and joining us now uh once again is
professor richard wolff i always uh
get a lot out of my conversations with
professor
wolf he is as regular listeners know the
host of
economic update on free speech tv
he is also professor of economics
emeritus at the university of
massachusetts amherst and visiting
a professor in the graduate program in
international
affairs at new york university you can
also find his work at democracy
at work.info uh a very informative
website he's put together
and with no further ado richard wolff
welcome back to the program
thank you richard i'm glad to be here
well
you know it's an interesting historical
moment to say the least
and uh i think you have a special
perspective on it because you've been
talking for
and studying uh for a long time
some of the issues that are only
beginning to surface in our political
debate among them
the role of socialism or democratic
socialism
in the political exchange which has been
notably
conspicuously missing from the american
political scene
and the last time you and i talked uh
one of the questions that
that came up and i've thought about this
a lot
is while his fellow democrats
and certainly the republicans and others
are excoriating
bernie for calling himself a democratic
socialist the question arises is he in
fact the last
best hope for capitalism is
capitalism's only chance for survival
the agenda of someone like bernie's that
might rescue
a foundering system before it destroys
itself altogether so
that's where we left off last time we
didn't get a chance to get into it
what are your thoughts on that question
well let me begin by um
talking a little bit about a growing
sentiment on wall street um i live and
work here in new york city i'm quite
close
partly because of my professional
activities and also my interests
to following the conversations down
there
ironically the stronger bernie gets and
he's now
clearly leading in the polls uh among
democrats
for the primary for president that they
are now
conducting um the closer he gets to
perhaps being the nominee
the more you have on the one hand
screaming uh
rants it's really all i can call them
of people who are terrified of socialism
chris matthews on television
um the pollsters who work
and the the advisors who work for the
clintons
for obama and so on the centrist
democrats yelling and screaming
but in wall street a growing number of
conservatives are now seeing
bernie as a positive not a negative
beginning to argue a little bit along
the lines you suggest
that the american economy is in fact in
a very very vulnerable place
it is nowhere near the so-called
great or greatest economy that mr trump
keeps repeating
and that the centrist democrats are
simply afraid
to call out which is ironic if you
remember
that mr trump denounced obama
in the last presidential race for having
a
fake rendition of a great economy when
it wasn't
now mr trump is in the seat occupied by
mr obama
saying exactly what obama did but not
having a corresponding new
trump to call it out as a fakery which
is what it is
anyway these folks in wall street are
saying look
uh the economy hasn't gotten in better
shape
under trump the only thing that has kept
it from being
a crash economy has been an
unprecedented
increase in debt people should
understand
the level of government debt is much
higher now
than it was when mr trump took office
the level of corporate debt is much
higher now
than when mr trump took office the level
of
personal debt is higher in other words
this is a debt-fueled
economy at the same time
that the united states's ability to
weather
another economic downturn is poorer
than it has been for a long time because
the united states does not occupy in the
world
the position of top dog the way it did
as recently as five or ten years ago
because of
china above all else but also because of
the united states is withdrawal
from large parts of the world that have
made the europeans
and that's a very important economic
bloc
uh much more ambivalent about their
alliance with the united states
much more open and interested in doing
business with china
as you can see around the huawei
corporation maneuvers
and so on uh this is a very
vulnerable economy and the folks on wall
street the smarter ones
are beginning to recognize that just
like after the great depression in the
1930s
it became necessary to have franklin
roosevelt
left winger by american political
standards
it is going to be con probably similarly
necessary
to bring in a new franklin roosevelt
i.e bernie sanders who tries very hard
to present himself as a new franklin
roosevelt
it might actually be a very salutatory
step necessary to be taken
because in the event of a crash which as
i say most
observers in in wall street believe is
only a question of when
not a question of whether whenever that
comes
you're going to need a lot of effort to
prevent
a break from capitalism and these people
see in bernie the kind of saving of
capitalism
that they credit franklin roosevelt for
having done before
you know it's interesting uh richard
wolff because on the one hand you have
elizabeth wolfe
i'm sorry elizabeth warren proudly
proclaiming
i am a capitalist um about her
programs policies while many of them are
you know quite good they're not
as uh bold or aggressive as bernie's
and i would agree by the way that bernie
bernie's plans could be much more
bold and aggressive than they are by
historical standards
uh but they're very to me they are very
much in the tradition of
franklin d roosevelt uh bernie does not
proclaim himself
a capitalist uh but one thing i've
noticed
is whether it's in my own discussions
with extremely wealthy people
or what other what they themselves have
said
in public or to other journalists or
what have you
uh or at davos or elsewhere is that
while i
consider the relentless pursuit of
wealth
frankly sinister and while i consider
those who excel at
it far more likely to be pathological
than the average
human being nevertheless i
find among those types of people
um a very clear-headed
kind of realism and i mean they didn't
get there by sugar coating the facts
either about themselves or opportunities
or the
economy or anything else and they're the
ones
i mean robert johnson the economist
talks about this law
they're the ones building landing strips
so they can fly away to new zealand
if society collapses all together
they're the ones with contingency plans
they're the ones douglas rushkoff wrote
about we had doug on this show
who want to know how to have
encampments i i mean the the the most
hard-headed planners in the country
also have contingency plans for utter
societal collapse so it's
it seems to me if they see
in bernie's by our political standards
quite bold proposals
a chance to save the system to me that's
not at all surprising
nor is it necessarily a reason not to
support bernie by any means it just
says that the people who are you know
calculating the probabilities
think it might be a good thing to have a
very
fdr like president and program in this
country is that
fairer is that you agree with all that
yes i think that's basically
what they're saying if they know
something about history which some of
them do
then they know that bernie is about the
mildest kind of socialist you're gonna
get
uh number one so he's not a scary person
on that level
and if you know some history and you
know how the government works you'll
know
that he will have to work with a
congress that even if it is sympathetic
in some general way to him
is full of people who will be enemies
political
and ideological of anything and
everything he tries to do
and then there are those who are smart
enough to understand
that the government's impact on a
capitalist economy like ours
is deeply limited from the get-go no
matter who's in the office
something presidents have had to learn
if they weren't smart enough
before i'm also struck by the fact
that the people most anxiety ridden
about a socialist becoming president
tend to be the politicians who have
built their careers
uh in the last 30 40 50 years
in which the united states has been
engaged in an
ideological a battle against communism
and socialism
and these people have begun to believe
their own rhetoric which often happens
and so for them a socialist is something
you denounce
because that's how politics works and
the idea that they actually have to deal
with
one um simply it goes beyond what
they're able to
to cognize i'm not surprised if the
clintons talk like that
or obama talks like that or their
advisors talk like that
and i like you i'm much more impressed
that the
folks on wall street understand
that whether it's bernie or somebody
else
whether the person calls himself or
herself uh a capitalist or a socialist
really matters less if capitalism begins
to fall apart
which i believe it is already doing in
this country but if that happens
you need politicians who will have
some kind of solution mr trump
has been offering a solution and that is
to scapegoat
foreigners to act out a theater
that we're holding back an invasion of
immigrants
to act out a theater that all of our
problems are the
fault of other countries not treating us
properly
and all of that is going to be fixed by
the great negotiator trump
this is all nonsense it's economic
makes no sense at all but it's good
political theater
it's the first pass at trying to save
capitalism
as it demonstrates that it doesn't work
that the system is getting more and more
fragile then you're going to have the
people who run this country
look elsewhere and bernie is the
only uh really new and different thing
and he and elizabeth warren as the kind
of
uh equivalent if you like on this side
of the socialism label those are the
people that offer something
sharply different and i'm not surprised
that the folks at the top
who see that fragility are beginning to
take
a long and sympathetic look at
a better deal to fix the system than
trump has proven himself to be
so richard wolff this is at this point i
want to
introduce uh the concept you're probably
familiar with and a lot a lot of us on
the left are familiar with
uh the term sometimes used is
accelerationist
the i the the school of thought that
says this system
is vile and corrupt and hateful this
economic system and oppressive
and we should do nothing to mitigate
the the suffering or the crises
it is producing because if we do that it
will delay the inevitable revolution
so let's you know make keep uh allowing
things to get lousier and lousier and
lousier because that
accelerates the moment of absolute
revolution and
overthrow of the system that's how i
would describe an acceleration is
so somebody listening to this is saying
well
if they wanted him because he could save
capitalism then
you know the hell with him let's just uh
let's get
uh somebody let's get uh buddha judge or
amy klobuchar and
even if they go in it's all going to go
to hell and then we can have
a new world what what are your thoughts
about that
yeah i pretty strongly disagree with
that i mean i think
two things one the left in this country
while it is much stronger
than most people either understand or
are willing to admit
uh still doesn't have the strength to
make all that much a big difference
to how this system evolves whether it is
accelerationist or not
so i don't get too excited about that my
second view
is is even more strongly opposed to it
because i think most americans
understand that the people at the top
the one percent the top five percent it
doesn't really matter
the majority for whom this economy is
working well
are overwhelmingly the people who
celebrate it
who think it's great like president
trump
um who celebrate whatever good
statistics
they can find like the low unemployment
rate
without looking too closely because if
you do it's not so good anyway
uh those people are silent and if the
left
instead of being critical instead of
trying to do something
to help people in this bad economic
situation if they become silent my guess
is most people will think of them
as like they think of the people at the
top silent
because it isn't going badly for them if
you want the mass of people
in their suffering and by suffering i
mean
carrying debts they cannot support
having to worry that their children
can't get a college education
without making those debts even worse
the worse
worrying about how secure their job is
whether the social security will make
them
paupers when they're in retirement all
of the
deepening critical worries of the mass
of people
if the left isn't battling to help that
get better then they aren't going to be
trusted
with being the ones you turn to if the
system collapses
the way you become the alternative
is not by waiting until the crash
happens
you better demonstrate long before that
who you are what you fight for what your
beliefs
argue because only then do you have a
chance that when the crisis hits
you will be the direction people decide
to follow
revolutions don't happen because we have
a clear
prognosis of what's going to happen in
the future they are not made by
or won by people with detailed
blueprints
what happens is the system falls apart
people become aware of it
those are two separate things and when
they become aware of it
they look for what to do next what might
help what might work better and they
turn to the people they know
they turn to the people they've worked
with they turned to the people they
might have some reason
to trust and the left has to be that
if it's going to have any hope uh in the
time of severe trouble
uh to win uh its view of where the
future should go
uh well said and again we're talking
with professor richard
wolff um hey you i was thinking as you
were speaking about kierkegaard's quote
that life can only be understood
backwards but it has to be lived
forwards i think that's
maybe to a certain extent true of of
revolutions as well but
you're saying you know lay the
groundwork be be that
resource in people's minds when they
when when there's a crisis
i think that's right if i could
interrupt sure
your point is still very valid because
it's not enough to say you have to be
there fighting
it would make you all the more
successful
if you could be an honest advocate
an honest act activist an
honest militant and by that i mean
fight for the reforms fight for the
the step forward however modest but
don't shy away from saying
exactly that i'm fighting for what i
can achieve here and now under the
constraints
but i'm not a misleader i'm not going to
hype
what we're fighting for a higher minimum
wage
or a change in the tax structure
and tell you which has been the crisis
of the
of the center left for so long and tell
you it's the solution to your problems
massive people have been led down that
path they don't believe it in the large
part
anyway and they would be much more
impressed
and much more likely to follow with real
sincerity somebody who says i'm going to
fight for the reform
here and now but i'm going to tell you
that without going
much further in the direction of social
change
these reforms either won't be won or
even if they're
one will prove temporary because we
haven't yet made
the social changes that can make these
reforms
secure look at what happened in the
great depression
we really did have an upsurge of reform
we did have the new deal
we did have a bernie-like character in
uh fdr and we made big reforms
social security unemployment insurance
the first minimum wage and a federal
jobs program
that hired 15 million people we achieved
a lot of reforms
but an awful lot of people thought that
by having those reforms
put in and by having a president like
roosevelt
we would have a reform to capitalism
they didn't go further they left in
place
the structure the capitalist structure
in which large numbers of us work
to produce profits that go into the
hands of a very small number
and guess what that fact that we didn't
change that structure
allowed that small number gathering into
their hands the profits
we all produced for them to use those
profits
to make sure that the reforms won
in the 1930s were taken away
in the decades since that we have to
learn
from that that only the more basic
social change
can make secure the reforms
we fight for and i guess the the analogy
i would give there richard wolf was that
in the area of economics i i
i personally know best of financing
health care
the reason why i want to get the
insurance industry
entirely out of health care the reason
why i want for-profit
providers and the investment firms that
go invest in them
out of the healthcare system is the
analogy i use is rust if you have a
rusty fender
and you paint over it and and put a
finish on it
it will look good but the rust will keep
beating away
and so you have to address the rust the
problem of corrosion in this case
uh uh profit-seeking corrosion
at least in my view in certain segments
of the economy or you can't go forward
but there's something else before we get
off the the whole question of the
debates i mean
there are two thoughts i wanted to
express and then get your thought
uh your reaction to one first of all and
you can react or not
as you like but i think it's actually
quite
astonishing given our political history
of the last 75 years
that there was even a debate about the
virtues of socialism
televised uh on behalf of one of the two
major political parties that to me
is is something that not only bernie can
take pride in but that his entire
movement could take pride in
and especially i would say and i think
bernie would agree especially the
movement so that to me was striking
and as part of that i have to say as
perverse as this will sound
i felt a certain measure of gratitude
that michael bloomberg was up there on
stage
particularly when bloomberg and bernie
were having it out
because i was thinking to myself now i
never
thought i'd see this is the kind of
class war i'd buy a ticket to
you know just to see these two go at it
from there
to perspectives and and and maybe i i
i'll close with this
while i said earlier that you know a lot
of wall street types are extremely smart
and hard-headed about the world around
them
they also have the capacity to be
astonishingly dense
and michael bloomberg to me is exhibit a
in this he's one of the
all these people who signed on to pete
peterson's initiatives
we have to cut medicare and social
security and
tighten our belts because we just you
know the economy can't take
more we have to let our infrastructure
crumble or whatever we can't raise taxes
et cetera et cetera
when it comes to the economy as a whole
as opposed to their own lives i think
they're astonishingly dense
and i think in that democratic debate we
saw some of that going on so
i threw a lot i threw a lot at you but
what are your thoughts
well i let me pick up on two or three of
the of the many points that you made
sorry about that not a problem not a
problem um
[Music]
first of all i take my hat off to bernie
right away i mean he's already won
something incalculably important
no matter what happens from this point
on he
both in 2016 and now again
he has demonstrated to the american
people
and to the world that the socialism
they thought was over with what had
become a historical anachronism
whatever the wishful thinking of the
people who wanted to
believe it that socialism has once again
proven that it isn't dead that it is
capable of inspiring
a whole new generation of young people
with an alternative to capitalism
and that that is alive and well here in
the united states
where we now see millions and millions
of people
finding it normal and appropriate
to discuss the strengths and weaknesses
of capitalism
over and against the strengths and
weaknesses of socialist
alternatives what an achievement
given the 75 years of hysterical
anti-communism and anti-socialism making
the united states
almost the only country in the world
where the socialism that is discussed
everywhere else in the world
had to become a taboo he's broken that
taboo in ways
nobody on the left or the right or the
middle
would have thought possible as little as
five years ago he didn't do it by
himself i don't want to over
credit him the occupy wall street
movement
was an important step in that direction
as were
others but he is the point man
who pulled that off and he did it again
last night in holding his own being able
to
handle a bloomberg which is not a tough
call
given who bloomberg is but nonetheless
he did it and you
you're right the symbolism uh could not
have been
uh sharper and starker as is the attempt
of mr bloomberg
to buy his way into this job the way he
has
bought his way into the new york
mayoralty and so on
so absolutely uh this is an astonishing
um achievement i also think
that it is a pipe dream if mr
bloomberg were to become the next
president
under the cloud of the billionaire
status he comes with
which is even worse than this similar
billionaire status
whether it's true or fake of mr trump
i mean it puts billionaires back to back
in an
economic system that is declining
that is discovering that the europeans
and the chinese
and the brazilians and the indians and
so on are catching
up on them bit by bit
year by year that the relative dominance
of the united states
is less and less and all the problems
that come
with that those are then going to be
managed by
two billionaires who are already viewed
as
odd as different
and as either disasters by half the
population
or as increasingly dubious
saviors by the other half their own half
so
you you really have a society and that's
i think what's worrying to people on
wall street
you have a society that needs
particularly
creative political leadership
and is in fact generating obtuse
business mentalities who have everything
that is the opposite of a sophisticated
nuanced political capacity
for leadership what mr trump does is
bloviate to a desperate part of the
population
that wants the theater that wants to
believe
that the problems can be solved by
whacking
immigrants or or being a white
supremacist
or bashing china uh this is
you know a a society that is going to
grow out of these illusions and mr
bloomberg
brings in the illusion that because he
was the right guy at the right time
in the financialization of our economy
with some technologies thrown
in that that that qualifies him to be
the president
these illusions will be quickly gone
through
and then what well and the only thing i
would add to your characterization of
these two
gentlemen is that you left out uh the
fact that they
are cartoonishly uh mean
uh sexist creeps but uh other than that
i i wholeheartedly endorse your
description
i guess in the couple maybe i shouldn't
do this
since we only have a couple of minutes
maybe it's a preview of our next
conversation but i would say that not
only is the u.s
in decline on the global stage but that
the global financial
reflected by banks by central banks by
uh by uh multilateral or
institutions of one kind or another uh
as well as by the
politicians that are supported by said
financial
uh elites uh that that their world
view is enormously uh under
challenged from left and right because
it is
in my view conspicuously failed uh to
deliver
on its promises or to provide stability
so
i mean if you have a closing thought on
it or just want to say let's preview it
i agree i mean one of the reasons you
see
uh whether it's the angry mass of the
british working class
voting for a brexit what a what a
wonderful
test case here are people who have
suffered very
badly the british working class suffered
more
through the 10 years of austerity since
the crash of
2008 than arguably almost
any other working class saved perhaps
for the greeks perhaps also the italians
but yet despite having suffered the most
were most
easily distracted into the
total illusion that the europeans were
somehow
at the root of their problem and that's
separating from
europe going it alone in a world
economy in which north america is a big
block
the rest of europe is a big block china
is a big block japan is
in trouble because it isn't part of a
big block
and they're not going to join japan by
being another offshore
island all on its own this is
crazy the british people aren't crazy
but you have to ask
why you would have this illusion because
the system
isn't working and yet
it isn't yet possible for the people who
suffer
a system that isn't working to be able
to identify
that their problem is the system they're
looking for scapegoats
they're looking for somebody else to
blame and partly i
sympathize it would be nice if by
separating from europe
you could solve your problems but you
can't and it might be acceptable
the morality put aside to go after
immigrants the poorest of the poor
if it reasonably could solve your
problem
but it can't any more than bashing china
can and so eventually
you're going to have more and more
people coming
reluctantly perhaps to the conclusion
that you need much more basic change
you need the kind of wrenching internal
social change that you have wanted to
avoid
that you have wanted to believe might
not be necessary
i wish it weren't but it is
and when systems die that's how they die
as people go through a variety of hoped
for easy outs and then discover
that's really not gonna solve the
problem
i think we're getting closer with each
week
to that kind of what the french call
de numo the kind of the
suddenly becoming aware of what you're
really
facing and in a way the movement towards
bernie is itself the recognition
particularly in young people that
something much more fundamental
is at fault here in the united states
and they gravitate towards the person
who at least sounds like he has some
sense of that
because the rest of them sounds so far
removed i absolutely agree with that
assessment
i certainly hope the optimistic
dimension of it is true
and uh i think we should all internalize
that and not get discouraged by the
setbacks of the moment
uh whatever they may be at any given
moment so with that
unfortunately uh we're out of time but
as always richard wolff economist host
of economic update on free speech tv
as always uh great speaking with you and
thanks for your insights
thank you richard and again my
appreciation for your having a program
that puts these kinds of conversations
out there
in the hopes that people will think
about them and come up with their own
contributions