Wolff Responds: Why Economic Policy = Class Struggle

In this Wolff Responds, Prof. Wolff underscores the importance of calling US “economic policy” what it really is: class struggle. The current inflation, as well as the Federal Reserve’s choice to raise interest rates, is hurting the working class significantly more than the employer class. This is class struggle-the 1% vs the 99%-because if employers struggle economically, they can raise prices while keeping employees’ wages stagnant throughout the inflation. In this struggle, Prof. Wolff reminds us, there are alternatives the government can do to control the inflation and we should not be fooled when they say otherwise.
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[@InnerSunshine]

Wonderful, "the importance of calling US “economic policy” what it really is: class struggle"

[@joeows6537]

Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan is beautiful in the spring time, Occupy Wall Street.

[@Rainbirdman1]

Memory overload.

[@sharonreynolds7423]

Why aren't more people following this brilliant man's call to the truth? We are so afraid to look at things with an open mind. Capitalists make sure of this. Sad and wrong.

[@frank124c]

The best way to reduce inflation is to increase the tax for the rich people. Why should they get away with not paying their fair share of taxes when the poor people are forced to pay through their noses?

[@frank124c]

@@resonate9815 Nixon, of course, was POTUS during the Vietnam War. He had to print up money to pay for his war. That's why he went off the gold standard.

[@PashtunDoughnut33]

Oof, as a college student, the thoughts of loan interest % going up is scary. Solidarity all:)

[@jeremyrangel8138]

If college was such a brilliant idea, why are you having a hard time paying that money back? Are you saying these stupid degrees weren't such a brilliant investment, after all?

[@matthewingerson]

​@@jeremyrangel8138 Tell us that you're a fool or a knave without telling us that you're a fool or a knave. Because, with questions like that, you're one of the two. You're either a fool who doesn't understand class-politics in international and historical contexts, exploitation, manipulation, extortion, subjugation, predatory-lending, nor the relationships of masters/slaves, financiers/borrowers, lenders/debtors, and owners/laborers. OR You're a knave who pretends to be ignorant about these things, or you pretend they don't exist. Whether a fool or a knave, neither is worthy of pride. :)

[@ProLaytonxPhoenix]

@@jeremyrangel8138 only an idiot would think that an economic system that seeks to underpay everyone and over charge them on everything would blame higher education for that. Or perhaps you're a paid troll trying to keep people from going to school to keep them ignorant so corporations would have an easier time controlling them.

[@jeremyrangel8138]

@@ProLaytonxPhoenix Nobody is being "underpaid" or "overcharged." If you think your labor is worth more than your employer is paying you, then you can go sell it to somebody else. If you can get your products cheaper than what the store is selling it for, you can buy them somewhere else. Nobody has a gun to your head. Accept responsibilty for your own failures and shortcomings, loser.

[@Octavus5]

Below-market interest rates hurt working people and benefit the rich.

[@badbill6492]

why careers are so difficult to position in to is mainly because the cost of education and training etc..

[@williammdsilva]

Is Wolff here using "class struggle" interchangeably "with class war"? Do they mean the same thing? The way I see class struggle is as what we proletarians do when we organize against our opressors where as class warfare is what we recieve from the owner class. Anyone care to chime in here?

[@carycunningham9510]

Class war is the sum of the struggle from all sides, class struggle is usually class specific, though the 1%'s limitless lust for greed and power, having every advantage to start with, is not what I personally envision as a struggle.

[@MrShanester117]

I honestly don’t get how you got tto where you got. Class struggle is the always grinding between the proletariat and the bourgeoise Class war are the acts that the proletariat/ bourgeoisie class engage in. The struggle is the tension. The warfare is what they do in the name of that tension

[@carycunningham9510]

@@MrShanester117 Can't say your wrong but I consider it distinctions without a difference. The struggle is the "grinding" and the "tension." The war is the "acts" and the "do." It's just a semantic argument. I make the distinctions based on scope, you make them based on some level of activity that you think those words reliably delineate. How about this? It's a big fight over money and the rich, predictably, are winning?

[@jeremyrangel8138]

Who, exactly, are your "opressors?"

[@williammdsilva]

@@jeremyrangel8138 The capitalist class. They use ownership of the land resources means of production houses etc to control people at work forcing us to work long hours just to hike up the prices and tell us to go vote knowing good and well they own both parties. The bourgeoisie in Marxist terms.

[@nthperson]

There is something even more fundamental causing the maldistribution of income and wealth. We live in a society where rentier privilege was carried forward from the colonial period into the written constitutions and laws of the newly-established states and the federal government. What is rentier privilege? This is the private appropriation of societally-created rent from natural assets. What is rent? Every location in a town or city has some potential annual rental value, a value based on aggregate natural advantages and the quality of public goods and services brought to locations. This is why land in the central business district of a city is valued per square foot, why land away from the center is valued by the quarter acre, and why land even further out might be valued based on fertility, on trees to be harvested, or on subsurface minerals. None of these values is created by individual owners. None of these values should be kept by those who hold deeds. These values belong to the community, to society. Not only is this a terrible injustice, but the private capture of rents (which accelerates every year) is a primary source of inflation and a primary cause of our cycles of economic boom and bust. The best analysis of this problem is the trilogy by British author Fred Harrison, titled: "#WeAreRent". The first two volumes of this work are available now. The author is working on the third volume as I write.

[@SeanOCallaghan0106]

When the FED increases interest rates it means it increases the rates for commercial banks which people borrow their money from, right? Commercial banks can't independently decide their own interest rates?

[@andrewlabit]

Commenting for the algorithm :)

[@HillbillyHippyOG]

Who borrows the most? Blackrock. Watch housing prices tank next. 😉 ✌🏼

[@user-zc1xn3re3j]

资本家认为自己是不是劳动者？ 你认为资本家是不是劳动者？ 作为劳动者，马克思的劳动价值论根本伤害不了资本家。但是，为什么资本家必须彻底否定劳动价值论呢？

[@maryamsukaynah559]

Please explain the Crypto coins investments. Is there any benefit for common people?

[@NaderNabilart]

Borrowing while having high inflation, and using ration system .. would this really fix the underlying mismatch between the supply and demand?

[@jeremyrangel8138]

If by fix, you mean make it way worse, yes, yes it would.

[@Consciousmindascendedspirit1o1]

👍🏿👍🏾👍🏽👍🏼👍👏🏿👏🏾👏🏽👏🏻👏

[@thedopestshow5504]

I run a Chanel can I do an interview with you plz it would be my dream

[@Davod2139]

+ The problem with Marxism and Leninism is Hegel. Hegel talks about historical consciousness. I think it was Lao Tse who said: 'People speak flowery words and start nonsense.' We must understand that an 18th and 19th century conceptualisation of what constituted consciousness of any kind is utterly laughable. They were talking out of their arses. Class consciousness, when cast in Hegelian terms is utter tripe. Das Kapital was an attempt to retrofit the idea of so-called class consciousness with a respectable philosophy; the evolution of class relations and class conflict as a motor for change. We grasp onto Marxist ideas because we want to believe. But Marxism is and always was, well meant ratiocinating tosh. There is no direct link between collective relations to production and human consciousness that bypasses individual human psychology, or that overwhelms all other loyalties and experiences in order to determine human behaviour. That is merely a grand surmise. To say that class consciousness is the motor of history is huge chutzpa on the part of Marx. And to take Marx seriously means you must ignore all that we now know about the whole of human psychology and the effect of all the rest of life experiences on a human being. For example: their race, gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, nationality, the football team they like, the affinities they have with other people, their experiences abroad, the influence of their friends, the influence of the books they have read and the movies they have watched, their personalities, their traumas, their education. ..and it goes on and on and on. Human consciousness, geddit? Meanwhile, the majority of us don't share the exact same relations to production anyway, we aren't organised into grand concerts of workers, ready to be militarised at the drop of Trotsky's hat. Pizza delivery boys are the dispatch riders of the proletarian revolutionary army. This is 2022. The age of robots and loneliness, of WFH and zero hour contracts and if and when we unionise it will only be to ensure better pay and conditions - that's been the experience - not to overthrow the capitalist state and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. At best/worst we just riot and loot shops. If people change society, it won't be because they are battalions of angry workers setting up Soviets, it will be because EDUCATED people and self-educated people dislike the status quo and band together inter-sectionally to change society for the good and not for the benefit of some new hegemonic white male dominated working class. We can be socialists without being Marxists. In fact, to be a humane socialist you cannot be a Marxist. To a Marxist we are nearly all for the chop - just ask Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin. arsnotoria.com/2022/01/01/editorial-what-is-humane-socialism/

[@andybaldman]

We ARE organized into grand concerts of workers. They’re called corporations.

[@PCFLSZ]

Sellers don't set prices, buyers do.

[@matthewingerson]

Tell us that you're a fool or a knave without telling us that you're a fool or a knave. Because, with a statement like that, you're one of the two. You're either a fool who's been indoctrinated with propaganda produced by the wealthy-class... OR You're a knave who pretends to be ignorant about these things, or you pretend they don't exist. Whether a fool or a knave, neither is worthy of pride. :)

[@johndzwon1966]

"Sellers don't set prices, buyers do." That's only true if you make some false assumptions. Assumptions like the one that implies that the rules of capitalism are as immutable as the laws of physics, which is a load of B.S. that most people have been brain-washed into believing and accepting mindlessly. The rules of neo-capitalism dictate that thou shalt screw thy end users (consumers & employees) to the back wall in order to maximize profits. Everything else is superfluous.

[@PCFLSZ]

@@johndzwon1966 Does this mean you also disagree with Wolff's assertion that the inflation is caused by sellers raising their prices? Speaking of flaw assumptions, where is it written in the rules of Neo-capitalism to screw end users and employees? Although exceptions always exist, the majority of businesses do neither.

[@rickb3650]

That 's contrary to reality in every way. I've yet to have this conversation with any defender of of neoliberal policy that has anything but 40 year old rhetoric (sales pitch) to back up their absurd claims. Whether it's neglecting to consider significant factors or just flat out fantasy invented to bolster their argument's glaring flaws, it always comes back to "because I believe it".

[@johndzwon1966]

@@PCFLSZ "Does this mean you also disagree with Wolff's assertion that the inflation is caused by sellers raising their prices?" No, that's just another false assumption. "...where is it written in the rules of Neo-capitalism to screw end users and employees?" Do you think that any proponent and/or instigator of such a philosophy would be stupid enough to put it in writing and display it publicly? When dealing with disingenuous and corrupt individuals or groups who are in the business of exploiting others, you will find that what they say is very different to what they do. It's called propaganda. In the West, we believe that we live in a democracy. Behind the facade of democracy lies an authoritarian dictatorship in which most people have to work. As an employee or citizen, you don't get to vote on how the company operates. It's their way, or the highway. I would also suggest that when it comes to corporations and multi-nationals, unethical behavior intertwined with obfuscation is more the rule than the exception.

[@Khannea]

The great emigration wave will soon start where the young will start leaving the US for western europe, fleeing horrible rightwing politics, guns, crime, lousy education standards, racial divisions, rampant racism, the rollback of womens rights, the drug epidemic, the maga insanity, police brutality, the withering wages, insane corporatism, religious madness, sick youth culture, ridiculous work hours, horrific medical care costs, homeless people everywhere, decaying infrastructure, bizarre bureaucracy, weird boomers, gun culture, complete lack of government investments, mass corruption, grotesque environmental disasters, etc. etc. etc. The Netherland will glady take these talented young workers off your hands.

[@skapunkoialternativeliving6522]

That's the beauty of being debt-free you have a choice if you have to borrow money that's your problem..

[@rubensdesateles108]

LULA PT 13

[@Jack-950]

It's dawned on me watching these lectures how whenever anyone talked like this the answer was always "they don't understand economics" except this guy's an economics expert lol.

[@Octavus5]

There are many schools of economics and some of them will accuse some others of "not understanding" economics. Wolff is a Marxist and interprets from that perspective.

[@alloomis1635]

class struggle is impossible in a democracy, as the lower class invariably has more votes. but usa is not a democracy. i bet you didn't know that.

[@michaelandrews4783]

The problem is political parties need capital to exist , therefore the wealthy are much more likely to hold power, especially in a neocon system where unions have been decimated like the USA

[@iwishiknewhowto1228]

What people dont know they live in a plutocratic nation?

[@kokokokow1760]

It's a democracy, but people vote Biden and Trump instead of Bernie. Democracy works only when the majority of people are informed and intelligent. Sadly it's the opposite. That's why Socrates was against democracy. Democracy lead to brexit, religion in schools and gun rights. People are stupid and most of them should not be allowed to vote. It would make much more sense if PhDs were allowed to be politicians and granted voting rights. And only PhD holders from verified universities. If you want to be a politican or allowed to vote, go get a degree and then convince people to vote for you.

[@rickb3650]

@@iwishiknewhowto1228 I think kleptocracy is a more accurate descriptor.

[@PoliticalEconomy101]

Why dont Putin push the button on Davos and do us all a favor?

[@ristekostadinov2820]

Putin is part of the Davos elite, what are you talking about

[@donttread5414]

Government creates inflation, not business. This is the nature of fiat currency compared to a hard currency like gold. Governments are able to have deficits and behave badly due to fiat. The government shut down the economy, printed trillions of dollars and paid people and businesses to not produce goods or work. If we had a hard currency, we would not be experiencing inflation and governments would be forced to have a sound budget. The fed manipulates interest rates to keep them artificially low to "stimulate" the economy which leads to bubbles, speculation, malinvestment and inflation. And prices are signals, they communicate to producers what the consumer wants, if for example the price of gas goes up that means there is a higher demand and not enough supply, more producers will come online and increase supply to meet this demand and as supply increases prices naturally come down. With elevated prices, consumers are encouraged to consume less which ensures there are not shortages. When government creates price controls, they discourage producers from increasing supply, and encourages further consumption which leads to shortages. I dont agree with anything Mr Wolff says and believe in a free voluntary society and free markets, I am an ANCAP.

[@kokokokow1760]

If you allow for higher prices, then the crisis is only for the poor. Firms are not incentivised to create more goods, since with less expense (raw products and staff) they get higher profit margins. Also since prices are high it's much harder for someone to start a business and start competing with the price gaugers. On top of that all the profits the established firms get go mostly to the owner s of the business and not to the workers who actually fuel the economy by buying and producing. You can see this in the GPU and Car and Real-estate markets. Production didn't ramp up when there were shortages, producers just wait to get most of their current inventory and are complaining of high material prices when the material manufacturers do exactly the same thing to their customers. It's not like there is not enough wood or steel in the world, it's just nobody wants to increase production. Regulations are partly to blame here, because there are penalties for letting staff go when the higher production is no longer needed, but most of is just profit greed. Gold leads to deflationary spiral, because when demand is low or production high, commodity pricess can only fall. When this happens people hold their money hoping prices will fall further and thus suffocate the demand part of the economy. If this continues for too long compnies go bankrupt and the economy crumbles. The government and inflation are needed in order for capitalism to work.

[@donttread5414]

@@kokokokow1760 When the price of an item increases it absolutely increases incentive for firms and entrepreneurs to produce this product and make it available to the consumer. The only way this would not work is if we had price fixing and monopolies which can only be enforced by government. I agree, with higher prices it makes it harder for everyone which is why government must not interfere with the free market and make the problem they created worse. Of course the profits go to the owners, its their businesses, they are the owners - highering someone for labor which is voluntary for both parties does not gran you ownership., you are paid for your productivity. In many cases, the owners are hundreds of thousands or even millions of people people, all shareholders, who are the owner, so when EXXON mobile makes profit, this is given to grandma through her retirement and puts food on her table. Real estate markets are manipulated by governments in multiple ways, the federal reserve buys trillions of dollars of MBS's and manipulates interest rates, this creates bubbles and speculation. If interest rates were not manipulated by government and they were determined by the free market and if the federal reserve didnt buy 25% of all mortgages in the country then housing would not be so expensive. Government created housing inequality through the fed's QE programs. In addition, many governments over regulate zoning and building restrictions making literally invisible gated communities which makes building new houses more difficult. Try buying a parcel of land and start building your own house on it, you'll see how quickly government stops you. For GPU / cars from my understanding this is a fault of the chip shortage which is a result of government intervention by shutting down factories / economy from their overreaction to the flu. The words major chip producer for GPU / cars is based in Taiwan I believe. We still have governments to this to this day shutting down economies and creating artificial shortages, and paying people to not work which everyone pays for because its printed money (inflation). Gold has grown its supply from my understanding at about 2% per year. It was not uncommon for times during the medieval / renaissances, etc where precious metals were used that the price of items would stay the same for hundreds of years. Capitalism doesnt require inflation or deflation, all capitalism is is private ownership and the ability to keep what you earn. If someone wants to buy someone, say a new laptop, they will buy it, they wont put it off for ever, people will eventually consume. Inflation is nothing more then the devaluation of the currency through fraud by government central banks that hurts everyone and creates income equality by enriching the rich who own assets and making it harder on the poor.

[@TC-eo5eb]

Wolff's opinion of what causes inflation varies widely from video to video. In this video, he once again blames inflation on employer greed. I have yet to determine if his theory of inflation differs from video to video depending on whether he wears his silly hat or not. Inflation was averaging less than 2% annually for the past several years/decades. In the past 12 months inflation has sky rocketed to its highest level in 40 years. So I guess what Wolff is saying in this video is that employers have been asleep at the wheel in recent years regarding greed and only in recent months woke up and decided to once again get greedy and stick it to the employees. As of May 23, 2022, President Joe Biden (D) had signed 89 executive orders, 72 presidential memoranda, 263 proclamations, and 51 notices. Any connection here with inflation ? Does Wolff even stop to think that inflation affects individual private business owners the same rate as it does their employees? The price of gas, groceries, vehicles etc is no less for employers than it is for employees. Like Covid, inflation doesn't know if its victim is an employer or an employee, rich or poor or liberal vs conservative.