[URPE] Sunday, April 11th, Oakland, CA: Rick Wolff on "Capitalism's Crisis Continues; What is to be Done?"

[Robin Chang]

"Capitalism's Crisis Continues; What is to be Done?" A Talk by Rick Wolff

Sunday April 11th, 2010

10:30 AM

Location: The Institute for the Critical Study, at the Niebyl-Proctor  
Library 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland, CA 94609


We are now in Year #3 of the second major collapse of US capitalism in  
75 years. The government's "recovery" has benefited banks and  
share-holders, not the millions of unemployed and foreclosed.  
Subservient to capital, government regulators failed to foresee or  
prevent the crisis. Now even modest and hesitant government efforts to  
overcome the crisis are stalled or corrupted by capital's wealth and  
power in both parties.

A real solution for capitalism's crisis is not another set of  
regulations, laws, and promises to prevent future crises. They have  
never worked. We need instead to change the system at the base. We can  
do better than capitalism. Now is an historical moment when we can and  
should say so loudly. Change must be grounded inside the enterprises  
where people work; we must reorganize production from the bottom up.  
Workers must become their own boards of directors (democratization of  
the enterprise) and share their economic power with similarly  
organized surrounding communities (democratization of the economy).

On that basis we can better pursue the traditional goals of socialism  
(planned economic development for the benefit of all, equal access for  
all to basic education, health, cultural, and other social services,  
etc.). We must reorganize production so that tiny minorities of people  
(whether private corporate boards of directors selected by major  
corporate shareholders or state officials) no longer make all the key  
decisions (what, how and where to produce and how to dispose of the  
profits). That organization has blocked or undone socialism at every  
turn.

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of  
Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He  
is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in  
International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He  
also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.