I was watching the lecture titled "Advanced and Applied
Marxian Economics" by Richard Wolff, and this stood out to me:
"Every leader who's ever intervened has made that
promise [that we will get out of the crisis and prevent future crises] and
every leader has been unable to fulfill that promise... Capitalism and cyclical
instability in prices are twins... What we have is an endless series of efforts
to contain and limit and control prices, without getting rid of
capitalism."
Hmm... so, we're left capitalism
as the cause of our woes. The only difference is our version of capitalism
includes the government steering the economy and limits/controls on prices.
Wait, that sounds a lot like... NOT capitalism.
Maybe Wolff has a different definition of capitalism than I do. But I decided to look up the Merriam-Webster definition:
An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
Even by this standard definition, when prices are controlled by the government (i.e., trade is no longer controlled by private owners), the essence of capitalism has been violated.
Is Wolff completely oblivious to the meaning of capitalism, or is he being intentionally misleading? Wolff is a renowned Marxist economist. This sort of thing is why it's so hard for me to take Marxists seriously.
