Image by Waywuwei via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Apr 1, 2018
Economist Richard Wolff discusses the coming economic collapse of the United States of America.
From the archives:
A Travesty of Protectionism by Michael Hudson
History of Capitalism in the United States: Exposing the Myth of America + Full Transcript
What If Workers Ran Society? by Elizabeth Schulte
Michael Hudson: Only The Little People Will Pay Taxes
Michael Parenti: Does Capitalism Work? (2002)
Michael Parenti: The 1% Pathology and the Myth of Capitalism
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Here’s a very minor point on which I’d disagree with Hedges or Wolff or both, I forget which said it, but I think one or both of them said the plutocrats of today are retaliating in anger for their losses in the New Deal. That’s not quite right. The plutocrats of today are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ones who Roosevelt saved. I think it’s a mistake to view the plutocracy as some immortal beast that holds an emotional grudge after all this time. No, I think the current plutocracy is attacking the non-plutocrats now simply because they can, simply because it’s a way to make money now, regardless of past history. Let’s not anthropomorphize the beast; doing so can lead us into erroneous reasoning.
Nor is the beast monolithic, a unity. If it were, the plutocrats would be saying to each other “what can the handful of us do to save this planet that the handful of us own? Even we, the super-rich, need a functioning ecosystem.” But it’s not like that. The plutocrats are constantly in competition against each other, constantly looking for opportunities to steal from each other, and each of them takes the attitude that saving the ecosystem is someone else’s problem. They did not decide in unison to destroy the ecosystem; it is their very lack of unity that is destroying the ecosystem. The self-labeled “Patriotic Millionaires” are a tiny minority, a drop in the bucket. All the rich are prisoners of the system — each of the rich is a prisoner of, collectively, all the other rich — so there is no easy way for them to overthrow the system, even if some of them wanted to. We just have to keep working on culture change, and hope that it eventually reaches enough people, big and small. Keep carrying your sign.