Anyone else get the impression that Richard Wolff is “hiding his power level” so to speak and is actually way more radical than he lets on? He seems to be more of a co-op, market socialism guy on the surface because he talks about workplace democracy a lot, but i remember him during an interview with Hakim saying pretty positive things about economic planning. Recently he has also been praising the People’s Republic of China a lot in various interviews, and in the latest interview i watched him give to Briahna Joy Gray he even snuck in a Lenin quote at the end (uncredited of course saying just “a famous political leader once said”) basically paraphrased the well known “there are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen” line. Is he a closeted ML or what? Is his focus on workplace democracy just a smart strategy to appeal to “baby leftist” Americans and introduce them to basic Marxist concepts without scaring them away?
Prof Wolff isn’t perfect but I rarely disagree with him. I listen to Economic Update every week still. Sometimes he has libs on though for some reason. I don’t want to use the phrase dumb down, but he is sort of reductive with some things.
Keep in mind support for Marxism/socialism/etc in the USA was pretty much nonexistent for a very long time. Co-ops, unions, etc are absolutely the best way to improve material conditions for the working class under capitalism. Unfortunately I think at this point in the US, the ruling class isn’t going to cede an inch without violent revolution.
I think he was actually the first Marxist I started listening to, so he’ll always have a special place in my heart.
Yeah his guests on the show are quite hit and miss. He had on recently this lib by the name of Thom Hartmann who did nothing but shill for the Democrats. I couldn’t listen to that guy.
Also who the hell runs the Democracy at Work Twitter account?! They’ve been posting some serious cringe about Ukraine lately.
But normally his stuff, or at the very least his weekly monologues are worth listening to. I think he’s doing a good job overall.
Was that a couple weeks ago? He had someone on who was going on about how authoritarian China is. I wish Richard would have pushed back.