My view is ideal economic system is in between capitalism and cooperative. History is greatest evidence that not any of them ultimately serve the purpose of progress and benefit of all civilian. How should be proper mixture is dependent upon thinking/attitude of civilian which ultimately dependent upon the country's era(time)/geography condition /economic health status etc. This also means there is not magic mixture formula which applies for all country and all the time. Formula is dependent upon time means it's not static , its dynamic. and such change gives civilian a new energy/spirit to create a new and better economic system.

Perhaps it is time we re-evaluate the economic model of Henry George. Share the wealth of natural resources and technologies through resource rents and let markets materialise without monopolies. By taking out the unequal relationship between workers and employers people can decide. This would also address the issue of capital for business. Instead of money coming from "rent-seekers" this could be addressed with a social banking system funded by resource rents.

This guy is a hack. He is forgetting all the good stuff. Consumers and workers have the ability to alter the markets. Refuse low wage jobs. Refuse high cost goods. Don't borrow money. Consume goods that are made from renewable resources. blah blah blah.

Here is the truth. Greedy corporations have monopolized and cheated you out of every cent they can in a capitalistic approach because you let them. They have noticed a trend of you not doing that anymore so they invented a new game. The game Remove Risk.

We could have done what he proposes by refusing to work for anyone unless they offer stock options to employers at a lower than market rate. Its called profit sharing and its pretty much everywhere.

I enjoyed the video a lot. Especially since It layed the blame on the capitalist system. For the sake of brevity I will only address the parts I disagreed with. The straight line comparison, seem to imply workers and capitalists up to the 70's were increasing wealth at the same rate. If that is so, if exxons profits went up 5% and my wages go up 5% I am suppose to be content. I think if we compare the relative wealth of capitalist to workers we are becoming poorer as workers, as capital gets concenrated into fewer and fewer hands. No doubt relative to exxon daily profits I am but a pauper.

While I did see a dramatic change start in about the mid 70's, I do not limit the change to the US. It seems like capitalist have one mindset. If there is a bailout here..there are bailouts all over the world. If we have cutback in social services, they attempt cutbacks in Europe. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagans counterpart in the UK, iniitated very similar attacks on the working class as Reagan. Since then, it seems the attacks on the working class have increased. It seems both parties in the US have shifted to right. Yesterdays republican party is todays democratic party. If the attacks on the US are harsher, its most likely because unions in the US are weaker. That has more to do with the decline in the standard of living than anything else. We need to win back all the rights Unions have lost since the late 1800's. I have seen strike after strike since the 78 coal miners strike go down in defeat. The fact Reagan was able to fire the controllers without a follow up strike to force the govt to rehire all the controllers and also to win the concessions they were fighting for, shows much we need to rebuild our unions.

Since most Europeans enjoy better health care, and some a shorter work week., I think American workers are getting the shorter end of the stick.

My cousin once removed is Karl Marx. He is considered "An Agent of the Devil," by the Chinese because his "Big Book destroyed their country with Communism."

I like the scholar here, who actually studied Marx: "m m" since it appears this brain actually thought through the "rhetoric" and could read the writing that was intended for ALL COMMONERS.

How to put the predatory capitalists into checkmate.

Cannibalization is true, "The game REMOVE RISK" is on and the goal for only 500,000 to inhabit planet earth is very real.

For whom doth this IDEA/AGENDA intend?

Study the Protcols of Zion, and then read Marx again.

HENRY MAKOW, PhD., is a scholar of this historical reality: Capitalism is THE TOOL, to bring the planet earth and all its' natural resources (human Goy are simply "cattle," btw), into a full spectrum dominance by the Israeli Zionists and their minions.

Notice Wolff dates his work to bring attention to this, as, 1948. Hmmmm, this is when the STATE of ISRAEL was also allowed to be, to make certain all the Jews and non-Jews of the "Holocaust" (forensic investigation of this as well as 9/11 MUST FINALLY BE DONE for pity's sake!), could live together on the earth as a beacon of hope to all, a light of democracy in the Middle East .... it goes on and on when predatory capitalists make up their "minds" (oxymoron) to rape, pillage and plunder the earth and all its' wealth.

Time for a new idea. Study the PROTOCOLS OF ZION, so we can rewrite history into a sane future.

Confession: I came here, but did not watch the video, yet.

This is what I have read, by Professor to put my comment at this site: Capitalism in Crisis: Actually, "It's the System, Stupid" ~by Prof. Rick Wolff

globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11577

Point in case, in my opinion: The State of Israel was set-up by predatory capitalists as a ruse to take over the whole planet. How convenient to set-up the ADL, in the US, and take away basically all freedom of speech. The PLAN has been very well implemented and the end game goal, in THEIR OPINIONS, is already ONE HALF THERE.

Too bad the internet was not around in 1948, then we would not be in this critical mass insanity of Zionist rule to "govern as GOD/s of earth."

conspiracypenpal.com/columns/wolf.htm

Another WOLF with only 1 F, but this is worth the read, too.

The U.S. has paid Israel over $1 Trillion since its inception and, by continuing to support this apartheid regime, is complicit in Israel's crimes. The latter charge, though morally obvious, is difficult to prove in a court of law but Israel's crimes are not.

globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11580

I really don't understand how anybody can take Wolff and Resnig and Gibson-Graham/ the rethinking marxism crowd seriously as marxist theorists.

Marxist analysis? I don't think so.
No mention of the falling rate of profit/ composition of capital. His explanation of the slowdown in the 1970s is based on underconsumption and demographic changes.

As for the solution: popular post-fordism ain't socialism. The idea of workers establishing petty commodity producing firms is a utopian fallacy that Marx explicitly argued against. What happens when those engineers are forced by competition to start employing wage labour? They go from cooperative to capitalist firm. The relationship between exploitation and labour goes beyond the firm to the state, the operation of market and the law of value. Ending these requires more than some yuppie fantasy of setting up a firm in someone's garage.

Ben & m m - Sorry but Marx did emphasize worker control, not state control (Critique of the Gotha Program, for example). He derided workers who looked to the *state* to create co-operatives as unfit to rule, but never argued against worker control. That's Bolshevism, not orthodox Marxism.

Marx's "right of inequality", outlined in the same document, also establishes the "right of equal measure" where value is measured not by currency but by the direct labour value of the products. The notion that "engineers are forced by competition to start employing wage labour" is meaningless in Marx's system because wage labour and surplus value are impossible. Goods are being exchanged against labour certificates, which are worth nothing more and nothing less than the labour they represent. To hire a wage worker for an hour, you would have to work for an hour (given equal intensity of labour). All labour of the same intensity is equally valuable - whether brain surgeon or janitor - 1 hour at average intensity being worth products equal to 1 hour of labour production at average intensity. Surplus value is impossible because there is no means to expropriate it.

Fascinating how all the little self-righteous lefty "intellectuals" have all come crawling out of the woodwork since the recession began. Just check out the pretentious up-turned collar on this guy, and that should give you plenty of warning that nothing useful will emerge from that mouth!

Ever try to read any of his work? I say "try" because you'll realize within 2 minutes that he has absolutely nothing intelligible to say. It is all vague and cyclical gobbledygook -- like staring into a black hole and wondering why you can't focus on anything.

And one after another the proletarian pettifoggers post their neo-marxist hooey in the comment thread, each earnestly trying to outdo the other in their sharp little critiques of the phony professor.

MORE DISTRACTION FOM OBVIOUS SHILLS...

This gentlemen certainly earns the BIG BUCKS by creating myth, distraction, and distortions in collusion with mainstream media. Add Moyers, Black, Celente and more to this list.

Myth of American Invincibility Omnipotent Wall Street
newsblaze.com/story/20090418172350zzzz.nb/topstory.html

I'd like to see this guy debate Rush Limbaugh. The Left doesn't understand the most basic natural realities. Some people are born to be entrepreneurs and create wealth. Most people are not smart enough or motivated enough to do anything but work for these entrepreneurs. That's the reality. Government can't change this. If the government gives everyone health care they won't be motivated to work hard. Productivity will drop and we will all be worse off. The problem with the Obama administration is they won't let the natural process of capitalism work to cleanse the system.

Well, I can see why he is as U-Mass rather than one of the better Boston-area institutions.

i wish this guy would give some sources to back up his "facts" like for instance the "fact" that the hours worked per week per year has gone up 20 percent since the 70's.

I found an interesting graph from the OECD, that right-wing hate group (sarcasm), that tells a different story.

1.bp.blogspot.com/_CQyU4ayBifw/SSmiDLHdghI/AAAAAAAAB6M/vVUYLrvMwhk/s1600-h/hour+per+year.jpg

Gabriel Chapman - I assume the OECD chart is hours per worker. Does Wolff’s figure refer to hours worked per family?

His blackboard graph confirms recurrent reports that real wages in the US have stagnated for decades. A Google search with “low wages in America” found “Over the last 20 years the real wages of blue-collar workers in the US have risen only 1.1%, although total compensation was up 10% thanks to the rise in benefit costs. Service workers did a little better in wages, with a 1.4% increase, but over all had only a 9.1% increase in compensation over the two decades.” More at nytimes.com/2006/02/04/business/04charts.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Wolff rightly notes how competition between employers for profits causes them to reduce wages then to complain demand is too low, from 18:42 mins. But this endemic problem requires a systemic solution not escape into irony! Responsible employers have paid good wages and militant trades unions have obtained a proper share of output. Now free trade with nations where low productivity requires very low wages compounds the problem especially when exchange rates are set by free capital. And when more is saved than can be profitably invested, borrowing by governments and peoples can maintain demand but is unsustainable!

I have graphs of average earnings divided by output and retail prices for the UK since 1970. Until 1992 this varied within a 10% band depending on whether government was more worried by inflation or unemployment. But in 1993 it started to fall and by 08Q2 was 24% below the average in 92; a central value since 79. Then the index rose, as output and retail prices fell and earnings did not, to 16% down in 09Q2. It’s an ill wind that blows no good! Surely real wages have been too low for over a decade? Yet British politicians reject the moral prices and incomes policy that worked well in the 1950s and 60s.

In Reform the International Monetary System, governor of The People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, values the global currency and Clearing Union Keynes first proposed in 1941 to avoid the build up of debts and protectionism that had led to war; in English at pbc.gov.cn/english/detail.asp?col=6500&ID=178.

And UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report, 2009 proposes reforms to the international system and warns of wage deflation. See the Overview on Downloads at unctad.org/Templates/Webflyer.asp?intItemID=1397&docID=11867.