Richard Wolff talks about communism as one of 3 basic kinds of socialism

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In this episode, Prof Wolff looks at 3 main kinds of socialism and how they affect the mass of people. In this clip he addresses the second, communism.

"They can get economic achievement on a scale that other societies both capitalist and the other kind of socialism, the regulatory kind, have not been able to achieve. That has to be faced. That is a virtue of those systems. But they too have their problems..."

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Prof. Wolff's latest book "Understanding Marxism"

[allypoum]

All power to the Workers' Councils.

[fortunazee]

Thank you for clarifying the truth, to counter all of the negative propaganda we see in mainstream media.

[SteveScapesYT]

Professor have you spoken anywhere about the ideas in Sander’s worker’s ownership proposals? Moving stock to worker-owned funds, and board of directors representation plans.

[lorenmiller]

He makes some really interesting points, but I'm going to have to disagree with him on some things. First off, and I'm sure he knows this, the Soviet Union and China were most certainly not practicing any kind of communism, and he knows this. He's calling it communism because the policies enacted in those countries were enacted by nominally communist parties, and thus, that's what people mean when they say communism today. It's still wrong, and we need to stop calling it that. Lenin called it "State Capitalism", because that's what it was. Later Soviet leaders called it "Socialism". This is less accurate. There was a lot of private enterprise in the Soviet Union. They deliberately courted that kind of investment, in order to build the economy. That was the whole point of Lenin's State Capitalism, which was meant to be temporary but became permanent, and then evolved.
Secondly, perhaps it is "politically dangerous" as he says, to have a command economy... but there was a lot more at play than just that. Culturally, nations like Russia and China tend towards what we in the West call "authoritarianism". In Russia, the majority of people actively detest Liberalism, and that's because they believe it makes nations weak. They believe that human rights and certain freedoms associated with the Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas, make a civilization weak. It doesn't matter if they are Capitalist or nominally Communist / Socialist. Just look at Capitalist Russia today. Some believe that Putin is a Communist, but this is a mistake, because he isn't. He's denounced Lenin, and Marx, and I think we can take that denunciation at face value. He's just an old school Russian imperialist (capitalist) who has tapped into the Russian national zeitgeist of hating liberalism, and has created a quasi-fascist authoritarian political movement in Russia, based around Russian nationalism, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the historical Russian Empire.
So... is Dr. Wolff saying or implying that it is better to have the American, or British style of State Capitalism in which private enterprise basically runs the government, and the tax burden is placed on the backs of regular working people, who also have little to no political power? If he is saying that, then I would counter that it is only marginally better, if at all.
Thanks to events surrounding the Cold War, the words we use, and how we use them, to describe the Soviet Union and China, are completely ridiculous. It's like Americans and others in the West don't have the faintest clue what Communism and Socialism really mean, but we keep throwing them around and using them in ways that are practically meaningless, whilst we fight over them. The emotional reaction for or against those words has become far more important than any meaningful ideas they may represent, and consequently the entire discussion is still largely a waste. You get really useless, counterproductive explanations by people like PragerU, for example. Richard Wolff, accedes to the usages for these words which are now common. I just can't agree with that, because it's like our understanding of a nation-state which only ended about 30 years ago (the USSR), and that of fastest growing economy in the world (China) is like the understanding that medieval people had of the way the Solar System works, before Copernicus. The difference is, real information is available. It's shameful, and ridiculous, and it needs to be confronted.

[mottscottison]

As someone who studied Marx, how Wolff don't understand the power to central government is dictatorship of proletariat to stop any insidious capitalists lurking thus the vicious cycle? And also socialism is a stepping stone to communism, as emphasized by Marx's dialectical materialism, not 'communism is a kind of socialism', because everything is circumstantial from human behavior, political climate and resources available. Communism is the goal and we are still in infant stages of socialism.

[greatrandomgamer]

But that isn't really Communism though! Communism is just the belief in a classless, stateless, raceless, equal, etc. society. As a Socialist, I support Communism because it is a "good" system. What you are really describing is Authoritarian Socialism. As much as I hate to admit it, the Soviet Union was, in many ways, built on some ideas of Democratic Socialism through the Soviet-Democratic system, while still keeping the state for multiple reasons (especially as a "temporary" instrument of the people of the USSR to help the people through the hard economic times it was heading towards). Of course, much changed under Stalin.

[TheApaura]

Your using inappropriate terminology, they were Bolshevik states, there existed no communism. Communism being of course a classless, moneyless, stateless society. Those states never even called themselves Communist, they said they were Socialist States on their way to achieving Communism (which they really weren't, because of power relations, and were not socialist because their existed no socialized production).

[James-rvyh]

That's called central planning...

[Queenie-the-genie]

Thanks to Professor Wolf for explaining the differences including the benefits and potential pitfalls of a form of socialism called Communism. Many people don't realize that there are different forms of Socialism, Communism being just one of them.

[Dieozam]

LOl I literally just looked up Richard Wolff and clicked this video after coming across a video of some guy giving a lazy tirade against communism to try and attempt to educate myself and for some reason I was unsubscribed wtf either way you do good work my brotha

[rishnayak]

I have a question. The United States began its rapid industrialization somewhere between the 1820s throught 1870s. By 1871 the United States was the largest economy in the world(they also had a civil war). Why is it that socialism is more effective at industrialization? What about the resulting Ukrainian Famines, that resulted(I am not denying that the United States' Captialism also killed people, but definetly not as much as the USSR did in 50 years) in millions of Ukranian deaths?

[emotemoribundinstitute]

Why don't people say "state communism" when there's anarcho-communism why do we humans assume communism is "state communism"? Why can't communism be more governmentally neutral?

[youtuber]

Wolff sure talks a lot about socialism and communism to be “ok keeping private companies” as people argue in the comment section. Why are socialists always so coy about their intent to get rid of private companies?

[electricman]

If Wolff thinks comminusium is so much better why doesn't he move there.

[augurcybernaut]

Specious squishy definition of Communism aside.
At no point does he elaborate on how his economics mitigate against these pitfalls. Neither in theory nor history.

[rk-mqct]

i love how he still chooses to live in America rather than other socialist or Communist countries.lol

[PoliticalEconomy]

It wont happen under liberalism. Liberalism has created so many "damaged goods" of human subjects and citizens it would be a disaster. Not to mention the aging of society and a shrinking youthful workforce. It will only work if there is massive government coercion and investment in education to create socialist citizens. Such a project will still take generations to transform people into the "new socialist man." Democratic socialism like you are promoting would be far in the future assuming we can change the state from liberalism to socialism. I doubt Marx is right that the material conditions create the citizenry, its most likely the other way around: socialist citizens create the material conditions.

[Mrkoak]

20th century communists were not more equal. There were party members and the military and then there was everybody else. Zizek is more honest about the contradictions inherent in living in a Soviet communism.

[phanxm]

CRINGE, when you're in a gulag cuz of him, you can thank yourselves xD