The Sonoma based nonprofit Praxis Peace Institute recently sponsored a lecture by Professor Richard Wolff at the Sonoma Community Center. Wolff has taught at Yale University, the Sorbonne in Paris, and is currently a visiting professor at the New School University in New York. Wolff hosts a nationally syndicated weekly radio show “Economic Update” which airs locally every Friday morning on KPFA. Wolff is widely recognized for his scholarly work on economic methodology, class analysis, and Marxian economics. His recent work has been focused on analyzing the causes and alternative solutions to the global economic crisis, challenging the conventional wisdom that capitalism is the optimal framework for the political economy.
The room was packed to capacity, definitely the most well attended lecture I have ever seen in that hall. Professor Wolff (or ‘Rick’ as he prefers to be called), is a lively and animated lecturer who comes across like your New York uncle who’s there to help you to “Wise up, kid!” He opened by explaining that he has been on the road for months, offering his critique of capitalism and its cure, and speaking to sold-out crowds all across the U.S. This was not, he explained, just a result of his charming persona or his series of best-selling books (Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism; Capitalism Hits the Fan; Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism). Even 10 years ago, he reminisced, a public lecture by an alternative economist might draw a handful of grad students and activists. An organic shift in the American zeitgeist, post-Great Recession, has opened a space for a public discussion of the merits and deficiencies of the economic operating system currently running in America, i.e., capitalism.
A topic that was once taboo in American culture is now on the table, as the populace loses faith in the wisdom and credibility of the mavens of conventional economics and their mainstream media (MSM) mouthpieces. This disconnect is deepened daily by the constant drumbeat of MSM reporters telling us about the ‘recovery’ (by which they mean a rise in stock market prices and corporate profits) that is simply not evident in the ordinary American’s daily experience.
In a masterful survey of the economic trends in the Western developed nations over the last half century, Wolff traced the roots of the recession to the enhanced mobility of global finance capital and the deliberate destruction by a resurgent capitalist class of the New Deal social coalition. This rise to unchallenged economic and political power was enabled by major technological advances in transportation and communication and a massive investment in electoral politics. Outsourcing of the manufacturing base to low-wage centers in Asia broke the back of the American private sector labor unions, thereby eliminating the most powerful social force that had the resources to check corporate power. Corporate profits soared and vast sums were ploughed back into American domestic politics to buy a government that would reliably ensure that the tax burden would continue to shift from corporations and the rich to the middle and working classes.
European, U.S. and Japanese politicians, in thrall to their capitalist class, did little to stop the relocation of industrial production and the subsequent rise in unemployment and drop in real wages. Public services declined as government budgets were cut, thereby amplifying the destructive social impacts of the recession. Capitalism is no longer delivering the goods for the majority of the population. The shock and awe of severe capitalist cycles has struck fear into the population and generated a deep anxiety that puts the system into question in a way that we have not seen for many decades. The multi-trillion dollar bank bailout, passed within days of the Crash, and the subsequent long silence regarding the fate of millions of unemployed and foreclosed citizens, has so transparently exposed the underlying mechanism of the capitalist system that the legitimacy of the system itself has come into question.
The ideological mechanisms that kept the populace in line behind allegiance to the ‘free market’ system have lost their hold on our collective imagination. The threadbare MSM euphemisms used to obfuscate the reality of global corporate capitalist goals (“deindustrialization,” “post-industrialism,” “outsourcing,” “world-class competition,” “free-trade agreements,” “declining middle class,” and “austerity”, etc.) are a source of ridicule and scorn for a growing critical mass of citizens. The Occupy Wall Street movement produced a slogan (“We Are the 99 percent”) that brilliantly condensed decades of critical theory into a simple unifying theme.
Wolff and his colleagues at Democracy at Work, a nonprofit organization, are proposing a new tool for the progressive toolbox, the Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprise (WSDE). In addition to the necessary and important work on legislative initiatives to humanize capitalism and temper its social and environmental impacts, the WSDE is a DIY approach to retaking power over our economic fate by establishing our own collectively owned and managed enterprises. This democratization of the workplace is one of the precursors to a genuine democratization of politics. There are already hundreds of WSDE’s in the U.S., the most notable one locally being the Alvarado Street Bakery.
The most powerful example of a highly successful WSDE in the world is the 50-year-old Mondragon Cooperative in the Basque region of Spain, now 85,000 members strong. Praxis conducts an annual tour to witness and study this creative and durable alternative to the conventional corporate business model. Traditional socialism failed because it relied on nationalization of the means of production and government economic planning without fundamentally changing the power relationships within their enterprises. Commissars were just CEOs with a red sash. Wolff’s stirring conclusion was that
democratizing the power structures within the workplace, and the cultural and psychological shifts that would entail, is a key element to evolving beyond capitalism.
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