How Capitalism is Killing Itself
Even 133 years after his death, the teachings of philosopher Karl Marx seem more relevant today than ever before. They've also gained in popularity. In a recent survey, 43% of young Americans under the age of 30 voiced favorable leanings to the notion of socialism. Is this a sign of a new anti-capitalism trend taking over in the United States? The new documentary titled How Capitalism is Killing Itself, produced by the acclaimed series The Empire Files, seeks to find answers.
The film dissects the tenants of Marx's economic principles, which were largely born out of a humanist philosophy. As recounted by Dr. Richard Wolf, the film's chief interview subject, Marxist economist and Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of Massachusetts - Amherst, the philosopher set out to uncover the root of social inequality, and identified a purely capitalistic system as its major culprit. In his view, capitalism could only thrive by imposing various social ills upon society such as impoverishment, inequality and exploitation. Therefore, the Marxist-led socialist movement is characterized by a need to redefine the very foundations of what he viewed as a deeply flawed and immoral system.
There are many indications that the long reign of capitalism may be on the ropes, especially when observed through the prism of this year's United States presidential election. Self-confirmed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders has proven enormously successful in spreading the gospel that Marx first preached well over a century ago. The youth, in particular, has flocked in support of Sander's candidacy and his message in record numbers. As members of this new generation eventually assume the mantle of leadership in their country, could their firmly held beliefs facilitate the end of capitalism as we know it?
How Capitalism is Killing Itself is a fast-paced and informative expose, but it makes no illusions to an even handed treatment of its subject; its agenda is implicit in its title. But even for the most fervent skeptics or the uninitiated, the film proves illuminating in its attempts to dispel much of the misgivings, fear and misinterpretations of the Marxist philosophy.
As always, Prof. Wolff nails it!
To all the haters - read Marx first (the primary sources, not the Wikipedia summaries). You can find all his writings at the Marxists Archive. Maybe you will understand why capitalism is unsustainable. If not, at least you will have a more informed argument the next time you post in a comments section.
Satoshi gets it.
Read the post below.
I appreciate that the points are well articulated and clear, but this is terrifying.
Blaming capitalism for the erosion caused by socialist policies and government intervention is like blaming air for asthma, and then banning air.
He makes a point that "since we are here now, that means this is where Capitalism leads" but never attempts to make that same point about socialism, which devolves into a murderous hell.
The dirty secret they will never say out loud is, "freedom doesn't work, we need societal control to prevent people from taking advantage of one another". If they said this, it would be clear how stupid this idea is. There's always someone at the top, and when nobody has rights, those people become the supreme leaders. Russia "emerged as an economic superpower", but how was the quality of life for the average person? They were fleeing the country, and not allowed to leave. Even the Chess champions and athletes have government minders escort them to events around the world.
People advocating for this nonsense won't discover these obvious flaws until there is a boot on their neck. Then it will suddenly become crystal clear, but there is no turning back from that point.
Wonderful professor. Good job!
If Marxism (Socialism-Communism) is so fantastic why don't they make it easy for people to leave, so they could then have more room for all those massive hordes (haha) that want Marxism?
Here is a deal for all the jealous Marxists who cannot stand reality, that there is no such thing as equality, even in Marxism, where all the peons are somewhat (but not really) equally poor, and the ruling class along with their cronies and kin, are unequally doing dandy. Here's your deal: For every person who wants to leave a Marxist country, we welcome that one and send one of your Marxist govt school indoctrinated dupes (most Democrats under 50 and a few too many over 50) in return. Then everyone will be happy! Oh no, cannot have that. Marxist regimes pretend that their system is "for the good" and will damned well force people to enjoy all that good, even if they have to shoot them in the back to keep them from leaving ...to make sure their power greedy unnatural unsustainable policies are followed, "for the good of all" = For the good of the ruling class who will lose another slave if you leave.
What the dupes don't yet understand is that they are not the ruling class and dissidents are beaten and worse, just like the Marxist of today (2019) are trying to get away with in the usa; beat up people wearing a Make America Great Again cap, who disagree with the stupidity of the lefties. Is beating them up going to make them change their mind -OR- convince them they never knew how bad Marxism really was?
What sense does it make to beat up someone who just want things to be better? To stop exporting jobs? Clearly many in the media should be tried for treason, filling the minds of these malcontents with lies, leading to hate.
The only thing more evil than Capitalism is... every other --ism: Progressivism, Socialism, Communism, Corporatism(Fascism), etc. all which are so lame they have to buy votes from those who cannot think beyond their emotions and those who want someone else to pay for what they want.
My greatest fear is that the border wall will be used to keep the people IN, once the Marxists dupe enough of their govt school indoctrinated zombies into voting for another Marxist regime.
When the non-Capitalists are able, have taken the guns, then they are those very evil types. No different than those who lock their kids in closets or chain them to their beds and beat them. They build Gulags. They cannot stand logic, reason, truth, to the point they would rather kill the messenger, lest others hear that logic and let the arguments be transparent for all to hear ...and then let the people decide. They know they would lose. So they must lie.
Marxism can never win by logic, only by lies and by force. And one of its chief proponents, Saul Alinsky, who wrote "Rules For Radicals" Obama's and HIllary's playbook, stated that if you told the people the truth, they would never go for it, so lie, lie, lie, and lie some more, ...and they did! And sadly too many people fell for it.
Sadly too many are still falling for it, even in the face of all the evidence, that eliminating socialism creates jobs. Socialist rulers don't want jobs, they want dependents, so they can buy their votes with a few freebies they stole from someone else. If that isn't immoral and truly evil, then you are clueless. If you had a great paying job, you wouldn't need a Socialist regime any more. They know that. Why don't you?
Production is poor. Graphs have 0 context. Was a good history lesson on Marx, but that;s about it.
Every time we a Republican president, we have Recessions.
Hey, moderators AM I NOT able to tell the rest of the viewers that the interviewer is RT News puppet girl ; Russian owned propaganda outlet ??
RT News has been cranking out CHAFF for Quite a while . . .
She's (the interviewer) is the RT News girl puppet.Owned by the Russian government; 1 of their propaganda machines . . .
I see a book titled CAPITALISM DOESNT WORK lol if that's the case please tell me why America is the greatest and most successful country on planet earth lol dont worry I'll wait, NEWFLASH to all you Marxist idiots out there, there is no little utopian heaven it doesnt exist and it never will grow the hell up and get with the real world!!!!
It seems they would like to dig up Stalin and rewrite history, claiming that all the ills attributed to Capitalism were not more in abundance in every system which has more government control, such as Socialism and Communism.
@Mic has it. Government, which has grown far more than necessary in the usa, IS the problem. Government, due to the laziness of the governed, will always be the problem.
Capitalism is an economic system ...which people would naturally develop or make use of without any govt. Sadly the Marxists professors and media have been lying in hopes of gaining total control over you, for many decades.
Hopefully more people will continue to wake up.
It's not capitalism that causes our societal issues, it is government. Government gives power to the ultra wealthy, they bail them out. In America, if the government didn't have the power to bail the banks out, true capitalism would have washed them away and we'd be starting fresh. In this next economic crisis speak up and fight against bail outs, it will be painful at first, but maybe we can start over for our kids.
Laughing my hiney off.
Socialism is nothing more than a criminal enterprise where they "legally" steal from those who earn, then give it to those who find it easier to whine and extort than to work or compete.
If you want a free education, gather together all those Marxist professors and politicians telling you that you "deserve" a free education... Ask them to teach you and your friends and their friends (everyone wanting a free education) FOR FREE.
Being the "good" Socialists telling you that you should have a free education, they should welcome your cries for that with open arms... shouldn't they? (laughing my hiney off even more since those are some of the greediest types ever)
You CAN have a free education. You can find the truth and history of Socialism via the internet. You can find out all the news and info the major media and schools keep from you as well. Best education there is for those that volunteered to be lied to by Marxist professors and the Marxist major media which is owned by the same bankster cartel who paid to insert Marxist professorships into the universities for many decades now.
You can also learn the true history of the Democrat party, the slavers, who still want to enslave everyone via Collectivism of whatever flavor... while shouting and pointing, "its them over there, they are the bad guys!" ...just like the muslim leadership does while they pocket the oil money and leave their people poor and hungry.
If you believe Capitalism is a bad system, why not move to a country where you like their govt? Why scream and shout and this one? Just leave. Please!
Yes, there is plenty of room for improvement; all that is needed is to drain all the Progressive swamp creatures that crawled in, causing most of the problems. Then make the penalties for corruption extreme and the ease of prosecuting it, including the corrupt Socialist judges, easy.
Majority of problems solved.
Whoops, two things are intrinsic to economic growth, Lack of regard4children and cheap energy
Economic growth is intrinsic to two things. - the purposeful lack of regard4children and cheap energy. We all know, whether we admit it or not, that energy will get expensive and therefor economic growth will slow or become negative. What will happen to the stock market? What will become of the American Dream? Well, you'd better prepare our children for it. If you don't then one would say you purposefully lack regard4children. At which point you can call yourself a lawyer without having to go to school. Ha!
People are not of equal ability, you cannot force them to be no matter what you do. Going against that natural fact is the epitome of intellectual dishonesty.
Capitalism is the only place you have a good Opportunity to excel. Is forcing them to perform the same as the lazy or less competent, fair and proper? Or is it evil men and women forcing their will upon others, and what gives them that right?
Case in point Angela Merckel and her muslim horde. The Progressives of both usa political parties and their La Raza horde.
I was borne and brought up in socialism. It's a bug lie. But i don't conside capitalism a viable alternative to it as it has been proven that it has failed practically also. In socialism and comunism stil a handful of people are runnning the country and taking decisions on behalf of the majority. The General Assembly - which is the equivalent of Parlament - is nothing but a flock of sheeps following what have been told. All economic reports and analyses were fake, reporting success after success when in fact real numbers were, some yimes, even falf the reported values. The idea of Collective Ownership is completly stupid as it states the everything is owned by everybody and in fact you have nothing and no say. This guy should have lived in USSR, have a small, tiny, unconfortable apartment, drive a shitty car, eat wht government decides to eat, have as many children as government decides to have, not to have a passport and travel wherevr you want and so on. Yes, there are good parts: free medical care system, free learning system, everybody has a job, everybody can afford a house. But there is no freedom, no free will, no liberty of expression. So, maybe none of these two social systems provides right answers to all the questions, but a mix of them may do. Humans are and always be greedy, dominant, corruptible, fanatic, craving for more and more of everything, capable of hatred and jealousy. Humans are born warriors and conquerors, always want to domine someone to feed their uncontrolable desire of domination. This is happening when in socialism PEOPLE are governing other people. They start to believe that they are the ELITE , they deserve more just because they tale decisions on befalf of stupid milions so they need payment for that. A bigger one. And we get to the same point except that they don't own the means of production. But nobody does.
And when everybody gets a house and a car and free access to leearnig and medical care systems, what happens ? they want more. They want freedom of travelling, they want to rule as they are as good as their rulers - since they have same and receive same - and so on. But they can't because SOCIALISM is also about HUMAN LIMITATIONS as it can't grow too much beacuse you can't give all the people more and more ... of everything.
As someone said in one comment, we juts claimbed down the tree, we just got out of the caves, we are NOT BUILT for building an equal society.
And we will struggl for many years to come ...
The mental experiments so many refuse to do:
1. What if there were no govt, what would naturally develop between the people? Would they barter among themselves benefiting from acquiring goods and services of others in exchange for what goods and services they could provide? Or would some con men try to convince the rest to give them money to tell them how to run their lives?
Either could occur depending on the content and character of the people in an area.
2. What would survive if govts collapsed? Would they barter among themselves benefiting from acquiring goods and services of others in exchange for what goods and services they could provide? Or would some con men try to convince the rest to give them money to tell them how to run their lives?
Those who don't need the power hungry to tell them how to live, would trade among themselves. Those who have been indoctrinated to depend on others to either: tell them what to do -or- provide what they need, would try to find authoritative sounding people to take the role of telling people what they should be doing.
How is it that an Economic system is called a political system? Who benefits from doing so?
Anyone wanting to point fingers at the evil USA bankster-corpro-govt-military-media complex. Fine. I agree. That is NOT capitalism AT ALL. To call it "capitalism" is simply ignorant. To pretend other govt systems like Socialism aren't just as, or more corrupt is also ignorant.
In actuality, the usa is multinational bankster controlled Corporatism-Socialism, similar to EU multinational bankster controlled Socialism-Corporatism; the EU variety having less military creating havoc for the benefit of the banksters.
The banksters which own and/or control multinational oil companies, defense contractors, and others, profit several ways from war, that is why there is so much war. FOLLOW the (bankster) money.
Middle East oil mullahs profit greatly from war also; due to war premium on oil. Again, that is why there is so much war. Otherwise, they would just agree on a price (which they already have) its just that both can get it higher if they can convince people to jihad for Allah and Islam -and- fight for God and country.
If the young folks decided their leaders were full of crap and stop fighting, the war profiteering would be over, oil would fall in price, defense contractors would go out of biz, peace and pretty flowers would flourish.
Read what decorated Major General Smedley Butler had to say about war. It isn't that difficult to copy and paste his name into a search engine is it? Read what Hitler's Hermann Goering had to say about how easy it is to drag the people to war, regardless of the type of Govt; democracy, fascism, socialism, communism, etc. "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked." Easy to do with a false flag event such as the Govt bldg in Germany or great bait in Pearl Harbor or the false flag Twin Towers in the USA.
How long can Germany support the rest of the bankrupt EU as even Germany begins to falter? Why do Swedish bonds have negative interest? Meaning you pay them to park a bit of savings.
Why is the US stock market rising so high in 2017-2018?
It is EU people getting their savings out of a falling Euro and to avoid negative rate bonds. The EU is breaking all their own rules to keep countries from leaving their socialist, Brussels dictatorial, confiscatory, utopian nightmare. It is non-usa causing the usa stocks to rise. Not because our economy is all that hot. Just better to be in a rising market than a falling Euro and negative interest rate bonds. Sweden isn't the only one. Other Eurozone countries have negative rate bonds, Japan, etc.
How long before an event that involves Europe getting into war occurs to cover over what the EU has done to Europe? One thing is for certain bankers and socialists are really great at running things into the ground. Whether they do it quick or slow, it is only a matter of time before they need a war or something to distract the people from coming after the govt with pitchforks and ropes after they are starving and their banks close for reorganization. Where they copy Cyprus: They keep your money and give you worthless shares in the bank.
However, all socialists in the usa, please move to europe so you can taste how it becomes first hand when vote buying finally runs them out of money.
Why Brexit if the EU socialist dictators were so wonderful? Why are the EU dictators and Brit socialists working feverishly to get around Brexit? If they care so much about the people? Or is it their bankster minion jobs and bankster socialist agenda they care so much about?
When Sweden's tax rate was 70% it still wasn't enough. Years ago now, time flies, they decided to cut back on services and lower the tax rate = cutting back on what? Cutting back on Socialism. Do your homework instead of just deeming yourself more "educated" which is a laugh by any measure.
The USA is not capitalism. The Scandinavian countries are NOT socialism. The simplistic assignment of Capitalism to the USA which is in debt up to its frosted hair tips at the hands of Socialists and Banksters who desire it, is as wrong as assigning the term Socialism to Sweden, etc. They all have degrees of Capitalism or they would have had economic collapse long ago. Most major and western countries are technically bankrupt; via their degree of socialism already, dead men walking, waiting for the guillotine to drop. When you get to spend other people's money, there is never enough of it, so they borrow, so the socialist whiners won't complain. Yet they complain anyway because when someone else is paying (what they call "free") they always want more. Voila Greece happens. And so too will the rest, unless they change course.
No don't check, just believe the continuing indoctrination of capitalism = bad. Projecting all the ills of socialism onto capitalism doesn't make it so.
Why not point to GREECE or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as wonderful examples of socialism? Just how is Italy and Spain doing? How long before they have a banking holiday similar to Cyprus? How about France, check the debt?
How is it that China and Russia climbed out of their economic pits they were in years ago? They incorporated degrees of capitalism. In Russia's case Putin used that engine until it got going fairly well and then took back the energy sector, the most lucrative. Nice for him. China made the mistake of borrowing to keep its workers busy building cities no one lives in. Good for those workers, bad for the rest when the bill comes due.
If the EU is what you desire MOVE there.
I really can't fault the jihadis so much for what they do to the socialists. That is who they are. It was known. Why didn't the "good hearted" ignorant people welcoming them into the EU know that? Socialist govt emotional indoctrination rather than education. There leaders, who decided for them, knew but didn't care about their fellow socialists, only their agenda, which is the bankster agenda, their bosses agenda.
Socialists, please move to that paradise where ever you think it is. There are people who will pay for your plane ticket as long as you don't come back (no free vacation). You will like it there. It was designed just for you. It is calling for you. It will fulfill your sense of indoctrination. Go. Be. Feel the sense of warmth and camaraderie of being around like minded people. Revel in the fact that you get others to pay for what you think should be free, even though you must know someone pays. Deny reality about the true economic condition of those wonderful socialist utopias and what actually caused it. Go on, you know you want to. You should!
Until teachers work for free, there is no free school. Until the lights power themselves, there is no free school. Until the books write and make themselves, there is no free school. Why should anyone else pay for yours? Same for health care. Anything the govt pays for goes up in price dramatically, that is socialism. Then the call for higher and higher taxes.
As long as you aren't paying those taxes you could care less. Nice, considerate, heart felt, caring types. What a laugh.
Great lecture by Mr. Wolff. Absolutely enlightening.
I would have been more educating if Mr. Wolf had explained the concept of dead ends of capitalist economic system. For example saturation of industrialization in developed countries; problem of surplus accumulated capital; impact of transfer of technology to under-developed countries, etc. etc.
Capitalism has prospered entirely within the bubble of fossil fuel. It requires a constantly growing population, and a constantly growing resource base. When a capitalist economy retracts (by loss of population or by greedy rich people causing recessions), it is disastrous for society. In a world of finite resources, it is unrealistic to think that population can continue to grow, that resources can continue to increase indefinitely, therefore it's obvious capitalism will fail in the long term. We have lived entirely within a bubble of resources we know are finite, and therefore we cannot say that capitalism works. It works ok when constantly fed resources, though it creates unjust, polluted, and exploitative societies if governments don't tame it to act in the interest of the society.
Well great depression of 1930s and 2008 depicts failure of capitalism. Moreover, capitalism has failed to deliver anything good but has gifted humanity war and so called terrorism; let's not forget WW1.
Long Live Socialism.