Beyond Piketty’s Capital: Richard Wolff Warns us Not to Band-Aid Capitalism
Last edited Sat May 3, 2014, 07:25 AM - Edit history (1)
WASHINGTON (VR)— Perhaps the biggest event in the intellectual history of the young twenty-first century is Thomas Piketty’s new treatise, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Together with his collaborator Emmanuel Saez, Piketty has led the way in researching economic inequality over the last decade, and he has marshaled all of his expertise to produce a devastating indictment of the capitalist system.
Piketty has challenged the legions of establishment economists and political spokesmen to defend the system, but, so far at any rate, the Right has no answer. The upshot may be a sharp shift leftward in the consciousness of civil society. And, as we discuss below, the shift leftward may go further even than Piketty himself has countenanced.
Piketty’s mastery of the dynamics of economic inequality leads him to conclude that, barring a major wildcard or sustained, aggressive state interventions, the economic system of the developed world is primed to deliver ever greater returns to capital over the next few decades (at least), and relatively lower returns to labor. In consequence, the economic elite of the developed economies of the world stands to become an entrenched oligarchy, where the very few who possess great wealth will effortlessly accumulate ever more, while the rest of the population will be making do with ever less.
In other words, we are entering a period of “patrimonial capitalism.” Apart from the egregious injury patrimonial capitalism will do to economic justice, it will also suck much of the dynamism out of developed economies.
For insight into Piketty’s arguments and his policy proposals, Radio VR’s David Kerans spoke with University of Massachusetts Emeritus Professor of Economics Richard Wolff, who is also a co-founder of Democracy at Work, an organization dedicated to overcoming the worst features of modern day capitalism by building a social movement of economic renewal through workers’ self-directed enterprises.
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Wolff warns that we cannot band-aid capitalism. However laudable and even attainable may be suggestions from economists like Piketty or Dean Baker, to name just two, piecemeal policies designed to stop the system from funneling wealth upwards will not work for long.
The elites are fully focused on preserving and expanding their fortunes, and the structure of the contemporary economy puts in the hands of a very few people in large corporate enterprises “both the incentive and the resources to roll back whatever adjustments a movement from below is able to make.”
http://www.rdwolff.com/content/beyond-piketty%E2%80%99s-capital-richard-wolff-warns-us-not-band-aid-capitalism
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Regulating capitalism is like riding a hungry tiger. It's VERY difficult (or impossible) to do and you're always in danger of being eaten. 
I also find that realization depressing. We can't even get progress here in the US to regulate and redistribute via New Deal type policies (I have been battling that particular windmill for thirty years now), so how in the hell can we find a way to implement real solutions when the patient refuses to even allow that meager band aid?
Major surgery is necessary, but no one will sign the consent form.
As I said, realizations can be depressing.
BTW, great name for our little group here.
I personally think that it's because the macroeconomic narrative for 40 years or so now has been some form of neo-liberalism. And since it HAS been 4 decades, that means that all the teachers of economics now are neo-liberal. So it's a self-perpetrating cycle that Piketty himself came out of. Anyway Piketty comes along to seemingly reinvent the wheel with another view of economics and , voila, it's daring and radical because it's different from what every other economist takes as Gospel.
Add in to the mix the fact that Marx and Engels have been "discredited" with the fall of the USSR and their ideas can be recycled as something new AS LONG AS YOU TAKE SOME OF THE PRESCRIPTIONS OUT OF THE EQUATION! And yes it helps that he's got a boatload of data to back up Marx's observations and predictions about where the rules of capitalism will take us.
Mostly it's about the discrediting of Marx though. As I said above, EVERYBODY in the economic justice movement thinks they have to reinvent the wheel because you can't be thought of as hanging on to a system that's been "proven" wrong. That not only includes economists, but it also includes organizers and the potential leaders of the anti-austerity movement too.
Personally, I see no reason to reinvent said wheel. Marx and Engels are being proven correct daily, economically, politically, and socially, V.I. Lenin and Trotsky are still the only revolutionaries to overthrow a capitalist system using Marx's prescriptions. That's good enough for me.
BTW, welcome to the Socialist Progressives group of DU.
I am also extremely annoyed that every single economic textbook ever seems to consider Adam Smith a minor deity, while Marx is interesting, if misguided. I just wanted to learn some economics, thank you, not listen to a political diatribe. but perhaps the two are inseparable.
thanks for the welcome; I have a feeling that I shall fit in well here.
about the way economics are taught nowdays in college and university. And I get that there are differing theories about economics. It IS a "social" science after all. But with rare exceptions, ALL of the instructors of economics today are out of the neo-liberal mode and that leads to a certain type of ideological thinking where you look to prove your preheld premises.
BTW, read the TOS for this group pinned at the top. Just so you'll know what you're getting into.
But it's always helpful for new posters to know what they're getting into.
However, you don't have to be a full blown commie to join and contribute. We're kind of an "Ecumenical Council" of the farther left here.
We've got anarchists of all stripes, Trots, Stalinists, Democratic Socialists, other types of socialists. Shoot it wouldn't surprise me for there to be a few Maoists as members. It can actually be summed up pretty easily. Don't red bait and don't resort to name-calling. Argue the ISSUES rather than the personalities and that includes the personalities who are dead. And yeah, don't be a dick sums it up nicely. Response to socialist_n_TN (Reply #15)
Thanks red!