Ask Prof Wolff: A Mistaken Critique of Marx

A patron of Economic Update asks: "Famed economist Vilfredo Pareto, who was a lifelong adversary of Marxism, believed that Marx’s view of the history of class struggle was highly oversimplified and misleading – that the struggle goes far beyond the proletariat/capitalist dichotomy. Would you care to respond to this?"

This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

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“A magnificent source of hope and insight.” Yanis Varoufakis, Greek economist, academic, philosopher, politician, author of Talking to my daughter about the economy.
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[sorinruga]

As Hitchens said: "Us Marxist focus on class not because we see it as more important, but because nobody else does"

[almanzaralbert]

As usual, excelente. This video needs to be translated in Spanish!!!. Of course, this video needs to be shared.

[DuderofDudeness]

Thanks Prof, however, I want to highlight other comments that the audio is too low in this video

[blakereid]

You know the problem with Newton? It’s not all about gravity dude, there are other important things. What about ocean currents or chemistry. Didn’t have anything to say about that. GRAVITY DEBUNKED

[LaOriental]

Volume is way too low. Would you be able to fix this? Thanks.

[ArchaeanDragon]

Audio volume needs to be boosted a bit. Having to turn up system volume quite significantly.

[bistromathcommander]

I'm a little confused by the comments about low volume. My phone is an old model, I'm using cheap ass ear buds, and I don't have sharp hearing, but I can hear the video just fine.

[DavidSanchez-vxbv]

it's urgent and very important that Marx and his work would be re-studied, reviewed in all the World. The genius of Marx transcended centuries

[tantzer]

Men and women can be thought of as different classes in societies where their economic contributions are different in kind and where their rights and obligations are different. Racial conflict, too, frequently has a fundamental class and economic dimension.

[susanmercurio]

Thorstein Veblen came out with a great critique of Pareto's point in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class.

[freddistenbrain]

Sound level way too low. Crank it up Professor.

[TheRantingRooster]

Great retort Professor!

A couple things. (Production wise)
1. Audio on this vid was really too low.
2. On the tail end of videos, allow a little more video at then end, so the end cards/links do not interfere with the message. One shouldn't see an end card before the speaker has finished.
3. I liked the lighting color in this video much better than most others. The lighting in the others is more blue, making you look pale/sickly.

[liquidsnake]

Ah yes, Wolff, the one who drops redpills on people like "you make more money for your company than they pay you *shocked pikachu face*"
i'm eagerly awaiting the time when he finally reveals to people the hidden truth that merchants actually pay less for what they sell you than you are paying them :O

[paulbest]

What a shame Milton Friedman wasn't born 100 years earlier. He might have shown the lazy, freeloading Marx how capitalism can work for the individual.
It is not about class struggle, it is about your struggle and my struggle. We each are responsible for ourselves. Both Marx and Fidel Castro had no regard
for money. Marx, in particular, thought it was acceptable to disregard his financial obligations, a common theme among the left. The world does not care you owe
$50, 000+ for degrees in Russian Literature, Eastern Religions, or Philosophy. That is your debt, you have no right to make it mine, as well
.

[SR-lhrm]

With all due respect to Professor Wolf (sincerely), the Marxist theory of production as articulated here is not rooted in scientific rigor or even a basic understanding of how business works in practice. Businesses do not produce goods and services. They produce VALUE in the _form_ of goods and services. Professor Wolf's first point in this video - that certain individuals employed by businesses are external to the production of goods and services - suffers from a mistaken view of production and what is actually being produced. Businesses produce value not goods and services.

Production does not end when goods or services come off the assembly line, because again goods and services are not what the business entity produces. The business entity produces value, and that value is not realized (does not come into existence) until it is sold to the customer or client. It is at this time, and not before, that the business entity's value proposition is completed. Before someone says "I want/need the thing that was produced here" there is no value or production. Value is inherently subjective not objective in nature. The "assembly line" conception of production that Professor Wolf falls victim to here is properly speaking concerned with pre-production, not production.

If the secretaries, purchasing agents, salespeople were not absolutely essential for the realization of the firm's value proposition, they would not exist in a system that tries to maximize profit; so in addition to being wrong the Marxist theory of production is also self-contradictory since it holds that all of this activity is occurring in a context of ruthless profit maximization by capitalists. If capitalists didn't need secretaries, they would eliminate the need for them altogether and keep the profits since capitalists only care about profits according to Marxist theory.

Marx was not an economist or a businessman. He was a historian and a Hegel enthusiast, which is fine and not a knock in any way, but he should be read as such. I like certain novelists, but I don't go to these novelists for financial advice. That would be crazy. Consulting a historian (Marx) for a philosophical world view is similarly not a good idea.

[danieljones]

Some more clarification of what Karl Marx attended to in His Work. Thank you, Professor Wolff.

[rodgerbane]

It's obvious to me, looking at history and human societies, that you've got to have socialism but you've also got to have Capitalism, and real Capitalism, not a lemonade stand or two. And now we can look back failed attempts to establish purely socialist societies. And I'd argue that attempts to create purely free market societies are also doomed to failure and you can look back and actually see it. So, how do we get to the sweet spot?

[stephaniecarrow]

Excellent as always. I would love for Prof Wolff to examine the exploitation of some others by capitalists, i.e., mothers and teachers. One produces, and both teach and prepare, the future workers, usually without adequate, or any, compensation.

Also, volume needs to be higher.

[nigelpalmer]

I think we should redefine the meaning of the word Race as it pertains to PPL, since PPL's physical characteristics change over time partly depending on how close to the equator they live also the Genome project has sort of proved we are actually a species, the word race annoys me more the more I hear it.

[ITNoetic]

Adding another comment to say that I'm not really seeing this is a solid response to that critique of Marx because, in my experience, Marxists take Marx's arguments to mean that other struggles (race, etc.) are at best secondary to class, and at worst antagonistic. To the point where I've seen them actually try to work against efforts to fight for the race struggle, due to their wanting to shift that fight to class.

Basically, a bunch of White leftists arguing against help specifically for Black people.