Democracy at Work: Curing Capitalism | Richard Wolff | Talks at Google
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Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York City. He wrote Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism and founded www.democracyatwork.info, a non-profit advocacy organization of the same name that promotes democratic workplaces as a key path to a stronger, democratic economic system.
Professor Wolff discusses the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, our incomes, our debts, those of our children, and those looming down the road in his unique mixture of deep insight and dry humor. He presents current events and draws connections to the past to highlight the machinations of our global economy. He helps us to understand political and corporate policy, organization of labor, the distribution of goods and services, and challenges us to question some of the deepest foundations of our society. For more of his lectures, visit the Democracy at Work YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/democracyatwrk.
Get the book here: https://goo.gl/XDxuDL
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Capitalism's fundamental structural problem is that a tiny group of corporate decision-makers control production while workers and communities bear the consequences of those decisions without participation, making the system inherently undemocratic and producing inevitable instability and inequality; the solution is democratizing enterprises through worker cooperatives.
- Corporate boards and major shareholders make all key decisions (what to produce, how, where, what to do with profits) while excluding the majority of workers who must live with the consequences
- This non-democratic power structure causes corporations to maximize profits for owners at workers' expense through automation, wage suppression, and externalizing social costs
- Worker cooperatives like Mondragon demonstrate that democratic workplaces can outcompete capitalist firms while producing less inequality and preventing job exodus
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Capitalism is neither inevitable nor the end of history; all previous economic systems (slavery, feudalism) claimed finality but all have been born, evolved, and died, and capitalism will follow the same pattern.
“What are we accepting? It's not inevitable. It never was. Oh, true. The people who like capitalism love to say it's the end of history. It's the final stage. But the people who articulated slavery said that. And the people who articulated feudalism said that. So of course the people who run capitalism say that. But the burden's on them. Every system we know of in human history has been born, evolved over time and died.”
The criticism that Marx's labor theory of value is flawed misses Marx's actual argument, which distinguishes between prices (market-determined) and values (socially-allocated labor), a distinction that predates Marx in Smith and Ricardo.
“If you actually read Marx, and by the way, it's not that difficult. I guarantee you if you read Marx, you'll know that he makes a distinction between values and prices. He talks about prices and what causes them. He talks about values, which for him are something else.”
American higher education institutions in the Cold War deliberately excluded Marxist analysis from economics education out of fear, preventing students from understanding critical alternatives to capitalist economics and thus crippling the country's ability to address economic problems.
“Never in my education in those three institutions in an economics course was I ever assigned one word of Karl Marx... My professors were afraid to assign it, to read it, to think about it, to discuss it, or to debate it. It was the Cold War when I went to school.”
Capitalism has been characterized by fundamental disagreement about how to understand economic systems, unlike fields with scientific consensus, with debates as stark as whether the sun goes around the earth or vice versa.
“Economics has been what philosophers call an agonistic field. A place in which different ways of understanding the economy contest with one another, fight it out.”
The Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in Spain, a collection of 150-200 worker cooperatives employing 100,000 workers, is now the seventh-largest corporation in Spain and has outcompeted dozens of capitalist enterprises while maintaining an 8:1 maximum wage ratio (vs. 350:1 in US corporations).
“Mandreon Cooperative Corporation is the seventh largest corporation in Spain. It has 100,000 workers. It is the biggest success story of the Spanish economy in the last half century. It is a collection of 150 to 200 depending on how you count worker co-ops.”
Student debt is a unique innovation of American capitalism where families borrow money to finance higher education, creating explosive levels of indebtedness that contributed to the instability leading to the 2008 crash.
“In a stunning innovation of American capitalism over the last 25 years, we borrow to send our children to college, producing a level of dead indebtedness that is explosive and which explains part of why we crashed in 2008”
Wealthy capitalists intentionally undermine political democracy because they understand that in a genuine democratic system, numerical majorities (non-wealthy people) could use voting to redistribute wealth and undo capitalist achievements through taxation or expropriation.
“If a society produces greater and greater inequality, you all understand what that means. tiny group of people with a lot of stuff and a lot of other people just barely making ends meet. The people who have a lot, they aren't stupid. They understand the danger of democracy and of universal suffrage because sooner or later if a tiny group of people have all the wealth and everybody doesn't, everybody's going to think the one thing we have is the vote... The rich understand that they've got to make they've got to neuter the political system. They can't let it function in the appropriate way because too dangerous for them. And so they buy it.”
The way voting works in corporations, each share gets one vote, so if someone owns 27 million shares (like a major bank), they control millions of votes while a worker with 11 shares controls 11 votes, making it mathematically impossible for ordinary shareholders to influence corporate elections.
“You get one vote for every share you own. So if your grandmother left you 11 shares, you get 11 votes. If you are Chase Manhattan Bank and you own for your various accounts 27 million shares, then the vice president you send to the annual meeting of the shareholders votes to 20 million shares. You could think that you're just like him, but you understand you're not. If 1% of the people own the bulk of the shares, that's the 1% who decide all these elections.”
The Great Depression (1929-1941) involved unemployment rates hovering around 20-25%, demonstrating capitalism's inability to self-correct and leading to John Maynard Keynes' argument that government intervention was necessary to prevent revolution.
“From 1929 to 1941, the United States had unemployment rates hovering around 20 to 25%. That's five or six times the unemployment we have now.”
The fundamental difference between Keynesian and neoclassical approaches is not whether to solve capitalism's problems, but whether government intervention is necessary; both accept capitalism as the basic system, making this debate secondary to deeper critiques.
“The debates were not only between those who loved capitalism and felt it should be handled by the private business community being able to do its thing, deregulate, let the economy work versus the Keynesians who loved the system but said in order to make it work the government has to come in.”
When corporations automate jobs to increase profits, the private corporation captures the profit gain while bearing no cost for the social consequences (unemployment, depression, family dissolution, community decay), making automation socially unprofitable even when privately profitable.
“They get depressed. They get sick. They start desperately looking for jobs... The social costs of all of this are staggering and always have been. But that's none of the problem of the corporation. It bears in a capitalist system no responsibility for that at all.”
Real wages in the United States have been stagnant for 35 years—equal to late 1970s levels—and Americans sustained consumption growth only through women entering the workforce and debt accumulation, creating an unsustainable situation that contributed to the 2008 crash.
“Real wages in the United States are the same today they were late in the 1970s. The only reason Americans have had to been able to consume a rising amount in the last 70 years is because of two things they did... Number one, a vast social change happened... women who have left in millions lives as homemakers, wives, mothers, and so on and become members of the paid labor force... But it turned out it wasn't enough.”
Worker cooperatives would not move production overseas to reduce labor costs because workers voting to shut down their own company, jobs, and community benefits would be voting to destroy themselves, preventing the 30-40 year exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States.
“A worker co-op would solve its problems in a different way... Imagine a corporation confronted with the notion, gee, you know, why are you hiring Americans who you have to pay a large amount of money to? Why don't you move to India? You can pay much less. capitalist corporation, as you know, has been doing lots of that. Worker co-op, unlikely. The workers would be voting to destroy their jobs, their company, the benefits to the community of having the jobs there. They're not going to do that. You wouldn't have seen the exodus of jobs from this country for the last 30 to 40 years.”
Neoclassical economics, which developed in the 1870s, explicitly rejected the labor theory of value as a reaction against Marx, not for scientific reasons, and substituted utility theory—which is equally difficult to measure empirically.
“Neoclassical economics which developed in the 1870s for those of you who know was itself a reaction against Marx. They hated the labor theory of value because it was associated with Marx.”
Marx was not interested in the mainstream economic question 'Why is the price of this hamburger $5 and a Mercedes much more?' but rather in understanding the power dynamics and labor allocation in the production system.
“I'm going to now exaggerate, but to make my point, Markx wasn't interested in that and I'm not either. I got many more interesting things I want to understand about this economy than why the prices of things are what they are... Markx is coming at it with a different agenda and so he starts in a different place and takes it in a different way.”
The priest who founded the Mondragon cooperative in 1956 recognized that waiting for capitalist employers to bring jobs to poor post-war Basque country was futile, so he organized workers to become their own employer through cooperative structure.
“In 1956 Spain... was a very poor country... In the Basque region... very very poor... They had a local priest and he made a famous joke one day in church. He said, 'If we wait to have jobs for some capitalist or some employer to come here, we'll all die of old age.' So, what I suggest, he said, is that we become our own employer.”
Millions of employees must live with the consequences of decisions made by corporate leadership (such as factory closures, relocations, or automation-driven layoffs) from which they are legally and practically excluded from participating.
“Meanwhile, there is a large number of people 500, a thousand, 10,000, 100 thousand, hundreds of thousands, millions who are employees of the corporation. They all of course have to live with the decisions that the board of directors and the major shareholders make. Well, let's give you an example. We're going to close this factory or office here in New York and we're going to move it to China. Have a nice day. or we're going to substitute these machines for these working people and lay them off. Have a nice day.”
To understand a system fairly, one must listen to both supporters and critics, just as one would interview both children in a family to understand it fairly—therefore, people should listen to both those who think capitalism is excellent and those who think it is a fundamentally flawed system.
“If you wanted to understand the family up the road that had two parents and two kids, would you decide to interview one of the two children, not two? Especially if you knew that one of the two children thought it was the best family in the world. The other children other child thought this was a basket case of psychological dysfunction. Probably most of you would understand. You got to talk to both of the children. Then you make up your own mind. Hear what they have to say. Hear the people who think capitalism is the best thing since sliced bread. But maybe also take a dare. Listen to the people who think it's critical, who think it's a system that never could do what it had promised.”
Despite graduating Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, obtaining a master's degree in economics from Stanford, and earning another master's degree in economics and history plus a PhD in economics from Yale, Wolff was never assigned any work by Karl Marx in any economics course.
“Now listen to this. Never in my education in those three institutions in an economics course was I ever assigned one word of Karl Marx. There is no excuse, no justification, nothing.”
Keynesian economics dominated from roughly the 1940s to the 1970s, then was entirely pushed out and replaced with pre-1930s economic thinking that rehabilitated the private market as the solution.
“Keynesian became the dominant economics in the world for most of the period roughly the 1940s to the 1970s. And then it was all pushed out and we had a return of what existed before the 1930s.”
Whereas political democracy demands that citizens who must live with government decisions participate in making them, capitalist enterprise explicitly excludes workers from participating in decisions they must live with, making capitalism fundamentally undemocratic.
“The mass of people in our economic system are required to live with the consequences of the decisions made by the corporate leaderships. Decisions from which they are excluded legally and in practice de facto. Whatever else you call this system, it is not democratic.”
In Mondragon cooperatives, workers collectively hire, fire, and evaluate managers, reversing the capitalist relationship where management evaluates workers—if managers are unsuccessful, they are removed.
“two interesting rules that might excite you. Rule number one, the workers together hire and fire and evaluate the managers. I know I have to let that sink in. In other words, it's the opposite of what you have. The workers decide whether the managers were successful, and if they weren't, they're gone.”
The British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has committed to legislation that would give workers the right of first refusal to purchase their company as a cooperative before it can be sold, closed, or taken public, with government loans to finance the purchase.
“The second biggest political party in Great Britain is called the Labor Party... the leader of the Labor Party, a man named Jeremy Corbyn. His party has committed that if they've run governments before... they're committed that if the Labor Party wins, they'll pass this law part one. Any existing business in England can continue as it is, but if it decides to close and or if it decides to sell itself to another business and or if it decides to go public to issue shares, it must before doing any of those things give its own workers the right of first refusal.”
China will face capitalism's characteristic instabilities and inequalities as it develops further, and both Chinese and foreign capitalists will eventually create the class struggles that characterize capitalism everywhere.
“If capitalism was what's coming to China, as I believe it is, both Chinese and foreign, then the instabilities and inequalities of capitalism everywhere else will descend upon China, too.”
The corporation, as the dominant institution of capitalist production, concentrates power in a tiny group: shareholders (1% own about two-thirds of shares) and a board of directors (12-20 people), who make all key decisions about what to produce, how, where, and what to do with profits.
“1% of shareholders own about two-thirds of the shares... A major shareholder owns millions of shares... those 50 people more or less make all of the key decisions for every corporation that works like this, which is 99% of them.”
The existence of worker cooperatives and their success (Mondragon) proves that democratically-organized enterprises are not utopian fantasies but practically achievable and more stable than capitalist firms.
“Stunningly successful, outco competed dozens of capitalist enterprises who could not make it work in competition with them. They're so successful now that they have their own university, the Mandreon University”
Wolff co-authored 'Contending Economic Theories' (2012, MIT Press) to provide English readers with systematic comparison of neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian economics and introduce heterodox perspectives to the economics profession.
“In 2012, a colleague of mine, Steven Resnik and I, we did a lot of work together, published a book called Contending Economic Theories. It was an attempt to create for the for English reading public a book that systematically compares neoclassical Keynesian and Marxian economics so that a generation of students would um have something to find”
Marx concluded that capitalism is not merely unable to deliver liberty, equality, and fraternity, but is fundamentally an obstacle to achieving them; therefore humanity must devise an alternative system or perpetually bump against capitalism's inherent limits.
“His conclusion was that capitalism was not only unable to bring it, but that capitalism was a fundamental obstacle to ever achieving it. And that therefore the human race, if it wanted liberty, equality, fraternity, and democracy, would have to devise a system other than capitalism.”
An employer hires a worker only if that worker's output in an hour will be worth more than the hourly wage paid; therefore workers always produce more value than they receive in wages—a surplus that becomes profit and is appropriated by owners.
“The only reason any employer will ever give you $20 for an hour of your work is if that hour adding you to whatever the payroll already is... you're going to make more goods or services for that company to sell than they would have if they didn't hire you... the company's calculation is it is worth it for me to hire you for $20 if and only if the extra hour of your labor will yield to me, the employer, more than $20 worth of extra output for me to sell.”
Capitalist corporations have systematically relocated production from Western Europe, North America, and Japan (where capitalism was born) to China, India, and Brazil since the 1970s due to lower wages and modern telecommunications allowing remote management, causing Western capitalism to decline while Eastern capitalism booms.
“Why the hell are we in the United States or Britain or France or Japan? We can now supervise production in a factory in China or India or Brazil with modern telecommunications as easily as we can before supervise the factory across the street. And we can fly anywhere in the world in a matter of hours... Capitalism over the last 40 years has abandoned the countries in which it was born and reached its maturity.”
Every president of the United States since the end of the Great Depression has presided over an economic downturn and promised it would be the last if the people just followed his prescribed policies, yet no president has kept this promise.
“Every president of the United States has been a president over a downturn... every president has promised during the downturn that if we just do whatever the things are he thinks we ought to do, we will overcome that crisis, overcome that downturn, and never have another one. Every president promised it. No president has ever delivered on this promise.”
The notion that one can 'earn what you're worth' in capitalism is false—workers fundamentally cannot be paid what they're worth because if they were, there would be no profit for the employer.
“And this is tough on Americans, it means that if you've spent a lifetime telling yourself you're never going to work for anybody who doesn't pay you what you're worth, I've got real bad news for you. That never happened and it never will. That kind of statement to yourself is your way of avoiding to deal with the system in which you live.”
Even if government nationalizes a corporation, removes private shareholders, and replaces the board of directors with state officials, the fundamental problem remains unsolved because the internal structure still has a tiny group (now state officials instead of shareholders) making all decisions that everyone else must live with.
“If the government doesn't just regulate, but let's suppose the government goes a step further, fires all the private boards of directors, takes the property away from the shareholders, and says, 'This is now a government enterprise.' and then puts into the board of directors not individuals elected by shareholders. They're all gone, but officials designated by the state apparatus. You 20 people will now run this factory. That's a little bit like what happened in the Soviet Union in 1917. That didn't work out too well either. And why? Because it didn't change the internal structure of that enterprise. Yes. Instead of privately elected people as in private capitalism, they had state officials. Interesting change, but that doesn't change the fundamental problem.”
The U.S. appears clumsy at solving economic problems because the country has had to pretend for decades that capitalism has no fundamental problems, which means people are not good at fixing it when it breaks down because they refuse to acknowledge its flaws.
“Some of you have been wondering why when we have economic troubles here in the United States, we seem so clumsy about solving them. We have had to pretend in economics that we don't have any problems, that we don't have a fundamentally troubled system, that we don't have anything to worry about, which means you're not real good at fixing it when it breaks down. For that, you'd have to face that it has lots of flaws. You'd have to look at how it broke down before and see what it is that might be a miss.”
People blame immigrants or politicians (like Trump) for economic problems because they lack understanding of the structural causes (capitalism's shift to Asia); removing immigrants or changing politicians won't solve anything because it doesn't address underlying structural realities.
“Which is why the trauma of politics is becoming so turbulent as this is slowly dawning on people and they look to to blame somebody. A favorite one is of course immigrants. Let's pretend it's all them who somehow are to We'll just kick them out. It won't solve anything. We'll kick out the old politicians and bring in Mr. Trump. Doesn't solve anything either. Dump Mr. Trump, that won't solve anything either because you're not dealing with what the underlying realities are that have provoked all of this situation.”
American political discourse has not seriously debated the pros and cons of capitalism itself in 50 years—a graduate student was unable to find a single congressional debate on capitalism despite searching the entire House and Senate record.
“I once had a graduate student. I said, 'Go read the congressional record, the literal record of every debate in the House of Representatives and the Senate and find me a debate over the pros and cons of capitalism.' He couldn't find it.”
Capitalism's instability periodically throws millions of people out of work, undoing family life and undermining education—outcomes that should have long ago made people question the system.
“We live with a system that periodically throws millions of people out of work, undoes their family life, under undermines their educations, transfor it's it's unbelievable what we expect and what we accept.”
Insisting that people don't have to think about, debate, or read about capitalism's critique is a form of self-imposed censorship that serves only those who want the current system to continue no matter the cost.
“To insist that you don't have to think about it, you don't have to debate it. You don't have to listen to people who tell you about it. You don't have to read the books that are there for it. Is a kind of self-imposed censorship. That doesn't do anybody any good unless you really want the current system to continue no matter what the cost and no matter where it takes us.”
Worker cooperatives, where workers collectively decide what to produce, how to produce, where to produce, and what to do with profits through majority vote, represent an ancient idea that has been implemented by humans throughout history and is being implemented right now in various places.
“The alternative is very old democratizing the workplace not a new idea not it's ancient nowadays it's called worker co-ops it's as good a name as any what does it mean a group of people getting together and making a a decision. We're going to produce something, a software program, hamburgers, haircuts, it doesn't matter. And here's how we're going to do it. We're going to be a collective. We're going to be together to decide how to produce, where to produce, when to produce, all of that. And we're going to debate it. And then we're going to make a decision by majority vote. That's what we're going to do. We're going to run it that way. Human beings have been trying to do that for a long time. What you may not know is that human beings have done it often.”
Mondragon has a rule that the highest-paid person cannot earn more than eight times the income of the lowest-paid person, solving the problem of inequality by capping pay differentials.
“They also have another rule. The highest paid person cannot get more than eight times the income of the lowest paid person. That's how they solved the problem of inequality. Just gone. Not an issue. There is some inequality. 8:1 is still a hefty ratio.”
The inequality produced by capitalism is a systemic feature, not a result of particular laws, rules, or political candidates, because the system gives decision-making power to those who benefit from inequality, which is why it persists across different political environments.
“But the problem is it's the system that produces the inequality. Not this or that law or this or that rule or this or that political candidate. This is a systemic problem like our instability.”
China's real wages have increased many times over the last 20 years while US real wages have stagnated, and China's GDP grows at 6-9% annually compared to US 2-3%, causing the two economies to converge with Western decline relative to the East.
“By contrast, real wages in China have increased many times over the last 20 years. There's no comparison. The workingclass standard of living in China, zooming by comparison to here. China's GDP grows in the neighborhood of six to nine depending on how you count percent a year. We're lucky if we get two to 3%. Year after year. That's why the two economies are getting closer and closer because we're slow and they're fast.”
The political turbulence visible in the 2010s (Brexit, Trump, etc.) stems not from temporary failures but from the structural decline of Western capitalism as production moves to Asia, creating conditions of economic anxiety that destabilize political institutions.
“The political implications. We're just at the beginning of understanding, but it's going to traumatize and trouble all of our lives for the rest of our lives.”
The British government is committed to building a worker cooperative sector specifically because of the problems, limits, and failures of capitalism—demonstrating that the critique of capitalism is not fringe but is informing serious policy in developed democracies.
“The British are committed to building a worker co-op sector precisely because of the problems, limits, failures of a capitalist system.”
Political chaos in the United States could worsen if a recession occurs within the next 12 months after a period of political instability, creating compound crises.
“Those of you who remember what I said that the average in the history of capitalism is four to seven years since the last downturn. Our major downturn was in 2008 and 2009. Now you do the addition four to seven years. Uhoh, we're due for one and Wall Street waits one. You think we have trouble in the United States with Trump now? Make Trump plus a recession over the next 12 months and try to ask the question again. This is a system whose instability rocks it.”
Capitalism produces two defining characteristics: stunning instability with economic downturns every 4-7 years on average throughout capitalism's 300-year history, and extreme inequality, both stemming from the system's structural concentration of power and profit-taking.
“We average an economic downturn every four to seven years in capitalism for 300 years. No matter where capitalism has come to that is what it brings with it.”
Economic policy is currently run by people with no understanding of the structural problems Wolff outlined, having been educated in only neoclassical and Keynesian economics without exposure to critical alternatives.
“So, you live in an economic system that is now run by people who have no idea about everything I just told you. It's painful.”
In autumn 2008, September to December, the US economy came dangerously close to total systemic collapse—no milk, no bread, no buses—representing the second major capitalist crash in 75 years.
“In the autumn of 2008, September to December, here in New York, we came that close to an economy that would have stopped functioning. By stopped functioning, I mean the kinds of things you don't think can happen, but we came that close. No milk, no bread, no buses, no nothing.”
According to Oxfam, 86 of the richest people in the world have more wealth than the bottom half of the world population (approximately 3.5 billion people), representing a level of inequality comparable to ancient pyramid-building societies.
“The agency that keeps track of inequality in the world, the best one is Oxfam in England. Some of you may know about it. They issue a report every year about world inequality. The famous number this last year was that something on the order of 86 of the richest people in the world together have more wealth than the bottom half of the population of the planet. That's about 3 12 billion people. Uh folks, this is a level of inequality that takes us back to the pyramids.”
Wolff was able to remain in the American university system despite his criticisms because he has the right credentials and pedigrees (Harvard, Stanford, Yale), which allow him to operate as acceptable due to his 'club membership' despite his heterodox positions.
“And that's because I'm like a game player. When I'm in trouble and I need help, I wave my pedigrees. You all know what I mean. I went to the right schools. So, I'm in the club. Even though I say strange things, I'm critical. That's sad.”
Democracy in the workplace is valuable because work is what occupies most of people's adult lives; if democracy matters as a value, it should be extended to the workplace, not just political governance.
“Just think of a society in which you have not just democracy where you live, but democracy where you work. If it was good for the one, maybe it's good for the other. Maybe getting rid of the kings who told us what to do where we live is like getting rid of the board of directors who tells us what to do where we work. Because you know what kind of matters? Being at work is what you do most of the adult life you have is going to work. If democracy is a value that means something to you, it should have been instituted long ago where you work cuz that's where you spend most of your time.”
At Christmas parties, CEOs thank all employees for their contribution to the firm's success, immediately afterward taking the profits those employees helped generate and distributing them to shareholders and themselves rather than to workers.
“The proof of it at the Christmas party. That's when the chief executive, a little wobbly from Too Much Punch, gets up on a chair and thanks everybody for the contribution every person in this firm made to our successful year. And then having thanked you, the chairman and the other members of the board go off and decide what to do with what you kindly helped to produce.”
A worker cooperative sector would require some government expenditure to establish but could be justified on 'freedom of choice' grounds—offering Americans the choice between hierarchical capitalist employment and democratic cooperative employment.
“And you know what the rationale for it would be? Freedom of choice. Let Americans have the choice. You want to work in a top-down hierarchical corporation or would you rather work in a democratic workplace? Would you like to buy from the one? Would you like to for Americans to have that choice?”
Reading Marx and critical economics is not ideological indoctrination but exposure to sophisticated analytical frameworks that intelligent people should evaluate for themselves.
“I even dare to suggest that intelligent folks like you could thrive on hearing the criticism and thinking about it. Accept all of it? Of course not. But think about it. Engage it.”
Karl Marx was born in 1818, the first generation after the French Revolution, and was a tremendous admirer of the Revolution's slogans of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which he hoped capitalism would deliver, but after observing 50 years of capitalist development in Europe by the time he became a young man, he found no evidence these ideals were being achieved.
“Karl Marx was born in 1818. That's very important because that's the first generation after the French Revolution and Marx was a tremendous admirer of the French Revolution. The slogans on the banners of the French, liberty, equality, fraternity, those were the three words of that revolution. in 1789 were absolutely the the love of the whole generation of which Marx was a part. And they all understood the French Revolution pretty much in the same way that what the French did was to get rid of feudalism, the old system, and bring in capitalism, the new system. and that by doing so they would bring in liberty, equality and fraternity or to use the modern language a democratic system. But Marx came a little later. So Markx was able by the time he becomes a young man to see about 50 years worth of development of capitalism in Europe.”
The critical perspective on capitalism that focuses on corporate power structure originates from a tradition of critics of capitalism spanning centuries, with the name Karl Marx coming to dominate this tradition due to his influential analytical approach.
“This point of view comes from people down through couple hundred years that capitalism has been the dominant system in the world. It's not very old. Like every other system, slavery, feudalism, any of the others, capitalism has always had people who love it and people who hate it. Just about like everything else. Critics, admirers, cbrants, skeptics. And what I'm about to tell you is there's a tradition, which some of you, I'm sure, know of criticism of capitalism. It has many contributors but the name that has come to dominate is the name of Karl Marx and this is often called Marxian economics”