production). Oopsies. "Luckily" few seemed to notice, or rather the few that did notice weren't given any attention because...of course they weren't.
BoulderPM Nobody owes anyone anything. What capitalism does is it removes the option of self determination from a population, forcing them to work for dollars instead of for their own needs. This is why Wages in America in the 19th century were higher than Europe’s - we had a frontier that functioned as an alternative to wage slavery. Capitalism is just animal husbandry when you get down to it. Our ancestors would not have survived in a capitalist world. Capitalism justifies its existence with bogus theories of competition as our biological default setting. This is just 19th century English nonsense. Our ancestors cooperated in order to hunt and fish. They cooperated in order to farm. Competition was a taboo. For modern man, competition is a fetish that enables him to satisfy sick urges.
@BoulderPM Your ideas about the world are based in fantasy. There is no victim narrative coming from me. You are not very discrete in your thinking. The victim narrative comes from liberals in the Democratic Party who believe taxation should remedy all social problems. This is the evil "Keynesianism" that conservatives believe is equal to Marxism. You are one of these conservatives. You have a boilerplate - cookie cutter answer to all problems...just like the liberals. The agricultural remedy I used was specific to the 19th century. We don't live in the 19th century. Sorry to burst your bubble. Your fantasies about early humans living alone, outside the group, comes from Austrian baby thinking. It's pure rubbish. My friend, you are deep into what can only be described as psychosis. You are not alone. In the modern era, it is the English who are responsible for this more than any other country. Read Ha Joon Chang's "Kicking Away the Ladder" to understand what I mean. Good luck. Your time in the spotlight was the late 70's. It's 2020, far past your prime. History is moving away from Laissez faire economics, even though on the surface it doesn't look that way. The big question is will the next wave be socialist or fascist - NOT socially liberal vs. laissez faire. Good luck and stop reading so much Zero Hedge.
@BoulderPM why do you think we evolved tribally. Cooperation. Without that we wouldn't have survived. The chief of the tribe didn't just flaunt power. The tribe put him in that position on merit.
Inequality is inherent in capitalism. Employer/employee relationship is also inherently unequal. Also, why should coins and dollars, and the accumulation of them (profit motive), matter so much to us? Why should this be our top priority in life?
The point of life is power and control. That is the ultimate goal of every lifeform in the universe, where your task is to take under control absolutely everything typically by displacing all existence with yourself so that you become a single entity in the universe.
One way to fix the inequality problem is to put a use by date on all fiat currencies. If money not passed on (i.e. circulated within the system) with a set period of coming into your hands it evaporates and is not longer valid. That way money is only ever useful for purchasing goods and services and there is no point, indeed no way it can be accrued.
They'll tell you it's because your "ideas" aren't good enough for the market. In reality, competition has very little to do with the idea. The only time an idea has an obvious effect is when it's just a completely stupid idea that no one even asked for, or when it's some seriously groundbreaking technology (which is usually originally invented by the government, the military, or tax-funded public universities, but then sold to a private company; not originally produced for a profit on the market). Organic market innovation is stuff like squeezable ketchup bottles, vacuum cleaners, and automated cash registers. Are they useful? Sure, they are convenient, I suppose. Are they on the level of government innovation, including things like the internet, satellite technology, or nuclear energy? No. Not even close. It's ridiculous that the myth is even still around that the government is somehow bad at innovation, when it is the source of most modern technology. There is a reason that the USSR was winning everything on the Space Race checklist, except for when NASA (the US government) finally managed to put a man on the moon. That wasn't the market. Why would the market do that? There is no profit to be made. It's just spending. I'm not against markets in general (I appreciate the diversity that is available through markets), but it is still true market competition is about resources first and foremost. It is not about innovation. The more money you have, the more money you make. The less money you have, the faster you go bankrupt. It's really that simple. Investment amount is linear, but return on investment is percentage based, and thus, total profit from investment is exponential. If you buy 1 stock at $1, then when the price goes up 100%, you will only have $2. You made $1. But if you buy 1,000 stocks at $1 each, then when the price goes up 100%, you now have $2,000. You've made $1,000 out of nowhere. That is a lot more than making only $1, and the only reason that you were able to make $1,000 is because you already had $1,000 to invest. So, it gets infinitely easier to make money the more money that you have, whereas for those who do not have much to invest, they will not make very much. It works the same way on the regular market, except that it's constant, and you can go bankrupt due to being outcompeted. Yes, there is some risk involved. Like, if you put $1,000 in a single stock, then you might lose $500 if the stock goes down 50%. But people who have more money are able to diversify their investments (the wealthier you are, the more diverse you can be), and in that case, the odds are extremely low that you will ever lose money as the overall economy grows (as a result of the constant labor and minor innovation being done). It is a bad idea to put all of your eggs in one basket, which I think is the same reason why it's not a good idea to give the state a monopoly on everything. It is like putting all of the nation's eggs in ones basket. There is no guarantee of an overall profit. If the government loses money, then... so does everyone else.
@@Soleilune1995 - I like what you have written about "return on investment". What most people these days seem to be simply unaware of is this: At the end of 2019, households and non-profit organizations held nearly $100 trillion in interest bearing financial assets. By comparison, the entire national 2019 GDP for the USA was under $22 trillion. Now consider that investments making under 5% annually are not worth having, once inflation and taxes are factored in. Also factor in that over the past 30 years, annual GDP growth has been less than 3% annually (2.56% for 30 years average). Five percent growth on $100 trillion is $5 trillion, so here is the question everyone should be asking: The entire economy of the United States grew less than one trillion dollars in 2019, so where does all the profit come from, to pay $5 trillion in capital gains for those "investors" holding almost $100 trillion in "financial assets"?
Neo Sannyasin And yes. Lincoln was not a capitalist by today’s standards. He believed in what he called “a fair relationship between laborer and capital” which was just a polite way of saying “I’m a communist”
When I define capitalism for my use, I think of the word “capital,” which leads me to think of “capitalism” as meaning “the practice of using capital.” In this view capitalism is the activities and relationships between investors and producers. With this idiosyncratic view in mind, the foundational institutions of capitalism are the corporation and the stock market. Therefore, the definition of “corporation” by Ambrose Bierce applies to the whole of capitalism, “An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”
No. it doesn't...it applies to corporations because that is exactly what they are although in terms of responsibility, it confers "limited liability", nothing more. Corporations are creations of government and whatever responsibilities they could or should be held accountable for, rest with the entity that allows them to exist. To complicate matters further, most governments are corporations also and none of this has anything to do with the "private ownership of the means of production" a.k.a. "capitalism".
This is by far the most important ideological debate for anticapitalists at this time. This fight is critical to the future because this issue has crept into history and other arenas and is being used among the younger generations of the conservative right to allow a defense of capitalism and a definition so meaningless they are now attempting to make a serious point of national socialism being left wing socialism youtube. This must be taken seriously and combatted at every opportunity or we will pay for our complacency and underestimating the damage possible by a perversion of language and reason.
Capitalism: survival within a market system determined by those with capital; further qualified by the hierarchy and stratification produced between the lender/employer with investment capital, and the disinvested debtor/labor relationship; further qualified by the origins of capital through the human tribalism of authoritarian theocratic paleo-conservative primitive accumulation, and that maintain hegemony through a fascist synthesis with capital, and the vertical hierarchical totalitarianism of corporations.
This was a great conversation about the different economic systems and I hope more people get informed so they can assess the negatives and positives of each system. What is now pressing in our country is horrible unemployment and how now employees will be shafted even more because of surplus of labor. My fear is unemployed people will take any job no matter what it pays. This will cause grotesque underemployment problems for many of these people.
There were employer-employee relationship in feudalism as well. Mercenaries and journeymen were paid wages. Artists were paid stipends, which is like wages. Probably domestics were paid a little something as well on top of boarding. What made the new liberal order was mainly about the land, which was owned by the king, and its way to distribute it, while keeping the ownership. Liberalism got rid of the kings politically, and allowed the purchase of land for the common people. Getting rid of the Church also meant allowing usury and intellectual property/simony. So it was good for peasants, bankers and artists. It stayed the same for artisans, liberal professions and wage labor, but they got more political power and access to financing, capital, which allowed them to grow. It created an elite of rich people that concentrated wealth through the market and capital reinvestment. It wasn't exactly planned this way, but it was a natural evolution. While it is true a lot of the critique of liberalism centered against wage labor in the 19th century, this was socialism, not communism. Socialists wanted either to redistribute the wealth, to counter the above unplanned concentration, or the workers taking over the workplace, like you advocate, which is anarcho-syndicalism. The other one was state capitalism, or socialism proper, in which the government owns everything, but since there is in theory democracy, people own the government. Marx was against all of that when he realized "capital" was the thing that needed abolishing. All those things don't abolish capital, it just makes it change hands, but the fundamental problem of concentration and poverty stays the same. He saw it as attempts to save the capitalist system but bound to fail. In his communism, only the means of production are owned collectively, which means by nobody. If you need an IPod, you go to Apple factory and do it yourself. If you need shoes, it is the same. So there is no State, no market, no class of people. But socialists always pretend for some reason their "system" is communism, or comes from Marx. The common definitions of capitalism are simply the opposite of State capitalism, where the state owns everything, and has a planned economy and tells people what they need. And since they all gave lip service to Marx superficially, both were meshed together. Defining it as employer-employee is good if what you want is anarcho-syndicalism, but it is not communism, since the group will own private property, and other people won't have access to it. So it does not solve the overall inequality of those that don't have access to the means of production or have access to less good ones. Nothing to stop a coop to in turn outsource and hire wage labor by contract or other ways, just like that Moondragon coop does. They dynamic will replay itself at some point because the first people will consider the place to be theirs, and it is unlikely they will want to share equally with a newcomer. There is still capital in other words which is owned privately. So it is still capitalism.
excellent lecture prof wolff, I've studied basic economics and political science and these definitions were never articulated like you have to get to the nugget of how these systems really differ. We never discuss these kind of definitions vis a vis their impact on society. My conclusion is that academia is complicit or afraid to discuss them like you have.
If a person is told they will starve and or suffer unless they sell their labor to someone else, that is slavery. If it were feasible to work outside the employment system without the government or social pressures dictating you must then I could consider not calling this system slavery, but we are coerced by threats to our livelihoods if we do not whore ourselves to a capitalist or even socialist employment arrangement. Until we are able to operate of our own volition economically without threats to our livelihoods then we are slaves to the system in power, whichever system that may be.
nhkg. Nobody in this country is forced to sell his labor to anybody. Everybody is free to offer his labor to anybody who is hiring, or to go into business for himself.
Regarding your first sentence nhkj. gfxe. Maybe. A big maybe. If automation eliminates all labor. If this country recovers from it's greedy insanity. People could be freed with non-thinking robots that just do one chore well and not revolt against humans, to have a decent life.. Ah, but at last I fear that greed will rear it's ugly head again, and use automation for evil profit. :(
You're trampling all over Dr. Wolffe's point in the video, which focuses on clear definitions that distinguish between systems. You're saying that capitalism is a slavery system. It's not. A slave/master relationship is different from an employer/employee relationship. I realize that it feels good to use hyperbole that equates the two systems, but you're throwing clear analysis out the window.
@@lawsonj39 An employee is just as much a slave to capitalism as a serf was a slave to feudalism and so on. What the arrangement is rationalized as is irrelevant to the core structure of the arrangement. Prof. Wolff is asserting a rationalization of contrasts between rationalizations not objective reality. No matter what you call it, if a person is forced against their will to conduct labor that person is a slave no matter the means by which they were coerced or the rationalizations for or against the arrangement.
It's wonderful to hear so eloquently spoken what my senses and suspicions told me in elementary school. With propaganda so prevalent and socialism such taboo for decades of my life, trying to feel a sense of belonging and patriotism to this country have been damn near impossible. Thanks, Richard.
I must confess once I heard you talking about monopolies, I thought it would be lovely to see you and Anwar Shaik discussing about monopoly capitalism...
Let's be honest, there are only so many things that we "need" to live and survive. A person being tied to a plastic single use widget making machine isn't a good thing for anyone involved except the owners of the place.
@@hazadus3 under the current system, for you to make it as a startup, you first need a truck load of capital. someone who's laboring in a single-use plastics factory is likely to get paid the bare minimum to cover their very basic living costs (rent & food), which is to say that they have no capital at all and also no ability to save any meaningful amount of money. they have absolutely no realistic chance to achieve financial independence. that is what the employer-employee relationship, the hallmark of capitalism as explained in the video, is. and it makes sense, as of course, if you have class system like that, not everybody can be in the ruling class, so you necessarily must make it very difficult for workers to transition into the capitalist class. this is achieved by simply making it so that capital is required to make capital. if you don't have capital already, then tough luck for you. if you do, then it just keeps growing. this way, it is ensured that the same people stay in power. so you see, capitalism is really no different from feudalism, except that under capitalism, there is more of an illusion of agency and democracy to keep the people at bay.
@@hazadus3 there's inheritance, or being for some reason in the favor of someone with capital. the richest families have been so for ages, with little change (I will have look up that bit myself again). I mean it is indeed possible to make it when starting from something like the middle class, but you need insane luck, then. granted, the internet is an extremely disruptive technology in all of this. it offers an amazing spectrum of possibilities even to lower class workers. but nonetheless, having the luck to have the right idea and matching know-how at the perfect moment in time (think Elon Musk with PayPal, Larry Page with Google, Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, ...) is still an extremely unlikely occurrence under the current economic system. and on top of that, the current education system is designed to produce employees, so most people never question their situation, or just can't afford to forsake the security of their employmentship because they have responsibilities like children.
16:32 "And no one ever thought to question the feudal system that it isn't feudal anymore because there is state enterprise." Under the feudal system, there was no distinct concept of a feudal system.
Thank you so much, I am a "Big Picture" person and appreciate your descriptions. Now, I would like you to drill down on capitalism: Topics like industrial vs financial capitalism and what has happened to Wall Street and the stock exchange where HFT computers account for 50% of the trading, turning everything into a Casino, and where the big houses are too big to jail and the government socializes only their losses, for fear these houses must not fail.
Thank you Wolff. Im a social science teacher, who actually uses your (Marx') definition myself. Anyone working with the common definition is going to fall short, and most people studying this have come to the same conclusion. At least now, i can tell my students to watch this video, for an explanation as to why i dont like the common one.
I think I have seen this video about 3-4 times now and honestly I don’t think I would ever understood his criticism. I have had the standard definition as the understanding of capitalism and I see now what he saying.
it is such a shame we have to go trough definitions of things for the ignorant 35% of the voting population. ....great information as always! Thank you!
I'd reckon a number much larger than 35% of the population is oblivious to how capitalism actually affects their lives. I'd guess more than 80% of the US population believes that they live under a properly implemented democracy.
Prof Wolf makes a interesting point about how the people who defend capitalism are the ones who are making the definition of what capitalism is in the first place
a truly amazing summary. people who defend capitalism associate communism (or anything that is not capitalism for that matter) with absolute control by the state. when the proper definition of communism and/or socialism merely refers to the means of production. it doesn't have to imply anything about state control. capitalism on the other hand is much closer to that vision of control by state. whether you have handful of politicians on top or a handful of capitalists - it's really the same thing.
I think there is an important difference. Slave owners have to give the slaves enough of the profit to allow them to survive until the next day. Capitalist employers do not have to give their employees enough money to survive until the next day as they can always get another employee. Because of this you see wages so low that an employee literally cannot survive if that is their only income.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Well no, it is not figurative, because when you sign a contract you lose freedom. in essence, if you have absolute freedom in what kind of contract are allowed to sign you can effectively turn yourself (or your children) into a slave.
@@deltaxcd None of us has absolute freedom. We give up certain freedoms to live in a society. And you are being figurative because even in debt you can marry who you want, live where you want, quite one job and take another and a myriad of other things. A literal slave cannot do any ot those things. A debt does not take away your freedoms literally.
Ray More what good or service has he produced and sold in a market!? Propaganda? He sells lies to feed his own ego by exploiting the very same poor ppl he claims to be educating.
Capitalism in a nutshell, you have a lot of competition in the beginning, and in the end you end up with monopolies. The system becomes less competitive with a few large corporations or businesses, and the wage of workers goes down in the end.
Lincoln promised in his inaugural address that there would be war if he did not get his triple-tariff and slavery was used as distraction for the Corporate Coupe. Lincoln was a Railroad Lawyer and member of Whigs, the moneyed elites. He was hand-chosen by Railroad Barons and Bankers as the inside-man for their Corporate-Coupe. The 14th Amendment, supposedly enacted to protect slaves, was actually used to grant Corporations "unconstitutional personhood” to enslave entire working-class. Corporations are now able to control resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, judges and the law. Their Corporate-Coupe was a success and US is now a Fascist State controlled by the Corporations.
@DemocracyAtWork - whoever is doing the audio should consider either raising Prof. Wolf’s audio during recording or raising the master volume. I can barely hear what’s being said most of the time...
I find your approach very thought provoking. I would love to see you get deeper into this, because there’s so much more I think you could talk about in context of capitalism as we I used to. What about the self-employed, like artists, lawyers and doctors? That’s not included in your employment dynamic based definition. Same with investors. Also, how about new employees and people who contribute little, experienced and high productivity, or rare people with inclinations/approaches that are harder to replace like people who create effective systems? Shouldn’t their be a hierarchy? How about meticulous decision making, anything from new products to firing someone? How do you manage to put that to a vote? How are people even brought onto the team? Why should people who can show they’re more consistent with their judgements and producing positive outcomes have equal payment and authority as people who haven’t proved that yet? Who decides when they do prove themselves? Toxic environments where, for example a majority votes to get drunk on the job? How about organizing finances? How about visionaries? What about sales and people who work for tips? What about when we change our mind about what we do for work or where we want to work? What about competition being driving forces behind new ideas and approaches? How much innovation can remain without these dynamics? Technically could something like a “micro-communism” exist within macro-capitalism, if the founders of a company decided to pay everyone equally? If it showed to be effective for production and growth, wouldn’t other businesses decide to do that? None of these seem considered in your videos that I’ve seen and I’d love to hear your inputs on them.
Please implement a permanent UBI now! Then we can transition to a RBE. Also support the Money Free Party and The Venus Project so we can finally go beyond politics poverty and war. That is if we wish to make it as a species.
When ever capitalists/economist talk about the system we work under they say we are under the " Keynesian " system. That system got put into place during the " Great Depression " to get things working again. It was thrown out by the Thatcher/Reagan system, end of the 70's/early 80's, this is the system that has lead to all the crashes since. The people who benefit from this system are busy trying to hide this fact, much the same as they claim Nazism is a form of communism. ( only if the water is also very dry ). The same type of argument is used by the religious that Hitler was an atheist, HE WAS BACKED BY THE POPE. A simplified description of the difference between socialism and fascism. In one the people control the businesses in turn control the government. The other, the businesses control the government, in turn control the people. ( Very simplified ). If there is an Elite class controlling things, it is not socialism. China has an Elite, North Korea has an Elite, This is feudalism.
Slavery in the Americas in particular was a capitalist enterprise. While the internal economy of a plantation might not be capitalist, the interaction of that internal economy with everything else was.
Exactly why I. Quit my unstable job.i worked at a great hospital or 28 years, then our politicians cut healthcare and Medicaid to bare bones my hours were cut drastically and many staff were laid off and fired.My 1,5 years were a living hell. The worst part was I no say!. I. Felt like a commodity and serf. I despise them I quit my unstable job, sold my apartment in Honolulu and retired early. The best decision I have ever made.
That is what happens when you get monopolies which are always created in capitalism. You have a few large businesses that become monopolies, they pay people whatever they want, because most people don't have to choice but to work for them. It is what it is.
At marker 29:40 Prof. Wolff mentions "slavery" and says it is a different system than "capitalism". I thought that even though slavery is a different method of organizing labor, it is outright labor theft in the worst degree, it is something separate from the economic system that it exists within. For instance, slavery can exists within the capitalist and fascist systems, but could not exist in a true socialist system. Have I misunderstood something?
The civil war was not fought to end slavery. Ending slavery was a biproduct of the war. Lincoln himself said he would have kept slavery if it meant that he could keep the union together
My passion for history at 11 years old also studied money products things how people decide trading value was bartered before coinage was created ! I learned about sociology before knew of the subject along with anthropology my passion also! Critical thinking teach history great women teachers ! At 19 in 1970 became socialist better system!
At the end of 2019, households and non-profit organizations held nearly $100 trillion in interest bearing financial assets. By comparison, the entire national 2019 GDP for the USA was under $22 trillion. Now consider that investments making under 5% annually are not worth having, once inflation and taxes are factored in. Also factor in that over the past 30 years, annual GDP growth has been less than 3% annually (2.56% for 30 years average). Five percent growth on $100 trillion is $5 trillion, so here is the question everyone should be asking: The entire economy of the United States grew less than one trillion dollars in 2019, so where does all the profit come from, to pay $5 trillion in capital gains for those "investors" holding almost $100 trillion in "financial assets"?
Dr Wolff has seriously misunderstood feudalism. The relationship of homage does not bind serfs to vassals. The relationship of homage is honorific. It bound vassals to higher-ranking overlords through whom they titularly held the right of usufruct to their lands. Serfs were simply "tied" to the land vassals held as a grant of usufruct from their feudal superiors. If granted the land, a vassal had therewith automatic rights to claim some share of the labor of the serfs who lived on it. Wolff is quite wrong to say that serfs underwent a ceremony of homage.
eBay is a great example of a free market. There's nothing wrong with eBay, Wolff. The rampant inflation in major sectors of the economy the government is subsidizing: education, health care, military for three, is a calamity and a great tragedy of our time. And people like this only want more of it. Absurd.
At 6:38 lets understand one thing here: No mention of FINANCIAL RISK has been disclosed at this point nor the freedom of people to NOT work for any employer (remember that at around 19:10). If Joe invests some or all of his money on some investment and it DOES NOT go well, he loses his investment and more in some cases. If it goes well, good for "him". If it goes really well, he's a heartless, selfish pig. I am a proponanat of share the wealth with those that helped you get there, once you reach a magic number by the way. The real problem is figuring out what that number is.
When Franklin D Roosevelt, in response to the depression of the 1930s, created work programs and the social security system, he effectively "bailed out" (i.e., supported by spending government money) regular folks, which in turn rescued the goods and services economy. Roosevelt said later that by doing this he had saved capitalism. When Obama was faced with the economic crisis of 2008, he bailed out the banks by giving bucket loads of money to the rich (banks and big corporations), let 10 million homeowners get foreclosed upon, and let the goods and services economy languish. By contrast with Roosevelt, then, Obama "almost killed capitalism." He bailed out the already-rich finance sector, did not punish any of the corrupt bankers who had caused the Great Recession, and did essentially nothing in that situation for ordinary folks. As a result, the current economic crisis (associated with Covid-19) is more dangerous than ever before because of the record-high levels of debt that in part stemmed from Obama's actions.
@Chris C, your stepdad is totally misinformed. Obama was Wall Street's inside man. He used the Fed's QE and the bailouts to keep asset prices/valuations high, which then has a domino effect on credit creation, because the assets are collateral against which firms can borrow. Obama was capitalism's Santa Claus. Your stepdad is as uninformed as knee-jerk liberals who think the Democratic Party is a force for social justice. Both the pro-Obama corporate Dems and the anti-Obama conservatives are 2 sides of the same coin. You should watch Jimmy Dore, Caleb Maupin, and Non Compete (a guy named Emerica Johnson). These 3 UA-cam accounts round out the awesome work of Professor Wolff.
pnyc I haven’t heard of Caleb Maupin, I love the NonCompete channel, and Jimmy Dore has his moments but I disagree with his strategy-for example ceding the electoral fight to conservatives and liberals is a mistake IMO. Solidarity
@@christopheryou I understand Jimmy Dore to be saying that no real change will come from electoral politics - which is controlled by conservatives and liberals. He wants people to base their political actions on the absolute rule that electoral politics is rigged. That's my understanding, at least.
The accepted definition is X, but it's bad. Therefore I will use definition Y and attack it. Nice straw man you have there... Or am I mistaken? I'm not bought on the idea of pure capitalism, yet I feel like defending it here: isn't it the idea that in a capitalist free market you're free to make a company in whatever way you see fit? From employee - employer to a commune run company and everything in between you can imagine. Someone?
The actual Capitalists have their own definition of capitalism and the voice of capital speaks with mostly one voice, Capitalism requires absolutely zero tax if not a negative tax on the most rich people. But the Capitalists need a governing coalition with Conservatives, who must narrow that definition, such that Capitalism also must require that the govt never adhere to any policy which is less reactionary than another policy option. The definition invented by the Capitalists makes Socialism sound more appealing. Whereas a better working definition would be Capitalism requires that you have a majority of workers working in private enterprises.
We can not use the words of enlightenment era bourgeois humanist scholars like ''democratic value is a human nature'' to argue with proponents of capitalism, assuming that democracy is somehow encoded into our DNA. Capitalism always brings about an oligarchy not because the capitalist defied some "human nature", but because the production process is largely socialized in a capitalist society while the power of surplus distribution is still in private hands. The capitalists and their affiliates who accumulate huge amount of surplus will always have more influence in politics. It is the socialization of both production and distribution in socialist society that dictates the needs for the socialization of decision making, aka democracy.
The only thing I would dispute is the claim that slavery is separate from capitalism. Slavery formed and continues to form the basis of accumulation of capital.
NO! Serfs did not swear allegiance to lords in front of the Church, it was vassals who did that to their seniors. Serfs did not have enough honour to be worthy of such pledges. Also, whole villages with serfs were literally won and lost in card games.
Professor Wolff, today's world is all about marketing. We (and Bernie) need to drop the term socialism as it has a negative branding that will not go away. Leverage the same beliefs/policies and call yourself a "Democratic Economist". Bernie would have been the nominee right if he never gave himself the "scarlet letter". If he was pushed as to if he was a capitalist and he responded "Yes of course but I do think it needs to evolve in these certain ways as times have change so much since capitalism's birth" but then slid in some aspects of socialism I think he would gone all the way.
"Freedom yes,
but for WHOM?
To do WHAT?”
Lenin-
@Nota Bene the work of socialists and labor unions, and the pressure they exerted on the capitalists with strikes, is how we got the at least moderately humane system of capitalism we have now (as at least compared the Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' depiction of capitalism, the capitalism we had in the 19th and early 20th century).
Our problem today is that the labor movement has been completely eviscerated compared to what it was in the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, and even 60's.
My point is that socialism was once strong in America, strong enough to seriously freak out our leaders and force concessions.
@@gfarrell80 I was exposed to a sympathetic view of communism/socialism at a young age, but I never really felt like I wanted to call myself a socialist until much later in life. I have come to think of our current consumerist capitalist society as a very sick system to live under.
Often Americans think of our society as good because we aren't a third world country and because even poor people can usually afford a cellphone. But all of the wealth in the United states still hasn't provided healthcare or proper education for the masses and it all comes at the cost of exploiting even poorer people in poorer countries. People in America don't seem to understand how rich the 1% really is and it's sad.
I don't think there's much (iif anything) worth saving about our current version of capitalism
@@Islandswamp solidarity, brother. The current version of capitalism is simple Tyranny. Tyranny of large corporations, tyranny of billionaires.
freedom for the citizens of industry, freedom from Kings
Barry Allard As a teacher, naming a school like that could be an implicit capitalist tactic to attract richer, more educated families who know the genius of Steinbeck. They’ll move there, and unequal property taxes fund some schools more than others.
Capitalists speak of the "free market", yet never mention the captive labor market.
Without resources, there is no alternative to exploitation. The capitalists know this. Their wage is inversely proportionate to desperation.
The maintenance of a captive, desperate populace is necessary to the function of capitalism.
A no regulation free market.. Makes you free to stay at home. Wait for Monday to come back, and drag your tired self back to work for pennies.
@@georgegates526 If I may quote of my favorite bands Protest the Hero (I think in the song Reverie):
_Freedom is incarceration by a different name_
_I'm free to walk the streets but I'm financially detained_
@@Bisquick I'm sure a lot of people can see what you are saying. Lack of enough money leaves you "financially imprisoned" and is no fun.
And the capitalist ideological answer to this is that workers dont contribute to society like owners of businesses do, so thats why its fair.. well when capitalists inherit a lot of society's wealth, they can own the system and deny proper education/information to workers and feed most people propaganda while restricting their material/financial capacity, and then blame the workers for being responsible for the limits they the capitalists have imposed on them systemically since birth.
Greenspan, often conflated as gloating, but he states he wasn't, he's so monotone it's hard to tell if he was ever gloating or not, that worker job insecurity was reasons to low inflation even in the late 90's; at least why it job wages even in the late 90's early 2000's were largely flat across the board of sectors of industries.
When I looked up what he said, it was actually a warning. But since he was in charge, they conflated he was gloating. I didn't see any gloat, rather it sounded more like mild concern about the future outlook of consumer demand: these fuckers are going to be too broke, more indebted, and willing to take lesser pay and thus unable to sustain consumer demand making the overall economy decline, not grow.
Excellent episode! I will be sharing this with friends and relatives that THINK they are pro-capitalism because they hold the "standard definition".
I really like, too, how this episode stayed focused on just the ONE, crucial topic of the definition of capitalism. This video has been needed for a long time and I'm happy that it now exists.
Common definition: "free enterprise system," with "free markets." Bad definition, because all other systems have this and thus this definition does not distinguish capitalism from other things.
Better definition: employer-employee relationship. A few people controlling a large group of people. A minority controlling a majority. Non-democratic.
The minority controlling the majority isn't part of the definition seeing as it also doesn't differentiate capitalism from feudalism or slavery
@@davidross5525 the difference is that the owners of the economy control corporations instead of feudal lands. Corporations are a social abstraction that incorporates merchants and bankers into the fief system and allows for a theoretically infinite amount of subdivision of assets to the nobility. It is impossible to give land titles to loyal subjects and infinitum. Look at the British system: later nobels have fictitious land titles. Corporations and shareholding solves that.
Those are wrong definitions: as free market and enterprise can exist under any system even in the communism
In the case of capitalism, I think we could say that this is a "free market for capital" where capital can be owned, freely sold, and produced.
As in the feudal system, capital cannot be transferred from one person to another, and in the socialist or communist system capital cannot be owned by the individual.
Slavery can easily coexist with any other system capitalism coexisted with capitalism and feudalism all the time and it exists even today.
David Ross But right above that he put employer-employee. That acknowledges itself the difference between feudalism and slavery by way of the relationship to production.
this is very insigtful. how can i follow you, blog/twitter/youtube? i need more of this type of reality perception. the free market is propaganda. corporations aren't democracy, they're tyranny.
Thy, prof Wolff, for the work you're doing. At the end, the most important is to educate and inform the ppl. You added to my personal growth. I was raised in, and believed strong in socialism. Saw the flaws in our society when i reached a few steps up the ladder. Tried to move things, but learned you either give up your moral beliefs, or get kicked down. I'm back down, but in a way richer thans before.
Stay safe. You're doing a great work. Love from Belgium
Once again professor, I concur. I've recently begun my 60 first year on Earth. I have had these ideas in my head of which you speak, since I was 12. To anyone else who does not understand how simply you state the truth, to them I say: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
Another brilliant video, Prof Wolff. Your work is sorely underappreciated today, but I hope that changes, and soon. You speak the truth.
Prof Wolff has had a full and busy calendar since 2016. We have to help him get his lessons out for all to hear. Share his videos widely and often!
@@joyfullydreaded1371 Oh I know and agree. He deserves a bump from something like an appearance on Joe Rogan (as much as I hate that show). But he needs to break into that next level, the internet 'mainstream'. How do we get him there. These ideas ARE the future, and need to be heard, for sure. Oh and yes, Fuck Amazon.
Turn up the volume on your end I got it at full blast and barely hear you.
Same!
Yeah its a quiet video they need to normalise the audio track
😂
Capitalism claims to champion "free markets" where the buyer and seller each have the ability to say "no" to a deal and walk away. The absurd hypocrisy of capitalism is that the "labor market" is anything but free. Who has the ability to say no? There are multiples of job seekers for any given job. If a person says no, the next person will say yes. If the government abolished the minimum wage, it would immediately go to 1¢ or even below $0 if you consider the possibility of people working to pay off debt forgoing wages in order to dedicate 100% of their wages to debt payments. People (labor) are not free to say no. There are no free markets in capitalism. All markets are derivatives of the labor market.
Indeed! I think Lassalle first conceptualized this in "the iron law of wages" to which Marx expands with some more detail/nuance. I'll add for anyone interested the reason for the last statement which is because of the labor theory of value which was agreed upon by all classical economists and is dismissed by neoclassical econ, noticeably without conceiving of a _different_ theory of value to undergird the class system (they do have a use-value thing but it makes no sense, especially as it pertains to the labor market as the base catalyst of production). Oopsies. "Luckily" few seemed to notice, or rather the few that did notice weren't given any attention because...of course they weren't.
@BoulderPM that's exactly how they survived though
BoulderPM Nobody owes anyone anything. What capitalism does is it removes the option of self determination from a population, forcing them to work for dollars instead of for their own needs. This is why Wages in America in the 19th century were higher than Europe’s - we had a frontier that functioned as an alternative to wage slavery. Capitalism is just animal husbandry when you get down to it.
Our ancestors would not have survived in a capitalist world. Capitalism justifies its existence with bogus theories of competition as our biological default setting. This is just 19th century English nonsense. Our ancestors cooperated in order to hunt and fish. They cooperated in order to farm. Competition was a taboo. For modern man, competition is a fetish that enables him to satisfy sick urges.
@BoulderPM Your ideas about the world are based in fantasy. There is no victim narrative coming from me. You are not very discrete in your thinking. The victim narrative comes from liberals in the Democratic Party who believe taxation should remedy all social problems. This is the evil "Keynesianism" that conservatives believe is equal to Marxism. You are one of these conservatives. You have a boilerplate - cookie cutter answer to all problems...just like the liberals.
The agricultural remedy I used was specific to the 19th century. We don't live in the 19th century. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Your fantasies about early humans living alone, outside the group, comes from Austrian baby thinking. It's pure rubbish. My friend, you are deep into what can only be described as psychosis. You are not alone. In the modern era, it is the English who are responsible for this more than any other country. Read Ha Joon Chang's "Kicking Away the Ladder" to understand what I mean. Good luck. Your time in the spotlight was the late 70's. It's 2020, far past your prime. History is moving away from Laissez faire economics, even though on the surface it doesn't look that way. The big question is will the next wave be socialist or fascist - NOT socially liberal vs. laissez faire. Good luck and stop reading so much Zero Hedge.
@BoulderPM why do you think we evolved tribally. Cooperation. Without that we wouldn't have survived. The chief of the tribe didn't just flaunt power. The tribe put him in that position on merit.
Inequality is inherent in capitalism. Employer/employee relationship is also inherently unequal. Also, why should coins and dollars, and the accumulation of them (profit motive), matter so much to us? Why should this be our top priority in life?
In our system, money = power to a great extent.
The point of life is power and control.
That is the ultimate goal of every lifeform in the universe, where your task is to take under control absolutely everything typically by displacing all existence with yourself so that you become a single entity in the universe.
@@grmpEqweer
>In our system, money = power to a great extent.
Yes, that's right and this is the main reason why people even try to make money.
One way to fix the inequality problem is to put a use by date on all fiat currencies. If money not passed on (i.e. circulated within the system) with a set period of coming into your hands it evaporates and is not longer valid. That way money is only ever useful for purchasing goods and services and there is no point, indeed no way it can be accrued.
@@deltaxcd
I make money because I like food.😂 Also things like indoor plumbing. Indoor plumbing is freaking awesome!
Free to who? There's a huge barrier of entry for entrepreneurs, it is in no way free to compete in the market under captialism.
It is free to the children of the masters. The masters hate competition they can't control.
They'll tell you it's because your "ideas" aren't good enough for the market. In reality, competition has very little to do with the idea.
The only time an idea has an obvious effect is when it's just a completely stupid idea that no one even asked for, or when it's some seriously groundbreaking technology (which is usually originally invented by the government, the military, or tax-funded public universities, but then sold to a private company; not originally produced for a profit on the market).
Organic market innovation is stuff like squeezable ketchup bottles, vacuum cleaners, and automated cash registers. Are they useful? Sure, they are convenient, I suppose. Are they on the level of government innovation, including things like the internet, satellite technology, or nuclear energy? No. Not even close. It's ridiculous that the myth is even still around that the government is somehow bad at innovation, when it is the source of most modern technology. There is a reason that the USSR was winning everything on the Space Race checklist, except for when NASA (the US government) finally managed to put a man on the moon. That wasn't the market. Why would the market do that? There is no profit to be made. It's just spending.
I'm not against markets in general (I appreciate the diversity that is available through markets), but it is still true market competition is about resources first and foremost. It is not about innovation.
The more money you have, the more money you make. The less money you have, the faster you go bankrupt. It's really that simple.
Investment amount is linear, but return on investment is percentage based, and thus, total profit from investment is exponential. If you buy 1 stock at $1, then when the price goes up 100%, you will only have $2. You made $1. But if you buy 1,000 stocks at $1 each, then when the price goes up 100%, you now have $2,000. You've made $1,000 out of nowhere. That is a lot more than making only $1, and the only reason that you were able to make $1,000 is because you already had $1,000 to invest.
So, it gets infinitely easier to make money the more money that you have, whereas for those who do not have much to invest, they will not make very much. It works the same way on the regular market, except that it's constant, and you can go bankrupt due to being outcompeted.
Yes, there is some risk involved. Like, if you put $1,000 in a single stock, then you might lose $500 if the stock goes down 50%. But people who have more money are able to diversify their investments (the wealthier you are, the more diverse you can be), and in that case, the odds are extremely low that you will ever lose money as the overall economy grows (as a result of the constant labor and minor innovation being done). It is a bad idea to put all of your eggs in one basket, which I think is the same reason why it's not a good idea to give the state a monopoly on everything. It is like putting all of the nation's eggs in ones basket. There is no guarantee of an overall profit. If the government loses money, then... so does everyone else.
@@Soleilune1995 - I like what you have written about "return on investment". What most people these days seem to be simply unaware of is this: At the end of 2019, households and non-profit organizations held nearly $100 trillion in interest bearing financial assets. By comparison, the entire national 2019 GDP for the USA was under $22 trillion. Now consider that investments making under 5% annually are not worth having, once inflation and taxes are factored in. Also factor in that over the past 30 years, annual GDP growth has been less than 3% annually (2.56% for 30 years average).
Five percent growth on $100 trillion is $5 trillion, so here is the question everyone should be asking: The entire economy of the United States grew less than one trillion dollars in 2019, so where does all the profit come from, to pay $5 trillion in capital gains for those "investors" holding almost $100 trillion in "financial assets"?
Share the work - share the rewards.
@ or socialism and communism.
Why couldn't I have a teacher like you when I was a student : /
He is your teacher now!😃 Never stop learning, it's one of the best gifts you can give yourself.
If I remember correctly, Lincoln used the term "wage slavery" for employee-employer relations. Possibly came out of his correspondence with Karl Marx.
Wasn't he assassinated?
Neo Sannyasin Yes. Lincoln was a fan of Marx’s work and had some communist views of his own.
@@dreadarchive-6915 is it true the only 2 presidents who tried to circumvent their contemporary financial system were assassinated?
Matthew Stone Yes.
Neo Sannyasin And yes. Lincoln was not a capitalist by today’s standards. He believed in what he called “a fair relationship between laborer and capital” which was just a polite way of saying “I’m a communist”
When I define capitalism for my use, I think of the word “capital,” which leads me to think of “capitalism” as meaning “the practice of using capital.” In this view capitalism is the activities and relationships between investors and producers. With this idiosyncratic view in mind, the foundational institutions of capitalism are the corporation and the stock market.
Therefore, the definition of “corporation” by Ambrose Bierce applies to the whole of capitalism, “An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”
No. it doesn't...it applies to corporations because that is exactly what they are although in terms of responsibility, it confers "limited liability",
nothing more.
Corporations are creations of government and whatever responsibilities they could or should be held accountable for, rest with the entity that allows them to exist.
To complicate matters further, most governments are corporations also and none of this has anything to do with the "private ownership of the means of production" a.k.a. "capitalism".
@@jgalt308 let me guess anarcho-capitalist? you are sad kind of idiot
This is one of the most important videos ever uploaded on UA-cam.
This is by far the most important ideological debate for anticapitalists at this time. This fight is critical to the future because this issue has crept into history and other arenas and is being used among the younger generations of the conservative right to allow a defense of capitalism and a definition so meaningless they are now attempting to make a serious point of national socialism being left wing socialism youtube. This must be taken seriously and combatted at every opportunity or we will pay for our complacency and underestimating the damage possible by a perversion of language and reason.
Capitalism: survival within a market system determined by those with capital; further qualified by the hierarchy and stratification produced between the lender/employer with investment capital, and the disinvested debtor/labor relationship; further qualified by the origins of capital through the human tribalism of authoritarian theocratic paleo-conservative primitive accumulation, and that maintain hegemony through a fascist synthesis with capital, and the vertical hierarchical totalitarianism of corporations.
This was a great conversation about the different economic systems and I hope more people get informed so they can assess the negatives and positives of each system. What is now pressing in our country is horrible unemployment and how now employees will be shafted even more because of surplus of labor. My fear is unemployed people will take any job no matter what it pays. This will cause grotesque underemployment problems for many of these people.
This is my guy right here. Love his ideas. I've given corporate america 25 years of my life. Their attitude continues to be the same, DO YOUR JOB.
Work for yourself you can leave the job right? Or do they have you in actual chains.
The world needed this, exactly as delivered, open handed in the mouff.
There were employer-employee relationship in feudalism as well. Mercenaries and journeymen were paid wages. Artists were paid stipends, which is like wages. Probably domestics were paid a little something as well on top of boarding. What made the new liberal order was mainly about the land, which was owned by the king, and its way to distribute it, while keeping the ownership.
Liberalism got rid of the kings politically, and allowed the purchase of land for the common people. Getting rid of the Church also meant allowing usury and intellectual property/simony. So it was good for peasants, bankers and artists. It stayed the same for artisans, liberal professions and wage labor, but they got more political power and access to financing, capital, which allowed them to grow. It created an elite of rich people that concentrated wealth through the market and capital reinvestment. It wasn't exactly planned this way, but it was a natural evolution.
While it is true a lot of the critique of liberalism centered against wage labor in the 19th century, this was socialism, not communism. Socialists wanted either to redistribute the wealth, to counter the above unplanned concentration, or the workers taking over the workplace, like you advocate, which is anarcho-syndicalism. The other one was state capitalism, or socialism proper, in which the government owns everything, but since there is in theory democracy, people own the government.
Marx was against all of that when he realized "capital" was the thing that needed abolishing. All those things don't abolish capital, it just makes it change hands, but the fundamental problem of concentration and poverty stays the same. He saw it as attempts to save the capitalist system but bound to fail. In his communism, only the means of production are owned collectively, which means by nobody. If you need an IPod, you go to Apple factory and do it yourself. If you need shoes, it is the same. So there is no State, no market, no class of people. But socialists always pretend for some reason their "system" is communism, or comes from Marx. The common definitions of capitalism are simply the opposite of State capitalism, where the state owns everything, and has a planned economy and tells people what they need. And since they all gave lip service to Marx superficially, both were meshed together.
Defining it as employer-employee is good if what you want is anarcho-syndicalism, but it is not communism, since the group will own private property, and other people won't have access to it. So it does not solve the overall inequality of those that don't have access to the means of production or have access to less good ones. Nothing to stop a coop to in turn outsource and hire wage labor by contract or other ways, just like that Moondragon coop does. They dynamic will replay itself at some point because the first people will consider the place to be theirs, and it is unlikely they will want to share equally with a newcomer. There is still capital in other words which is owned privately. So it is still capitalism.
excellent lecture prof wolff, I've studied basic economics and political science and these definitions were never articulated like you have to get to the nugget of how these systems really differ. We never discuss these kind of definitions vis a vis their impact on society. My conclusion is that academia is complicit or afraid to discuss them like you have.
This might be your best episode yet. I wish everyone sees it. Thank you.
If a person is told they will starve and or suffer unless they sell their labor to someone else, that is slavery. If it were feasible to work outside the employment system without the government or social pressures dictating you must then I could consider not calling this system slavery, but we are coerced by threats to our livelihoods if we do not whore ourselves to a capitalist or even socialist employment arrangement. Until we are able to operate of our own volition economically without threats to our livelihoods then we are slaves to the system in power, whichever system that may be.
nhkg. Nobody in this country is forced to sell his labor to anybody. Everybody is free to offer his labor to anybody who is hiring, or to go into business for himself.
@@clarestucki5151 ...or suffer.
Regarding your first sentence nhkj. gfxe. Maybe. A big maybe. If automation eliminates all labor. If this country recovers from it's greedy insanity. People could be freed with non-thinking robots that just do one chore well and not revolt against humans, to have a decent life.. Ah, but at last I fear that greed will rear it's ugly head again, and use automation for evil profit. :(
You're trampling all over Dr. Wolffe's point in the video, which focuses on clear definitions that distinguish between systems. You're saying that capitalism is a slavery system. It's not. A slave/master relationship is different from an employer/employee relationship. I realize that it feels good to use hyperbole that equates the two systems, but you're throwing clear analysis out the window.
@@lawsonj39 An employee is just as much a slave to capitalism as a serf was a slave to feudalism and so on. What the arrangement is rationalized as is irrelevant to the core structure of the arrangement. Prof. Wolff is asserting a rationalization of contrasts between rationalizations not objective reality. No matter what you call it, if a person is forced against their will to conduct labor that person is a slave no matter the means by which they were coerced or the rationalizations for or against the arrangement.
It's wonderful to hear so eloquently spoken what my senses and suspicions told me in elementary school. With propaganda so prevalent and socialism such taboo for decades of my life, trying to feel a sense of belonging and patriotism to this country have been damn near impossible. Thanks, Richard.
I must confess once I heard you talking about monopolies, I thought it would be lovely to see you and Anwar Shaik discussing about monopoly capitalism...
Thank You ...always learning and understanding more our society with you .!
Always a great pleasure to watch your videos. Thank you Prof Wolf.
Let's be honest, there are only so many things that we "need" to live and survive. A person being tied to a plastic single use widget making machine isn't a good thing for anyone involved except the owners of the place.
I'll just say: one million colorations of sugar water.
something that can only come out of capitalism.
Why doesn't he leave the job and work for himself?
@@hazadus3
under the current system, for you to make it as a startup, you first need a truck load of capital.
someone who's laboring in a single-use plastics factory is likely to get paid the bare minimum to cover their very basic living costs (rent & food), which is to say that they have no capital at all and also no ability to save any meaningful amount of money.
they have absolutely no realistic chance to achieve financial independence.
that is what the employer-employee relationship, the hallmark of capitalism as explained in the video, is.
and it makes sense, as of course, if you have class system like that, not everybody can be in the ruling class, so you necessarily must make it very difficult for workers to transition into the capitalist class.
this is achieved by simply making it so that capital is required to make capital. if you don't have capital already, then tough luck for you. if you do, then it just keeps growing. this way, it is ensured that the same people stay in power.
so you see, capitalism is really no different from feudalism, except that under capitalism, there is more of an illusion of agency and democracy to keep the people at bay.
@@holleey But how did the capitalist first acquire his capital? Did he not start as an employee aswell?
@@hazadus3 there's inheritance, or being for some reason in the favor of someone with capital. the richest families have been so for ages, with little change (I will have look up that bit myself again).
I mean it is indeed possible to make it when starting from something like the middle class, but you need insane luck, then.
granted, the internet is an extremely disruptive technology in all of this. it offers an amazing spectrum of possibilities even to lower class workers.
but nonetheless, having the luck to have the right idea and matching know-how at the perfect moment in time (think Elon Musk with PayPal, Larry Page with Google, Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, ...) is still an extremely unlikely occurrence under the current economic system.
and on top of that, the current education system is designed to produce employees, so most people never question their situation, or just can't afford to forsake the security of their employmentship because they have responsibilities like children.
16:32 "And no one ever thought to question the feudal system that it isn't feudal anymore because there is state enterprise." Under the feudal system, there was no distinct concept of a feudal system.
PLEASE increase the volume of your uploads! It's got my mixer all outta whack :/ other than that 10/10, great video, keep it up!
❤ for the algorithm
Thank you so much, I am a "Big Picture" person and appreciate your descriptions. Now, I would like you to drill down on capitalism: Topics like industrial vs financial capitalism and what has happened to Wall Street and the stock exchange where HFT computers account for 50% of the trading, turning everything into a Casino, and where the big houses are too big to jail and the government socializes only their losses, for fear these houses must not fail.
Thank you Wolff. Im a social science teacher, who actually uses your (Marx') definition myself. Anyone working with the common definition is going to fall short, and most people studying this have come to the same conclusion. At least now, i can tell my students to watch this video, for an explanation as to why i dont like the common one.
I always like hearing the wise words of Professor Wolff.
I think I have seen this video about 3-4 times now and honestly I don’t think I would ever understood his criticism. I have had the standard definition as the understanding of capitalism and I see now what he saying.
it is such a shame we have to go trough definitions of things for the ignorant 35% of the voting population. ....great information as always! Thank you!
I'd reckon a number much larger than 35% of the population is oblivious to how capitalism actually affects their lives.
I'd guess more than 80% of the US population believes that they live under a properly implemented democracy.
By saying capitalism is not the perfect system we don't mean that communism or socialism are the perfect ones :)
Thank you for this, this helped me understand the differences a lot.
Prof Wolf makes a interesting point about how the people who defend capitalism are the ones who are making the definition of what capitalism is in the first place
a truly amazing summary.
people who defend capitalism associate communism (or anything that is not capitalism for that matter) with absolute control by the state.
when the proper definition of communism and/or socialism merely refers to the means of production. it doesn't have to imply anything about state control.
capitalism on the other hand is much closer to that vision of control by state. whether you have handful of politicians on top or a handful of capitalists - it's really the same thing.
Great episode Professor Wolff.
Finally something good to listen to during my commute to school
Employer rents the employee. Masters owned their slaves.
Otherwise, much of this system is very similar. To say there's a choice is ridiculous.
I think there is an important difference. Slave owners have to give the slaves enough of the profit to allow them to survive until the next day. Capitalist employers do not have to give their employees enough money to survive until the next day as they can always get another employee. Because of this you see wages so low that an employee literally cannot survive if that is their only income.
Actually, when you get into debt or sign any kind of contract you always become a slave. and you are owned until the contract is fulfilled
@@deltaxcd You are speaking figuratively. I was speaking literally so apples and oranges
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451
Well no, it is not figurative, because when you sign a contract you lose freedom.
in essence, if you have absolute freedom in what kind of contract are allowed to sign you can effectively turn yourself (or your children) into a slave.
@@deltaxcd None of us has absolute freedom. We give up certain freedoms to live in a society. And you are being figurative because even in debt you can marry who you want, live where you want, quite one job and take another and a myriad of other things. A literal slave cannot do any ot those things. A debt does not take away your freedoms literally.
Thank you for your work
He doesn’t work!!!!
@@Blueblackngold sure.. I'm sure educating thousands of people on weekly basis for donations is easy...
Ray More if the information is wrong agenda focused propaganda it isn’t information to begin with
He’s never worked. He’s a cog in the academia wheel
@@Blueblackngold well if you have an argument im open to hear it.. But what you post is not an argument its just a statement of opinion
Ray More what good or service has he produced and sold in a market!?
Propaganda?
He sells lies to feed his own ego by exploiting the very same poor ppl he claims to be educating.
Capitalism in a nutshell, you have a lot of competition in the beginning, and in the end you end up with monopolies. The system becomes less competitive with a few large corporations or businesses, and the wage of workers goes down in the end.
Lincoln promised in his inaugural address that there would be war if he did not get his triple-tariff and slavery was used as distraction for the Corporate Coupe. Lincoln was a Railroad Lawyer and member of Whigs, the moneyed elites. He was hand-chosen by Railroad Barons and Bankers as the inside-man for their Corporate-Coupe. The 14th Amendment, supposedly enacted to protect slaves, was actually used to grant Corporations "unconstitutional personhood” to enslave entire working-class. Corporations are now able to control resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, judges and the law. Their Corporate-Coupe was a success and US is now a Fascist State controlled by the Corporations.
Is it me, or is the audio really low?
IKR? And on a video that needs to be loud as hell!!!!
I feel like Richard Wolff's thought as a Marxist theorist will be appreciated for generations to come. He makes so much sense.
I am a 1st time viewer. And became a fan of you..
@DemocracyAtWork - whoever is doing the audio should consider either raising Prof. Wolf’s audio during recording or raising the master volume. I can barely hear what’s being said most of the time...
Extremely thoughtful and well said Richard! I love your work.
Richard Wolff is the Lewis Black of economics.
I find your approach very thought provoking. I would love to see you get deeper into this, because there’s so much more I think you could talk about in context of capitalism as we I used to. What about the self-employed, like artists, lawyers and doctors? That’s not included in your employment dynamic based definition. Same with investors. Also, how about new employees and people who contribute little, experienced and high productivity, or rare people with inclinations/approaches that are harder to replace like people who create effective systems? Shouldn’t their be a hierarchy? How about meticulous decision making, anything from new products to firing someone? How do you manage to put that to a vote? How are people even brought onto the team? Why should people who can show they’re more consistent with their judgements and producing positive outcomes have equal payment and authority as people who haven’t proved that yet? Who decides when they do prove themselves? Toxic environments where, for example a majority votes to get drunk on the job? How about organizing finances? How about visionaries? What about sales and people who work for tips? What about when we change our mind about what we do for work or where we want to work? What about competition being driving forces behind new ideas and approaches? How much innovation can remain without these dynamics? Technically could something like a “micro-communism” exist within macro-capitalism, if the founders of a company decided to pay everyone equally? If it showed to be effective for production and growth, wouldn’t other businesses decide to do that? None of these seem considered in your videos that I’ve seen and I’d love to hear your inputs on them.
Audio is really quite! I'm on Chrome and have both the internal stereo to 100% and UA-cam's player is at 100% can barely hear you :'(
Always learn something new here! Thanks!
I love this man. His delivery is fantastic.
Please implement a permanent UBI now! Then we can transition to a RBE. Also support the Money Free Party and The Venus Project so we can finally go beyond politics poverty and war. That is if we wish to make it as a species.
love prof Wolff. Audio was super low for me on this one.
In other words more smoke and mirrors when it comes to this government and it’s economic plans and handling of labor and its divisions.
19:49 - 20:18 says it all.
Socialism values lives and provides for all. Capitalism values things and who gets what is arbitrary.
When ever capitalists/economist talk about the system we work under they say we are under the " Keynesian " system. That system got put into place during the " Great Depression " to get things working again. It was thrown out by the Thatcher/Reagan system, end of the 70's/early 80's, this is the system that has lead to all the crashes since. The people who benefit from this system are busy trying to hide this fact, much the same as they claim Nazism is a form of communism. ( only if the water is also very dry ). The same type of argument is used by the religious that Hitler was an atheist, HE WAS BACKED BY THE POPE.
A simplified description of the difference between socialism and fascism. In one the people control the businesses in turn control the government. The other, the businesses control the government, in turn control the people. ( Very simplified ). If there is an Elite class controlling things, it is not socialism. China has an Elite, North Korea has an Elite, This is feudalism.
Slavery in the Americas in particular was a capitalist enterprise. While the internal economy of a plantation might not be capitalist, the interaction of that internal economy with everything else was.
Very interesting talk Professor thanks.
Your video's are wonderful.I have learnt a lot.I have relearnt many things.
Exactly why I. Quit my unstable job.i worked at a great hospital or 28 years, then our politicians cut healthcare and Medicaid to bare bones my hours were cut drastically and many staff were laid off and fired.My 1,5 years were a living hell. The worst part was I no say!. I. Felt like a commodity and serf. I despise them I quit my unstable job, sold my apartment in Honolulu and retired early. The best decision I have ever made.
Underpaying someone is slavery
That is what happens when you get monopolies which are always created in capitalism. You have a few large businesses that become monopolies, they pay people whatever they want, because most people don't have to choice but to work for them. It is what it is.
At marker 29:40 Prof. Wolff mentions "slavery" and says it is a different system than "capitalism". I thought that even though slavery is a different method of organizing labor, it is outright labor theft in the worst degree, it is something separate from the economic system that it exists within. For instance, slavery can exists within the capitalist and fascist systems, but could not exist in a true socialist system.
Have I misunderstood something?
Great video, professor Wolf. Thank you.
feels bad i didn't know ow capitalism works. thanks you for laying it out in simple terms
The civil war was not fought to end slavery. Ending slavery was a biproduct of the war. Lincoln himself said he would have kept slavery if it meant that he could keep the union together
My passion for history at 11 years old also studied money products things how people decide trading value was bartered before coinage was created ! I learned about sociology before knew of the subject along with anthropology my passion also! Critical thinking teach history great women teachers ! At 19 in 1970 became socialist better system!
could you please boost the audio in future vids, its a little low
thx
I agree. The sound volume of the recording is too low to be audible on UA-cam. Thank You for any adjustments.
At the end of 2019, households and non-profit organizations held nearly $100 trillion in interest bearing financial assets. By comparison, the entire national 2019 GDP for the USA was under $22 trillion. Now consider that investments making under 5% annually are not worth having, once inflation and taxes are factored in. Also factor in that over the past 30 years, annual GDP growth has been less than 3% annually (2.56% for 30 years average).
Five percent growth on $100 trillion is $5 trillion, so here is the question everyone should be asking: The entire economy of the United States grew less than one trillion dollars in 2019, so where does all the profit come from, to pay $5 trillion in capital gains for those "investors" holding almost $100 trillion in "financial assets"?
Dr Wolff has seriously misunderstood feudalism. The relationship of homage does not bind serfs to vassals. The relationship of homage is honorific. It bound vassals to higher-ranking overlords through whom they titularly held the right of usufruct to their lands. Serfs were simply "tied" to the land vassals held as a grant of usufruct from their feudal superiors. If granted the land, a vassal had therewith automatic rights to claim some share of the labor of the serfs who lived on it. Wolff is quite wrong to say that serfs underwent a ceremony of homage.
eBay is a great example of a free market. There's nothing wrong with eBay, Wolff. The rampant inflation in major sectors of the economy the government is subsidizing: education, health care, military for three, is a calamity and a great tragedy of our time. And people like this only want more of it. Absurd.
Thanks, another great video.
If 💲money=equals=free speech 👄
Then
Is💲money=free=when you speak🗣
At 6:38 lets understand one thing here: No mention of FINANCIAL RISK has been disclosed at this point nor the freedom of people to NOT work for any employer (remember that at around 19:10). If Joe invests some or all of his money on some investment and it DOES NOT go well, he loses his investment and more in some cases. If it goes well, good for "him". If it goes really well, he's a heartless, selfish pig. I am a proponanat of share the wealth with those that helped you get there, once you reach a magic number by the way. The real problem is figuring out what that number is.
I would pay to see you debate Professor Jordan Peterson.
That was arranged at UNV of Boise a few years ago Peterson dropped out.
@@Realist-sh3dg I wonder why...
@@thanosAIAS Debating a professional economist, not wise his reputation may suffer. The guy is smart but not his field.
You may want to watch the debate that Richard Wolff had with Gene Epstein last November in NYC. Search: Capitalism vs. Socialism: A Soho Forum Debate.
Wait, so when my stepdad says “Obama almost killed capitalism” he is misinformed? 🤯
When Franklin D Roosevelt, in response to the depression of the 1930s, created work programs and the social security system, he effectively "bailed out" (i.e., supported by spending government money) regular folks, which in turn rescued the goods and services economy. Roosevelt said later that by doing this he had saved capitalism. When Obama was faced with the economic crisis of 2008, he bailed out the banks by giving bucket loads of money to the rich (banks and big corporations), let 10 million homeowners get foreclosed upon, and let the goods and services economy languish. By contrast with Roosevelt, then, Obama "almost killed capitalism." He bailed out the already-rich finance sector, did not punish any of the corrupt bankers who had caused the Great Recession, and did essentially nothing in that situation for ordinary folks. As a result, the current economic crisis (associated with Covid-19) is more dangerous than ever before because of the record-high levels of debt that in part stemmed from Obama's actions.
@Chris C, your stepdad is totally misinformed. Obama was Wall Street's inside man. He used the Fed's QE and the bailouts to keep asset prices/valuations high, which then has a domino effect on credit creation, because the assets are collateral against which firms can borrow. Obama was capitalism's Santa Claus. Your stepdad is as uninformed as knee-jerk liberals who think the Democratic Party is a force for social justice. Both the pro-Obama corporate Dems and the anti-Obama conservatives are 2 sides of the same coin. You should watch Jimmy Dore, Caleb Maupin, and Non Compete (a guy named Emerica Johnson). These 3 UA-cam accounts round out the awesome work of Professor Wolff.
RussCR5187 This was not the argument my free-market capitalist stepfather was making 😉 Excellent, bullet-proof framing 🙏
pnyc I haven’t heard of Caleb Maupin, I love the NonCompete channel, and Jimmy Dore has his moments but I disagree with his strategy-for example ceding the electoral fight to conservatives and liberals is a mistake IMO. Solidarity
@@christopheryou I understand Jimmy Dore to be saying that no real change will come from electoral politics - which is controlled by conservatives and liberals. He wants people to base their political actions on the absolute rule that electoral politics is rigged. That's my understanding, at least.
Hero. I thought most of what hes saying. Based on books (Gah). But if I said it outloud I would be fired. Im not a marxist tho. Im a Trotskyist.
Economics professor par excellence.
Richard D Wolff is the GOAT
The accepted definition is X, but it's bad. Therefore I will use definition Y and attack it.
Nice straw man you have there... Or am I mistaken?
I'm not bought on the idea of pure capitalism, yet I feel like defending it here: isn't it the idea that in a capitalist free market you're free to make a company in whatever way you see fit? From employee - employer to a commune run company and everything in between you can imagine.
Someone?
The actual Capitalists have their own definition of capitalism and the voice of capital speaks with mostly one voice, Capitalism requires absolutely zero tax if not a negative tax on the most rich people. But the Capitalists need a governing coalition with Conservatives, who must narrow that definition, such that Capitalism also must require that the govt never adhere to any policy which is less reactionary than another policy option. The definition invented by the Capitalists makes Socialism sound more appealing. Whereas a better working definition would be Capitalism requires that you have a majority of workers working in private enterprises.
Keep up your great work
Great job dude!!!
We can not use the words of enlightenment era bourgeois humanist scholars like ''democratic value is a human nature'' to argue with proponents of capitalism, assuming that democracy is somehow encoded into our DNA. Capitalism always brings about an oligarchy not because the capitalist defied some "human nature", but because the production process is largely socialized in a capitalist society while the power of surplus distribution is still in private hands. The capitalists and their affiliates who accumulate huge amount of surplus will always have more influence in politics. It is the socialization of both production and distribution in socialist society that dictates the needs for the socialization of decision making, aka democracy.
Need to Turn UP the Audio not loud enough you I can barely hear it. Thanks Professor Wolf.
The only thing I would dispute is the claim that slavery is separate from capitalism. Slavery formed and continues to form the basis of accumulation of capital.
State govts ran chain gangs, they weren't private enterprises but that was slavery
Thank you!
I've been radicalized I can't stop thinking about this stuff whenever politics comes up 😩
NO! Serfs did not swear allegiance to lords in front of the Church, it was vassals who did that to their seniors. Serfs did not have enough honour to be worthy of such pledges. Also, whole villages with serfs were literally won and lost in card games.
Great lesson! Thank you
would it be safe to say that Capitalism emerged from the Feudal mindset?
Its Feudalism wearing a smiling mask.
Professor Wolff, today's world is all about marketing. We (and Bernie) need to drop the term socialism as it has a negative branding that will not go away. Leverage the same beliefs/policies and call yourself a "Democratic Economist". Bernie would have been the nominee right if he never gave himself the "scarlet letter". If he was pushed as to if he was a capitalist and he responded "Yes of course but I do think it needs to evolve in these certain ways as times have change so much since capitalism's birth" but then slid in some aspects of socialism I think he would gone all the way.
Thanks Professor 👍👍
elizabeth taylor: the sound on this one is too low, I can barely hear you. Has been slightly too low in past but nothing like this. can you fix?