Ask Prof Wolff: Expanding Economics Curricula

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A Patron of Democracy at Work asks: "How different would teaching economics be in a world full of coops? What would be the same/different?"

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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Follow Wolff ONLINE:

[Robalini]

"Oh good, now I can fire half my workforce." That was a great impersonation of Elon Musk.

[jasonbenyousky]

this is a great topic to discuss. as someone who is taking an econ class that is very obviously biased towards right wing libertarian ideas, i have had to do hours of research to rebut essentially everything in the class. they only cite hayek, friedman, and have quoted people like thatcher and Reagan too.

re-education is a long process when it comes to unlearning everything that capitalism foists onto us, and this discussion is vital to opening up that process

[WileyCylas]

Prof thank you as always for sharing ur endless knowledge with us! (& not being stingy with it like the hoarding capitalists!) I enjoy seeing the varying comments perspectives & questions

[davidluckens]

Last fall, on his "Update " program, Prof Wolff mentioned a footnote in an article by a researcher for the FED named Jeremy B Redd, "Why do we think expectations matter for inflation"? The footnote-no.2 in the article reads thusly-"I leave aside the deeper concern that the primary use of mainstream economics in our society is to provide an apologetics for a criminally oppressive, unsustainable and unjust social order"Adoplh Reed jr, another distinguished scholar, once quipped, ""economists attend a church where the cross is upside down"--rough translation.

[DerekFullerWhoIsGovt]

Being so close to a survival teaching, economics takes on religous conotations

[DavidCodyPeppers.]

5:43
We will cut everyone's hours in half...[and pay them the same salary].
Peace!
\o/

[DeathToMockingBirds]

Your point about automation only stands if the COOPs are NOT in competition with each other. Otherwise market dynamics will still drive them to optimize for profits (shared, but still).
The missing key is that sure, we can be organized within workplaces LIKE COOPs, but the bulk of necessary production has to be COLLECTIVIZED, socially, ran democratically by all citizens.

[positrone]

Please make a Mastodon Account for Democracy At Work. Thanks

[kevinschmidt]

'Ten years ago, there were around 350 worker co-ops in the USA. Now there are nearly 600, largely thanks to a perfect storm of economic and social change. This has been witnessed by the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), the national grassroots membership organisation for worker co-ops, whose mission is to ‘build a thriving co-operative movement of stable, empowering jobs through worker-ownership’.' Aug 7, 2018

[Guitarpima]

You will never, I repeat, never fix a problem, using the same system that gave you the problem. May I suggest you research the Venus Project. Also, research the zeitgeist movement.

[penguinnh]

Would Twitter be in the mess it is if it had started as an employee owned cooperative?

[odgnj]

The second a company gives free time to workers another company will spring up work more with less people and bankrupt company a.

[jgalt]

Hey, the crypto-robots appear to be missing today...and they usually account for the majority
of comments on this site.

[jgalt]

Just for fun...Federal Government Employment for 2021

1, 408, 055 ...EMPLOYEES

365 AGENCIES

$78, 795.11 AVERAGE SALARY

$110.95B TOTAL SALARY

[lloydmoore]

All my life i know man shall eat bread by thy sweat. today folks are laugh at..are consider to be fools for working hard. it's always the workers fault, never the system.
for not being able to succeed.even if you have two or three jobs. it's always buy some stocks man!! society are fast becoming risk takers gamblers hence work are increasing becoming deleted.

[clarestucki]

A guy with three Econ degrees should be embarrassed putting out such a rant of left-wing political ideology disguised as Economics. He doesn't even think to ask who would provide the new high-tech machines that would permit the co-op members to still earn the same income working only half as long ???

[chuckleaf]

No. It is the old debate. If you look up most socialist parties... they promote co-ops.

Chavez==>>>"giving preferential treatment to cooperatives in state purchases of goods and equipment."

Cuba>>>"Cuba is planning to use co-operatives to help its weak economy. But will the government give co-ops the political space to develop their own independent goals?

Lenin--->>>>"The following pages contain extracts from the speeches of Lenin dealing with the role of the co-operatives in the revolutionary struggle of the workers."

Found that stuff in two minutes.. It's not a new debate at all. Wolff is pushing age old communist ideas. PLAIN AND SIMPLE..

[GhostOnTheHalfShell]

I would add the field would also have a vastly different theory of economics than the current orthodoxy. Prof Steve Keen as an example, who has demonstrated just how much the math and assumptions are both wrong empirically or logically broken. The entire field is an incompetent joke.

[jeremyrangel]

Does nobody realize how stupid the concept of running a business "democractically" is? Why the hell would we let the guy that cleans the toilets make critical decisions within the organization? If the janitor had actual business acumen, he wouldn't be cleaning the toilets, now would he?