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with Cornel West and Richard D. Wolff
GRITtv on Jul 28, 2015
A conversation about capitalism with two brilliant minds, Cornel West and Richard D. Wolff, together in a rare joint appearance. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, and author most recently of Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown 2010- 2014/ Dr. Cornel West has written or edited dozens of books, including classics like Race Matters, and Democracy Matters. His most recent is Black Prophetic Fire, written in conversation with Christa Buschendorf. Also in the show, activist Manju Rajendran tells us about a small business that is successfully operating under an anti-capitalist economic paradigm. And Laura raises questions about the record-setting settlement with BP over drilling disaster in the Gulf Coast.
From the archives:
Chris Hedges and Richard D. Wolff at the Left Forum 2015: Marx: The System is the Problem
Chris Hedges: The Enemy is Corporate Power, Part 2
Joe Hill Was Right. Don’t Just Mourn. Organize! by Rev. John Dear
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The opposite of capitalism isn’t socialism, though. It’s a sales tax. Ironically, the only person advocating it is a religious nutjob (Huckabee). Take the FairTax plan and increase the rate and the prebate until the poor are fed and the air and water are clean. Jobs, schmobs. People will do work they need to do if they are allowed the resources and the time. Working 4 jobs to pay rent and gasoline isn’t freedom: it’s just mean.
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Reblogged this on Rcooley123's Blog.
I don’t think you could have said it any better, David. Spoken like a true mystic who has a good grasp on the Cosmos and Universal Law.
As much as I like Cornel West, he was duped for the first several years anyway, that the “hope and change you can believe in” President was the knight in shinning armor coming to the rescue.
I agree it is high time we approached Marx as a moral philosopher rather than as some “communist” bogeyman. The dignity of the individual is exactly what life teaches. Cornel stresses the notion of individuality. An even better term might be sovereignty. Each individual has the right to exercise self-determination.
My own view is that we must escape from an unnatural mono-cultural fixation on utilitarianism and rediscover metaphysical integrity. For without creative will, nothing is achieved. We do not really understand the Universe, so why not face that fact, and conduct ourselves accordingly? As the ancient Daoists knew so well, strength grows in direct proportion to spiritual humility. Real humility honours truth, not vain illusion; for life itself is deeply mysterious, not an exercise in mystification.
When we banish true mystery or shroud it in the limiting projections of our own devising, we deprive ourselves of the capacity to question, to be curious, to reflect, to meditate and to cogitate our destiny. Mystery may be the enemy of truth when it is an excuse for complacent inaction, but it is also is the great affirmation of the possible. None of us knows what we are capable of, until we exercise our own sovereign capacity to overcome doubt, and affirm the real mystery of conscious intent.