Objective economic analysis is difficult to come by in this heated political moment, with deep budget cuts that disproportionately affect the poor and working class while the top one percent of Americans continue to amass wealth at a record pace.
Professor Richard D. Wolff's academic work and public lectures warning of a crisis of capitalism preceded the current disaster.
Wolff will discuss the fallout of the economic collapse and the ongoing struggle over who will bear the massive costs.
Wolff is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently a visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs at The New School in New York City.
Having accurately predicted the economic collapse of 2008, he is widely sought after as a commentator on the current financial crisis. Wolff is also noted for his ability to distill complex economic concepts and data into palatable, accessible language.
Director of Development and Communications, Truth-out.org
Richard D. Wolff
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum in New York City. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD. He will release three new books in 2012: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books), Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press), and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books).
Wolff hosts the weekly hour-long radio program Economic Update on WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York City (Pacifica Radio). He writes regularly for The Guardian, Truthout.org, and the MRZine. He has been interviewed on RT-TV, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera English, Thom Hartman, National Public Radio, Alternative Radio, and many other radio and TV programs in the United States and abroad. The New York Times Magazine named him “America’s most prominent Marxist economist.” His work can be accessed at rdwolff.com. Wolff lives in Manhattan with his wife and frequent collaborator, Dr. Harriet Fraad, a practicing psychotherapist (see podcasts at www.rdwolff.com on psychology and economics).
Economic system in which most of the means of production are privately owned, and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets. Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of mercantilism. It was fostered by the Reformation, which sanctioned hard work and frugality, and by the rise of industry during the Industrial Revolution, especially the English textile industry (16th18th centuries). Unlike earlier systems, capitalism used the excess of production over consumption to enlarge productive capacity rather than investing it in economically unproductive enterprises such as palaces or cathedrals. The strong national states of the mercantilist era provided the social conditions, such as uniform monetary systems and legal codes, necessary for the rise of capitalism. The ideology of classical capitalism was expressed in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), and Smith's free-market theories were widely adopted in the 19th century. In the 20th century the Great Depression effectively ended laissez-faire economics in most countries, but the demise of the state-run command economies of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (seecommunism) and the adoption of some free-market principles in China left capitalism unrivaled (if not untroubled) by the beginning of the 21st century.