Wolff Responds: DC Rage: More Coming Unless Basic Economic Changes Made 

@777killad Yep. We live in a plutocracy.

I dig those two Black Repubs. Nice balance. Good guys, ai think. Poscast I watch.

Darrin.. You know the results of yesterday if the protesters were black. BLM faced hundreds of cop s and a barricade fence. Those Trump idiots were almost invited in. No accident

@777killad That is the definition of totalitarianism

@Edgar Miller You're begging a question nobody is willing to confront. Often I drive by my rental houses, and see the trash cans filled with empty beer cans. You know them Covid relief checks are going to go toward buying more beer and dope. I'm sorry, but I can't feel too sorry for a lot of these poor folk. (Oh yeh, how did I get me rentals; I worked late a lot of nites, and ate beans a lot.)

No! He's a socialist like me

I've considered concocting an excuse to go back to college just to study in his courses at UMass

Wolff's given me a new respect for Marx. Communism didn't work because it flied in the face of human nature and was implemented by totalitarian regimes. The new boss was the same as the old boss. But Marx at least tried to come up with an alternative to capitalism.

@@freepalestine2434 he is professor "emeritus" unfortunately no longer teaches courses there but there are many on youtube

He's a treasure.. who needs to be evenly distributed!! :-)

"...if we let it..." Hmmm. Gives me a think. Who is letting it? Who will stop it? How will it be stopped? I could go on, but I won't. Good think, thanks.

"We" is a keyword in that statement I completely agree with. WE (the real majority/power of Americans) need to stay positive, stay informed, stay active (Vote!), and support each other in any way needed to achieve the common goal of true prosperity for all. If "we" don't, it gives those who don't have the same values a "free pass" to take what they want for the benefit and prosperity of themselves.

I do think it will get worse. We are in the latter days.

@@randybest9187 You may be right however, if you have cancer? Do you fight? Or do you just give up? I submit to you the idea that evil should be addressed not ignored. By ignoring you empower. Its just a thought. You all have a good day.

@Edgar Miller yes many believe it’s perfectly normal to work yourself into an early grave in this nation! People have been led to believe it’s normal to accept employer abuse, put up with crap wages, toxic environments and work multiple jobs until you drop. The norm in lower income American is die an early dead from overwork and abuse or be lifted out of your lot in life by some magical luck, which very few ever attain. It’s NOT NORMAL, this kind of life isn’t a normal life, it’s a punishment for not having enough and being part of the have nots.

Props for lookin into things man

Agreed. Sounds good, always has.

They were not working class in DC. They were petty bourgeois small business owners. You think the working class can afford to take a couple of days off in the middle of the work week, during a recession and fly half way across the country? No, this is the similar to 1930s Germany. They're the squeezed middle class small-business owners who can't ever go left because it's against their economic interests. The centre has nothing for them so they go off the deep end on the right.

@@fi0nner This is nonsense. Employees of companies were fired because they were identified by their employers. Derrick Evans, WV delegate, was arrested at his grandmother's house where he lives. Enrique Tarrio, PB leader, lives with his mom. These aren't monocle wearing capitalists. They're deluded foot soldiers for capital. We have to face the reality that a large part of the working class is not yet class conscious and will act against their own self interest.

@@Lavabug you're not completely wrong. There were definitely working class people there. But the middle class, petty bourgeois element is significant, echoes Germany in the 1930s and can't be ignored. Especially by "Marxian Scholars". Trumps voters have always been better off than Dem voters. Check the NYT exit poll data on voter income from 2016 & 2020. In both cases Trump voters earn more than his opponents voters.

@@fi0nner Working Class is having to make decisions about what you are going to do today or even tomorrow based on your financial situation. Most have to do that unless they are wealthy enough to have no concerns of that nature (not many). Nobody wants to consider themselves working class for some reason, while almost everyone is working class. We have working-class, and we have oligarchs. Oligarchs are winning because they successfully divide the working-class.

Same here! I love listening to Wolff's lectures. He, along with a select few others over the last few years, have convinced me to pay much closer attention to politics and economics.

He's sound, I've been listening for a few years now. He's totally failed to grasp why working-class people in the UK voted to leave the EU though.... which is very common.

Thank you Professor Wolff! You are and have been a wolf crying in the wilderness. Elected representatives are intentionally deaf to your warnings. This country is circling the drain.

Yes more is coming and they have guns and training 🤔

Ditto on that Professor Wolff. 😁

It's no longer about dividents, P/E is throught the roof and everything is a gigantic bubble. It's all about control.

Share holders who want their dividends should be pissed off though!

@Edgar Miller I thought dollars were also printed up in the basement of the Federal Reserve. Something is not adding up here.

@Edgar Miller are dollars real or stocks real? Or are both worthless paper?

13. 50% Labor in All Corp. Boardrooms, Codetermination. Of that number 50% female and 50% male. 14. Raise the minimum wage to a level in which labor can maintain a level of existence somewhat above the bottom rung of Maslow's Hierarchy of Human needs. 15. Tie the minimum wage to inflation, requiring a Cost of Living Adjustment every year.

Americans don’t have what the French have. The French haven’t been dumbed down by American education, media and culture.

The house of the aristocrates!

@F D you're entitled to your shit opinion. If you think we can tackle the disinformation campaigns of repubs and conservative Dems for the last hundred years, you haven't paid attention to history. Go talk to qanon. See how far you get.

Ecuador, nz, portugo, siberia...seriously

I don't think it is either. I had a black guy walk up to me and spit in my face and say 'Fuck white people.'. I mean where do you go from there? I've had young kids working at shops act like I'm the enemy just for being 50. I don't think the problems in our society are fixable.

Got to tell ya... I certainly feel the same.

@@alaskansummertime Maybe reflect a little bit and show some humility once in a while and you wont be so hated. The problem is old white men are narcissistic as hell and have no idea how good they had it.

Unfortunately our species seems to find psychopaths more charming than reasonable folks like PW.

@@SofaKingShit the "system" is currently owned by oligarchs and sociopaths because we were told deregulation was good, control was bad. The US is netter than the UK as press owners have to be resident and citizens The UK it can be owed by anyone. Most press here is owned by 5 individuals who don;t live here.

Sadly those who seek or worship power are more often than not the most venal, mediocre, and unscrupulous types of characters. Yes, there are genuine and humane leaders in all fields out there, but they are disproportionately ignored, maligned, or tolerated-for-optics'-sake by today's ruthless old-money establishment-structures. Some form of "bottom-up-majority", open-access decision-making mechanism needs to be developed.* The centuries-old top-down hierarchical structures are failing the majority of people terribly in this century. (Certainly we can point to progress in areas like medicine and technology, but even there are still issues with accessibility and proper application.) But still too many cling to the established systems, not just the few at "the top" who benefit the most, but also those myriad of people "below" conditioned so long to believe has always been and can never be otherwise, leaving all trapped in a self-perpetuating, man-made feedback-loop. The cracks were always there, but now they grow deeper, wider, more problematic, because the foundation itself is rotted. We have the pleasure (/s) of living through one of the most apparent transitional schisms of all time, and we must use whatever agency we have if we really want to see the changes many of us claim to want. The scale, levels of work, will-power and cooperation needed are so massive, there are no more words... *A good example of a most relevant book, "The New Human Rights Movement"(2017), speaks to root-cause, correlation and ideas for solutions like this so effectively and in such detail, it is little wonder books like this are blacked-out from any if not all media, libraries or mainstream communication platforms.But it can be had, and is obligated reading

Bernie Sanders?

We had a candidate like Richard Wolf. The DNC decided for us that Biden was who we want. Why are we letting a corporation control the Democratic Party?

ACTUAL FACTS 💯

same with Noam Chomsky. they interviewed him up to 1973

I've only just started listening to this but my immediate response is that we can't reduce what happened on the Capitol to merely economic troubles. We don't even know these people were 'working class'. I agree economics is part of the background of this event but the defining variable is a president who was willing to incite violence and trash democratic principles and a right wing establishment willing to play along (for the most part). He mentions Brexit in the same vein but although Brexit is sometimes billed as a working class rebellion, a number of studies have now shown that most of its support came from the middle and upper classes. I don't think we can reduce this 'rage' to mere economic troubles, I'm not certain that it's just a white working class problem, and I'm not certain that economic prosperity would alleviate this anger that we are seeing when the establishment is willing to lie and bend the truth so readily. Remember, the middle classes are just as susceptible to populist right wing immigrant bating as anyone else. The more you have the more you fear losing it.

@@dylan8131, " defining variable is a president who was willing to incite violence and trash democratic principles", WHOA slow down . 1 - all Trump said was lets go cheer them on, that comment is not inciting violence. Just ask Spock if you don't believe me. 2 - Don't overlook the enormous anger being shown. Because its only going to get worse.

​@@Alosipher Trumps been revving these people up for weeks. telling them their democracy has been stolen and that they must 'fight' etc. Anyway, I don't think you address my point. It's not that I underestimate the anger. I'm angry too. I just don't happen to believe that the American election was 'stolen' from Trump. And the defining reason for believing that conspiracy, and therefore acting out in violence, is not that people are poor. It's that some people, lower class, middle class, and/or upper have been brainwashed by the right wing establishment, fox news, and online conspiracy theories. Not everyone who struggles economically or feels disenfranchised immediately becomes Qanon white supremacist. There are plenty of very wealthy very privileged proto-fascist right wing nut jobs. So it's clear that economic instability isn't the only problem here. There a whole host of other reasons that come together at once to take someone down that path.

💯. 5-decades of: grift, corruption, trickle down, corporate Socialism, greed is good, me-first, outsourcing, p/t labor forces.... TurtleMan. Gelato Jane. Miss Lindsey. Rick Scott. Bushes. JungleJim Jordan. Matt Gaetz. It’s very very simple: if YOUR representative is not fighting for you like Katie Porter, they are useless.

That's what it takes. Its all fun and games until they show up at your house and start breaking shit.

@Edgar Miller 💯 %. Also they all jump on the “Shameful” bandwagon as a cover. Shades of Roman Senators & dignitaries in “A,B,C” movies. Pompous AH’s & totally FOS.

He's not saying that though.

The DC mob have drank the American exceptionalism and narcissism cool-aid since the end of WW2, at the very least.

@@feonjun I get the cool-aid reference but I don't what you mean by american exceptionalism and narcissism.

@@andreipopescu5342 ok. So I am saying: a cocktail of broke, desperate, mentally ill( that goes to rich people too) and the mostly ignorant WHITE mask-less people,who are getting their news from Glenn Beck, Mark Levine, Rush Limbaugh and the gang of Fox News. They are all in it together.

@@Eged282 I don't know who those people are... but... this guy? really? communism? really?

I remember someone said do you know how ISIS was able to obtain so many recruits. It's simple, you destroy the people's lives in the Middle East and they have nothing but anger so this creates a situation for terrorists to recruit to offer them a chance at a better life by fighting for their cause. This is how extremism and terrorism is created. Americans are suffering because the rich took everything and now some leaders are exploiting the conditions to recruit a cult following to obtain power and wealth. There will be more social unrest, domestic terrorism.

@@walden6272 once the social contract is broken, and there is no longer sufficient safety or welfare guaranteed to the people, that's when a government fails at providing the possibility of peaceful meaningful lives. Then the average person looks for purpose in meaning anywhere they can find it. Today in the US, the American dream of some security and possibility (homeownership, some wealth, starting a family, having a lifelong career, etc) isn't likely for Millennials and Zoomers. The majority of people under 45 do not have the opportunities the older generation did. Not only is this tragic, it is radicalizing. What happens when more than half the population think dramatic change is an imperative. Some portion of that number will take an accelerated destruction as a 'lesser evil' than a slow destruction from neglect currently on offer by our leaders. Our democracy is broken in the US. The popular position, policies and politicians are not allowed the power to realize the popular will. The people have little to no say in what the government does. My people, myself included, all share in a collective despair and desperation. The mental health problem, the opioid epidemic, wage stagnation, wealth disparity, housing insecurity, food insecurity, child poverty, no access to healthcare, the pandemic response, etc all exemplify our shameful state of life in the US. For critics and fans of the States, outside our boarders, the popular culture, big businesses, military presence, global capitalists and government glad handing is all you see. The average America cannot see those things over our lived realities. Something got to give.

Uncle Rich

A hood human being ?!!..........LMAO...................you have to be kidding me.

well let me nip this in the bud because while I respect the work of our lupine interlocutor, this is some pretty wild class reductionism. not sure why the *white* working class isn't being separated here

@@niticondavis7365 Same

When you’re on strike, next to your work colleagues, racism, sexism, and all devisions fall aside and the things that unite us; the wage, the wealth and income inequality, a fight for a better future for our kids no matter what we look or act like become apparent and that the system is to blame and needs to change.

You might find it interesting to know that as the white middle class has declined many of us whites have become more empathetic towards black people as we are starting to experience the same types of economic and social injustices as blacks have for so long. After watching yesterday's events at the Capital Building I was reminded of something said by the great Malcolm X: "The chickens are coming home to roost".

@@joevignolor4u949 fucking on point. Exactly correct.

Avinash Reji just need right conditions.

The system has been fascist for decades. It just didn't seem like it because people weren't dying in the streets until the past few years.

Precisely. His thoughts are a direct threat to the power of the people who control the MSM. They want to keep him as far from the public as they possibly can.

PBS won't even have him on.

@@clintonflynn815 The Petroleum Broadcasting System won't have a Marxist economist on? Baffling!

Not economically feasible for profit-making enterprise, to listen to this point of view.

Since 1970 is NOT a decade.

My comment says over a decade, not a decade. Over a decade means more than a decade.

I'll rephrase it with this, "over two decades". How's that, cool?

When I was a kid in the 80s you could find a job for fifty cents. 25 cents for the newspaper and 25 cents to make the phone call. Not now.

So agree with you. Accepting being duped is a step towards undoing the racist ideas eaten up by those who react vs. respond in the white working class. Below ineffable is copy of what was written above in Lupe to face it comment : (Invite you to write after seeing video there if you 'd like to join a Pat! Teach in. www.pmrbio.wordpress.com for more info as of Feb. 2021. ) RD Wolff, add how the Owning Class uses racism to your ALMOST complete analysis please. Look at resources of the The Leap group analysis and The Us People's Bailout group. „Governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.“ - James Connolly The Irish Worker, 29 August, 1915 (Prof. Wolff please use your brilliant mind to one day again show us non capitalist govt. alternatives!) Thanks for the EXPOSURE of the decades of the 1 percent (above capitalist class) taking it's pound of flesh out of the lives of all 99 percent of society! And WE CANNOT avoid exposing how racism in the police and the (white) Sleeping Giant is going to be the downfall of any organizing if racism is not SHOWN as a driver towards false targets. Racism is used to vent police rage onto black and brown protesters in anti white supremacy demonstrations. (Defund the police). YES the white working class has rage. AND it has bought into racism! The use, by trump and others in leadership of the far right, OF RACISM to lift up CONFEDERATE usa thinking as a way out of powerlessness is going to alienate the black and brown working giant! The Owning class manipulates the willing white working class/working poor, who refuse to call out racism as the arm of capitalism. Capitalism , RD Wolff , you are right is the enemy of any care for humanity. THE contradiction in your short video gift to us RD WOLFF is a key instrument historically thrown about and still used by the OWNING CLASS that is left OUT. As a member of the Jackson Rising book study group, (cooperationjackson.org) some questions are shared. The hope is that with more thought you will deeply answer and UPDATE your analysis. Q What can we do about the distress in the society being blamed on Mexican/non-white immigrants? Q What responsibility do you and other progressive white intellectuals have to consistently expose how racism is USED by the trump/ruling rich to distract white workers of the 99 percent to prevent workers RAGE going toward the real problem: the Super (thieving/non tax paying rich).? Repeat: a big contradiction in your analysis that it was left out, the steering of the white worker rage towards black and brown working sleeping giants. Q Can you connect us to the MANIPULATION of white poor? Will you share being an "easy mark" means being distracted by racist ideas like kick around black and brown folks? ANd therefore don't focus on the economic murder of capitalism. Racist distraction is fed to white workers by the white rich right? White workers have been used by the rich and white workers also have avoided talking among themselves about being duped. The next capitalist president (Biden_ will blame and focus on them instead of on president's TRILLIONAIRE /Non Tax paying support. Presidents work for Wall St. / see above Connolly quote) . PLEASE REDO .add, history of how racism has been and is always used by the usa rich to divide folk. This is an almost complete analysis. Lets build trust through more complete practice. Will you? Suggestions: Ask your wife Harriet Fraad for her suggestions and maybe also Steven Singer? Singer is a husband, father, teacher, education advocate who wrote Why the Rich Need Racists prejudice as Social Control for Huffpost. www.huffpost.com/entry/why-the-rich-need-racists-prejudice-as-social-control_b_58fe4b1ee4b0f02c3870ed48 Resources: theleap.org/peoples-bailout/ cooperationjackson.org/blog/jacksonrisingreviewonournightstandsjuly2020

Yes Chris Hedges interviewed Prof Cornel West, BOTH were beyond excellent..

He just was on the Jimmy Dore show.

Who the fuck has those things? No one I know.

no one has those lmao

No lower class person has such things. You're thinking of the horde of small business owning "boot strappers" who supported Trump from the start. And it was this group who stormed DC like a horde of Nazi brownshirts. See Germany in the early 1930s.

@@jacobgordon7998 I live in Texas, and I see it all the time... People living in ramshackle trailers with expensive cars and boats parked on their lot. When I was working the 2020 Census, I saw so much of it it was hard to believe. I traveled to Oklahoma to enumerate the rural northeast, and it was the same there.

@Ayan Majumdar People are still paying off their vacation from 3 years ago while booking this years vacation with their credit card. You need a new car while there's still 4 years payments left on the car you have.

They teach you to do as your told and not question.

Look in the billionaire corporations' cupboard. It ain't bare

@Samantha HW 👍

Both these things are available in other Western countries...I have no idea how the US population sees healthcare for all as socialism or how a minimum wage is "government intervention"...it is to help people live a life.

Why not a $100 minimum wage? And free healthcare and education for anyone who crosses the border.

@@jackflack9004 shitty argument, but I will bite. $100 minimum wage would cause uncontrolled inflation and healthcare/education for anyone who crosses the border is a problem got to do with sovereignty. The US is controlled by corporations which is why you dont have free healthcare or a minimum wage, like we do here. Disgrace of a country.

@@brenda726 mmmmmm.... universal healthcare with almost all technology, standards, protocols, drugs, procedures, etc invented/developed in the US. Also the minimum wage needs to be slightly below cost of basic human needs so people don't stop there. Cuz once you have your basic human needs covered by a fix salary, you start to get comfortable, tend to get objects that you don't really need, start having kids, as there is little incentive to become more productive or innovative. You just want to live "the good life" and be happy. But who said one should be happy?

What about Rodrigo Duterte's dictatorship like crackdown on civil liberties...?

@@tedmalley7636??? No dictarship here. Go to my home State of Michigan. That's a dictatorship. How about NY California, DC. I have no issue here. I'm not in manila. I ca0n understand the shutdown in manila. People are stacked like cord wood. Other than that it's fine

Sounds like England.

Yes a third party that’s actually for the people of this nation because neither party serves the real Americans in this nation, the lower income and working class stands no chance of ever being heard with the current party system.

Yes Newton, let's DEMAND it...

join the peoples party. it is now official in maine

Thanks for making this point. Everything Wolff is claiming is true and important, but none of it has anything to do with what happened on the 6th. Those folks were NOT working class, not by a light year.

Thank you for all your great work.

Here's one possibility I recently found out about: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_International

@Ayan Majumdar Well, I kinda figured that. That's kinda what I meant by "democracy in the workplace". Just like Professor Wolff describes it. But I just don't know how working people could purchase huge enterprises such as Amazon or Microsoft without the funds. Let alone the complications of those enterprises being multinational corporations. It would be interesting to see how it could be done.

@@elnegrobembon part of the problem with coops is that they function best in economies of scale. For large corporations It would be better to mandate workers on the board of directors like Germany. Another idea would be to offer tax incentives for corporations to outsource distribution to local coops. Basically the best way to deal with corporations is to prevent them from accruing Monopoly power. They cannot be effectively democratized in the short run.

@@cleopatraoatcake7364 🤔 I took a quick look, but I didn't see much about bringing democracy to workplaces. I guess the closes thing there is is support for unions, which is not quite what I was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of converting these large, multinational enterprises into worker-owned and operated cooperative businesses. Ive heard of smaller businesses getting bought out by their own employees, at times with the help of credit unions or with other types of financial assistance. But it seems like a rather complex situation when involving companies valued at billions of dollars and spanning multiple countries.

@@dediguise0018 Why would mandating workers on the board work better than the workers actually being shareholders and electing the whole board themselves? But yeah. It's definitely harder when you're already dealing with near-monopolistic economic powers. But I'm sure we can't be the first people to have thought of this.

Nope. He's saying it's our system's fault

Because he’s a socialist not a communist. Socialism is nothing more than employee ownership of the means of production. Propaganda has extremely distorted the definition in the name of “fighting” communism. Fairly simple to see if you understand what you’re looking for.

Because in America we slap name of " communism " on everything we hate .