Economic Update: Capitalism's Definition is NOT Innocent 

@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.

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.

Same!

Yeah its a quiet video they need to normalise the audio track

😂

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.

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"?

He is your teacher now!😃 Never stop learning, it's one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

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!

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.

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.

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”

@ or socialism and communism.

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.

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

Work for yourself you can leave the job right? Or do they have you in actual chains.

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.

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.

Its Feudalism wearing a smiling mask.

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 RU-vid 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.

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.

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.

IKR? And on a video that needs to be loud as hell!!!!

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.

I agree. The sound volume of the recording is too low to be audible on RU-vid. Thank You for any adjustments.

He does this in plenty of other videos. However he tends to stress the lack of democracy as well, as it's more relatable to most people.

China, Communist Government, Marxist Economy very successful.

1 isn't true. The vast majority of living creatures have no hierarchical structures, and even social animals tend to only have very loose hierarchies. Humans by far have the most extreme hierarchies based on how complex our societies are, and they are most definitely not based on "skill, strength and intellect" either. In our modern day societies, most hierarchies are based more on inherited wealth than anything else. 2. what oligarchs? You mean like the capitalist oligarchs currently ruling? Because if you look up how power and wealth are actually distributed, you'll find that our world is very much an oligarchy. And even if socialism and communism don't promote prosperity - who needs that? As long as everyone has enough to live comfortably, I don't think any additional "prosperity" is needed. That's more prosperity than most people have in capitalism, anyways.

You should not confuse so called Human Nature with Human Behaviour. "Human Nature" is what we are as a species. Social, verbal, intelligent etc. creatures. "Human Behaviour" is what we are trained to do by our culture, society and family. And why is that important? People defended slavery or feudalism with "It's human nature. Some are made to rule over others. Some are slaves and some are rulers." We got rid of both slavery and feudalism. Our behaviour is changing all the time, what was seen as normal then is seen as a atrocity now. Time to move on.

@@secularnevrosis Good point.

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.