Ask Prof Wolff: Can Profits Be Excluded From Food and Healthcare?

A Patron of Democracy at Work asks: "Would you agree that for large monopolistic industries that the entire society depends on for survival, like food, energy, defense, and health care, worker coops would not go far enough? If we're serious about our long-term survival, wouldn't we have to remove the profit motive entirely and give all citizens democratic control over these industries?"

This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

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“Marxism always was the critical shadow of capitalism. Their interactions changed them both. Now Marxism is once again stepping into the light as capitalism shakes from its own excesses and confronts decline.”

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[boombot]

Healthcare is a basic human right! Clean air for🌎 🌍🌏the Humanity!

[treefrog]

Excessive, exploitative profits SHOULD be excluded from food and healthcare and education. Any formal "society" should implement policies that provide an individual with the ability to achieve his own greatest potential. Otherwise why have any nation at all? Our current paradigm benefits the well-to-do and ignores the potentials of those of "lesser means" to the detriment of that society as a whole.

[michaelhanson]

Thank you DaW for continuing to promote these speakers like, and especially, Professor Wolff. We need his common sense breakdown of real world economics to cut through all the propaganda being spewed by Corporate owned Mass Media. Thank you.

[KennethJLave]

One of the most significant understatements ever made:
"We don't need an economy based on profiteering."

[helengarrett]

Food, education, shelter and healthcare are all sectors that must be removed from profits, more correctly profiteering. Indeed, transportation and utilities also could, actually should, be removed from the profit sector. If WE had some say in how this government and society was run I bet we would remove a lot of the essential services we rely on for survival from the profit sector and be put in in the vital services non-profit sector.

All this could happen if every last one of us organized and got active and insisted on a fair shake and a better life for working people.

[williamblack]

Indeed, as some who works in a major retailer, I see everyday the chaos and dysfunction the profit motive causes.

[jimmmydds]

Thank you Professor Wolff. Your courage (balls of steel) and dedication to humanity inspire me. There is another angle to this topic that I would like to discuss with you. If we removed profit from the work we do to meet our fundamental human needs, the employee class would be drastically empowered. We would never have to sell ourselves like slaves to an authoritarian employer as a means of survival again. Our new negotiating power as workers would tilt our society in the direction of a democratized workplace, I imagine. This is how it would look:
As a society, we would democratically define what our most fundamental needs are and how best to divide the work to meet them. With profit out the window, the goal would be to make the work as painless as possible. I dare say, we would find a way to make the workweek much, much shorter than 40 hours. But here is the best part: if you don't want to be part of this "basic needs" system you don't have to. You can start your own business or join someone else's business. The only thing that changes is that no one would be forced to subordinate themselves to an employer to survive. I wonder how many people would choose a minimalistic lifestyle with abundant free time and a democratic workplace over a lifestyle of consumerism and 40 hours of subordination per week. I don't think the employer class would like to find out.

We know that, in life, there are things we have to do that we don't want to do. Survival is not given to us. But we also know that it would be a hell of a lot easier to survive if we worked together. Do we really need some filthy rich prick to extract huge personal profits from the work we do to survive?

[larrysherk]

Anything on which the public welfare depends should not be involved in private ownership.. In our coming world there is no room for capitalism.

[JefriNazri]

Thank you Professor Wolff!

Love these videos. Very eye opening!

[DerekSpeareDSD]

Let's just get rid of all those who profit from all the needs humans have to live.

[drphosferrous]

If there's 10 people in the world and we each have an apple, the first one to take all the apples would win. Most people would starve, the society would fail, and half my apples might rot before I could bribe people with them but I would feel like a capitalist winner and not die immediately so that's kind of a success for me. I'd be a neolithic god king for a few days. Imagine how successful I could be in a scaled up example!

[davidpallotta]

Loved your show for years, but could you explain, STEP BY STEP, the entire idea of forming worker co-ops (where to start, how to start, who to start with, etc?)

[merlynschutterle]

Regardless how you try to regulate, the companies max their profits and pass everything to the consumers.

[backToFreedom]

You forget the milirary industrial complexe. Please add it to the list.

[Joy]

Brilliant Video. I completely agree with Prof Richard Wolff. His Analysis is Brilliant. May God Bless him. Any Normal Healthy Sane & Honest Human Being will Agree with him. We all are with him. May God Bless him. We pray for Prof Wolff. He us a true Gem of Humanity. May God Bless Him. Amen.

[michael]

The Chinese Foreign Minister press conference March 7 was most interesting, rare opportunity to escape mainstream media and get to know what’s happening in the world.

[blogintonblakley]

Here's a newsflash, an economy doesn't have to be profit based at all.

We use profit based economies because authoritarians decide the kind of economies we use. We use the kinds of economies that benefit authoritarians...

{points at the world}

See?

[ekkiazure]

Besides the question of profit, I wonder what measures can be taken to curtail the problem of food waste in our societies. Global South countries have a problem of waste particularly in the distribution and logistics phase, given that our infrastructures tend to be wanting, but in general people are very conservative with optimizing food use once it's in the house, that means, for example, eating leftovers over the course of coming days until finished with or repurposing those into other dishes, like soups. On the other hand, Western countries tend to waste food significantly on the other end: not so much during transportation, but during sales and domestic use. When I lived with a German family, for example, whatever was not eaten after a meal, was thrown away, even if it was perfectly fine and fresh food.

I wonder what can be done to prevent this from happening, especially taking into account that removing profits from food production would render it cheaper. If people already now waste so much food, even when it is relatively expensive in the West, would they not do it even more liberally if the cost is reduced? What can be done to curtail this?

[BBBarua]

If every business in the world runs on "profit" then American Businesses (Big and Small) have to follow that rule. Gov can set a rule to create without-profit Industries and must also block all imports and free trades.

[lacha]

Food, healthcare, housing, education.