EDITORIAL PICK: Economic Update with Prof. Wolff: Capitalism vs. Democracy
In this week’s editorial pick for our Import program, we select a video from “Democracy at Work” which analyses capitalism’s impact on democracy.
On this week’s show, Prof. Wolff presents an analysis of how and why capitalism is an undemocratic economic system. The first half is devoted to the micro-level, namely to the organization of the enterprise (factory, office or store). Its undemocratic character is exposed using examples and empirical evidence. The second half has a macro-level focus that shows how capitalism’s generation of growing income and wealth inequality impels the employer class (a small numerical minority) to use their money politically. Their practice undermines real democracy leaving only its empty forms.
To read the transcript of this interview, click here: Economic Update: Capitalism vs. Democracy
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Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, and the University of Paris I (Sorbonne). He is a co-founder and contributor of Democracy at Work, a non-profit organization that promotes democratic workplaces as a key part of a transition to a better economic system. Wolff has published many books and articles, both scholarly and popular. Most recently, in 2012, he published the books Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Haymarket Books) and Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press). He writes regularly for Truthout.org. He has been interviewed on The Charlie Rose Show, Up with Chris Hayes, Real Time with Bill Maher, Democracy Now!, Al-Jazeera English, Thom Hartmann, NPR, Alternative Radio, and many other radio and TV programs in the United States and abroad. The New York Times Magazine has named him “America’s most prominent Marxist economist.
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