The End of American Empire (w/ Richard Wolff)

0:03 [Music] Welcome to Kurt Affairs. My name is David Robinson. I am the editor-in chief of Kurt Affairs magazine. And I am completely delighted to be joined today by Richard Wolf. He has been called America's most prominent Marxist economist by no less than the New York Times. He is a specialist in making economics intelligible to ordinary people which he does each week on his syndicated program economic update. His many books include understanding Marxism, understanding socialism, understanding capitalism, democracy at work, capitalism hits the fan, and the sickness is the system. The legendary gnome Chomsky says of Richard Wolf that

0:49 his constructive and innovative ideas suggest new and promising foundations for a much more authentic democracy and sustainable and equitable development. Ideas that can be implemented directly and carried forward. Richard Wolf, Professor Richard Wolf, welcome to Current Affairs. Thank you very much, Nathan. I'm glad to be here. Now, I noted there that many of your books have the word understanding in the title. You are started as an academic economist, but you have in recent years dedicated yourself to helping ordinary people understand the often confusing and mysterious forces, the economic forces that shape their lives. I wondered if we could perhaps start with some of what you are trying to get people to understand. Some broad themes that come

1:34 out that you I'm sure you respect a lot of what uh ordinary workers uh perceive about the economy that perhaps many economists don't perceive. Um but there has to be a great deal that ordinary people don't understand about the economic world. So what is it that you're trying to when you take someone who doesn't really understand economics, how are you trying to open their eyes? is what are you trying to show them? Well, the way I would answer that question is to say something unflattering about lawyers. Uh I know that that's a I'm a lawyer, so be careful. Um here's a joke. The joke goes like this. Lawyers take very simple problems. Uh, I give you $10 and in exchange you

2:23 deliver a pound of potatoes to me at a certain point in the future and then that point arrives and the potatoes don't show up and I uh I make a complaint. I've been hurt. I've lost my money and I have not gained the potatoes. Well, that should be a simple problem to resolve and it is in fact a simple problem. However, lawyers have created layers upon layers of precedent and rulings and exec exceptions. And so, it turns out that resolving this simple problem requires you to hire a translator to take the complexities of the law and reduce them back down to the

3:08 simplicity of how they all began. And for that, of course, you need to hire a lawyer who will be able to do that translation, having gone to law school and learned about the first phase of the operation. Well, having made the joke about lawyers, let me now turn it on us, the economists. Please, please do. We do exactly the same thing. We take very basic, pretty simple uh ideas and run them through a special uh hamburger machine and out comes gobbledegook the material textbooks uh and of classroom lectures and the young people write down in their notes and

3:56 give it back to you on the exam. And then when they try to apply their so-called learning of economics to the world around them, they find themselves lost. They can't do it. And they revert understandably to what they learned and because they don't have any other vocabulary basically. And so we end up with a population and here I include not just the working class but the media people, the academics, the politicians, the corporate leaders who have been to the same classes. I've taught them all. Uh and I can assure you that they don't understand it any better than the people they're working with. So we have a society which has and I'm going to say this in a simple way an

4:43 extraordinarily low level of economic literacy. M so you're you're talking there about how the e economic profession can take obvious features of ordinary reality that uh we could perceive without studying economics that are hugely important to economic reality and obscure them so that we no longer understand them. A a a specific example of that to me the first thing that as you were talking came to mind would be uh the existence of power. Everyone understands in their workplace that their boss has the power to tell them what to do. The idea of of bargaining power is is is fairly intelligible to people. And yet, as I understand the mainstream economic uh literature for a long time, at least uh power was very

5:30 difficult to even fit into an understanding of how the economy works. 100% correct except you use the past tense and you don't need to. But the present tense will do. it'll cover the past and and that has not changed. I mean, here's a reality that everybody understands. When you go to work and take a job, there is a person somewhere who has the power to fire you. It's indeed more or less the same person who had the power to hire you. You don't have that power over that person. They have it over you. And this is rather crucial because it means they're free to do things that might displease you 10 different ways. But you have no such

6:17 freedom. And you are living all the time with the absence of that freedom. And no amount of telling you that we live in a world of liberty and harmony and equality takes away the reality of what you know. Even though you will say particularly on the 4th of July here in America when we celebrate this nonsense that you live in a land of freedom and democracy when you do know such a thing and you know that you do know such a thing. When I explain that in my classes my students don't rise up in objection. They look at me a little bit like puppies who have done something inappropriate on a rug. You they understand exactly what happened here. a as I take what you're saying to mean uh

7:03 it's that economics should perhaps uh start with the real world and build its theories and its knowledge based on you know what actually happened but Milton Friedman made a famous argument that that is not in fact necessarily uh what economics he had a famous kind of defense of the unreality of economic models saying that our models might not fit reality um and you can point out all of the ways in which humans do not act like the famous homoeconomicus. But that doesn't matter because what matters is as in physics whether the models make uh sufficiently accurate predictions. He argued that essentially it was a a red herring or not a knock on economics to say that their theories or their models

7:48 weren't realistic. You had to show that they didn't work as predictors of of what would actually happen in the world. Yeah. The problem with the poor Milton uh Freriedman was that every prediction ever made has sooner or later not worked which means well I mean that's the reality reality in physics it's a reality in economics I mean no one predicted the crash of 2008 or let's put it this way I'm sure there were a few folks out there somewhere who did but the whole global capitalism crashed in 2008 and9 mind. No one predicted that. The vast majority of models which I study and I teach from had no clue. They didn't have any clue before 1929 either.

8:36 They didn't have a clue about the pandemic of 2020. They don't have a clue about Mr. Trump and his tariffs. They don't have a clue and they know that they don't have a clue. But you can't get a university position if you say that. And I say that as a person who has a university position. Well, uh, but here, Professor Wolf, it's my my chance to give you a slight correction, which is you say nobody predicted it. Um, but you are a Marxist or Marxian. And, uh, Karl Marx, the Marxists, um, because of their framework of capitalism as being deeply unstable, uh, were the people who weren't surprised at all by the meltdown of 2008, 2009. Well, I don't run away from the label of Marxist, but let me be self-critical as well. Among Marxists,

9:24 we tell the following joke. We are very proud to have predicted 10 of the last four crises. You know, it's very that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The point is Marxism teaches you about an aware gives you an awareness of the instabilities and the forces that make capitalism a remarkably unstable system. It does not tell you and anyone who says otherwise is thinking in a mechanical way. It doesn't tell you when it's going to happen. It doesn't tell you how deep it's going to cut. It doesn't tell you how long it's going to last. Those are all questions of the conditions and circumstances in which the downturn of

10:10 capitalism happens. And by now, yeah, we have some confidence. We have this institution here in the United States, partly private, partly governmental, called the National Bureau of Economic Research, the NBER. And one of the things they do very establishment in no way tarnished by any association with Marxism or any other uh terrible ideology uh they keep track of the economic fluctuations and they have taught us it's part of what everybody knows in economic history that wherever capitalism has settled down on average every four to seven years it experiences a crash of one kind or another. Some are short and shallow, others are long and

10:57 deep. That varies all over the lot and it's only an average. But you will not find an exception to that situation. It is an unstable system. And because it happens every four to seven years, it means that those of us that are adults have already at the time we begin thinking lived through a bunch of them. Therefore, to deny that instability is a remarkable act of ideological, you know, missspecification, and I'm being as polite as I know how. Hi, sorry to interrupt, but if you like this video, please subscribe to this channel for more wonderful current affairs material

11:45 in the future and head to currents.org/subscribe to subscribe to our beautiful print magazine. today. You've talked there about how the identification of the inherent instability of capitalism is one of the uh advantages of a Marxist economic framework. But of course um it is still the case as as you indicated that uh among those in your profession of economics. Uh Marxism is a a minority position to say the least uh still and I I wondered if you could expand on what you think it is that your fellow economists miss. I mean they would see Marxism as uh discredited as more religion than science etc etc. They have all their criticisms. uh what what what

12:32 are some other ways in which you think this this Marxist uh lens on the economy opens our eyes to to how it really works? Okay, let me let me choose one example of of many in the in the official cannon in in what and I am a product I should tell you I am a product of the elite education system of the United States. I went to Harvard then I went to Stanford and I finished my education at Yale. I'm like a poster boy for the elegant education. So I am reporting to you what I was taught in the 10 years I spent in that quasi penal institution of those three uh uh in particular. Here's what I

13:17 was told. That capitalism is a wonderfully well articulated system, the greatest that the human mind has so far been able to construct in which a partnership exists among the workers, the capitalists and the landlords. Each of them contributes something. The capitalist distri contributes the capital, the worker the labor and the landlord the land. And together with the land and the capital and the labor, we produce a wonderful basket of output which is then shared among the contributors in proportion to what each has contributed. This is a

14:04 lovely story. It can be rendered for a three-year-old to It sounds like something out of children's picture book. Exactly. It is. It is by of and for mental children who are uh entranced by this story the way your three-year-old would be to learn about the chicken who discovered the squirrel. Okay, this is lovely. What's Marxism? Marxism says this is uh silliness. This is a fantasy. This is the the attempt, the equivalent of saying in a case of slavery, uh the master does what he contributes. Let's call it mastering. And the slave does what he contributes,

14:50 labor. And maybe there's a landlord in the story. Why not? And slavery is the wonderful coming together of the three. And since what the master does is so important, he gets a big share. And what the slave slave does is less important. He gets a You get it? It's a story of decency, of equivalent, of uh fairness, of justice. The Marxists come along and say, "Are you crazy? The worker sells his ability to work. He sells eight hours a day. I'll come at 8:00. I'll stay till 5:00 in the afternoon and you can tell me what to do, how to do, where to do, with what equipment, on what raw material. And at

15:37 the end of the day, whatever I've poured into my creativity, my mind, my brains, my muscles, it belongs to you. You bought my power, but you get the result. And you spend that result once you sell it. You spend the results you get in that story. You only hire me for one reason. That the value of what I add by my labor is greater than what you have to pay me to come there and do it. If there isn't a difference, you won't hire me. You understand that? even if you didn't go to business school and I've taught in

16:22 business schools and that's what we teach them. So it's all a fair story. It's a wonderful arrangement. That's why it's so successful. And the Marxist comes along and says what you're doing is telling a story whose whole purpose is to obfiscate what's going on here. And by the way, that's why Marxists are a minority position. Because if you teach this to the working class, you know what happens? They get angry. Yeah. Just like you and I would if we were told that story. You know, the um the the story of Karl Marx himself is really quite inspiring in this respect because, you know, he comes to London as a as a

17:09 poor immigrant. is looking out over 19th century industrial England and perceives, you know, while this fairy story is being told as it was in the 19th century as it is now. I mean, looks out and sees child labor, sees people's bodies being destroyed in mines and and and factories and, you know, and determines himself to dedicate himself at the cost uh to his health, to his family. I mean Spences, you know, you know, lives really suffers to try and understand how this really works. Yes, he does. And and you say it poetically, which I, by the way, being someone who has learned a great deal from Markx who feels an intellectual debt uh to Markx

17:56 that I'm grateful for. I mean, I don't mean a debt in the sense of a burden. It's a debt I'm I'm grateful uh in acknowledging. Yes, Markx lived in this in the London that Dickens described and at the same time. So, we know we know what he saw and lived through when he walked through the streets of London uh at that time. Here's how I would put what he did, what he dedicated himself to. And you know, I've studied Marx's life, so I know a little bit about it. He was caught up as was the whole generation in that early part of the 19th century in this case in France and Germany because he comes from the border region between France and Germany and young people at that point in time and

18:43 in that part of the world were absolutely enthralled by the French Revolution. The slogan liberte egalite fraternite was for them a spectacularly successful concentration of a new world. You know these are the people who thrilled to be hovven symphonies because they were welcoming a new world a post feudalism that was you know better even than the renaissance had been before. and they they felt carried out carried forward, but they were also the the first couple of generations after the French Revolution. So when he's an adult, a young man, he looks around

19:30 London, sees the Denzian world that it was at that time, just as you say, and he reasons to himself as follows. Capitalism replaced social uh feudalism and it promised that that replacement getting rid of the Lord surf relationship and replacing it with the employer employee relationship would bring in liberty, equality and fraternity. They meant that they were sincere in seeing those as all coming together. And Marx's conclusion, which shapes his life, is that you got capitalism, but you never got what was

20:17 promised to go with it. There was no equality. There was no fraternity, and there was no liberty. And and Marx, because he wasn't just interested in in bearing witness to this reality. After all, you didn't need him. Dickens did a better job of that than he did anyway. What was necessary was to account for it. Why did capitalism celebrated sincerely by people who wanted it to bring liberty, equality, fraternity, why did it fail to do so? His and his job, his contribution is he explains to us what it was about capitalism that prevented it from

21:02 delivering what it had promised. And the critique is in designed to answer that question. It's not a critique made on its own ground for its own aesthetic appeal. It has, by the way, aesthetic appeal. But that's not why he did it. And he was a very clever man. If you ever read Markx, you'll know he's quoting Dante and quoting Shakespeare every other page. He's a very well-educated European intellectual at the time. But his job was to show that the answer to the question, why did capitalism not deliver on the promises of liberty, equality, and fraternity? His answer is because capitalism has within it the structural impediment that

21:49 block it from doing so. So that if you want liberty, equality, and fraternity, you're going to have to go beyond capitalism because it cannot deliver on that promise. And by the way, I would argue coming later, coming now, that it's still as bereft of delivery on that promise as it ever was. And I I'm sitting in Manhattan and I I'm surrounded by billionaires who are living less than a half a mile from some of the worst poverty I can show you on this planet. Now we've uh been talking here about capitalism and one thing that you said there was that capitalism

22:34 replaced the Lord surf relationship of feudalism with the employer employee relationship and I think that's important to dwell on because one theme that comes up in your work is that people misunderstand what capitalism is. If you ask people to describe capitalism versus socialism they might say uh capitalism is private property and markets. Socialism is collectively owned property and a a command economy. Um but you mentioned there something that is central to your analysis of what capitalism is. That is to say the nature of relationships uh within the workplace. So can you help us clear up what you think are some misunderstandings of what what capitalism is when we're talking about it? very very glad you asked the question because it gives me a chance to to say something that I think like you

23:22 just said is core to what we're talking about. Private property, let's start with that. Private property is not unique to capitalism. It doesn't belong in a def definition of capitalism. Most I'll take slavery as it existed in the American South before the Civil War. Did you have private slave plantations all over the place? Yes, you did. Did you have uh a market? Absolutely. You had a market for slaves and you had a market for the products of slave labor. So the presence of a market and the presence of private property does not allow you to differentiate capitalism from slavery for example and many other systems that I could show you the same thing works. And to say that for example where there

24:09 is collective property and where there isn't the market that we understand it we have something other than social other than capitalism I would argue is equally uh out of order. It doesn't really make any sense. I like to remind people that the ownership of a modern corporation is a collectivity of shareholders. They together own the corporation. isn't privately owned in the sense that that usually is meant by private individuals. It is owned collectively. If you turn to the board of directors, the people who really make the core decisions, that turns out to be a collectivity as well. Usually between

24:54 15 and 25 individuals comprise a a capitalist corporate board of directors. So individuality isn't a particularly definitive quality of capitalism. And let me take it another step. Some people like to think of socialism as when the government owns and operates enterprises the way it they did uh particularly in the Soviet Union, the way half of the enterprises in China today are organized. And I would argue that's another mistake. Mark never said that. What gets rid of capitalism is if you remove the private individuals and you substitute state officials that would be a change then monarchy would be

25:41 socialism. Yeah. I mean it really it's a bizarre idea and I I'll show you that when we do it in the university. If you teach slavery, do you tell people that the state in in various slaveries own slaves? Of course you do because that's that's very well known in the historical record. Nobody in their right mind would suggest you no longer had slavery because the government coexisted with private slave owners. And the same is true of feudal plantations and the same. So why why did we develop in the west this bizarre idea that when the government does it, it's somehow a different system? No, it isn't. You ask

26:29 the question, is the government functioning like an employer? And the answer is yes, it is. And therefore there's a there is something that Marxists have developed the notion of state capitalism. And that's not socialism which is a non employer employee arrangement which by the way has existed throughout history exists now in Britain in America in Europe in China. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone except if ideologically you can't think your way through what I just said. Yeah. So you you're talking there not only about misunderstandings of of of capitalism but also of what a socialist uh system

27:17 uh would look like. Um I I want to just read a a couple of things that that you've written here. it. I mean, one source of the misunderstanding uh seems to be that um as you say in Democracy at work, most of the anti- capitalist movements that called themselves socialist in the last uh century did not prioritize explicitly include or if they came to power institute an economic system in which the production and distribution of surplus were carried out um by those who produce it. Um and so there are lots of examples of of systems that called themselves socialist uh but didn't do what uh you argue is essential to socialism that is to have democracy at work. And you say that any you know any real socialism any authentic socialism is and I'll quote you again a yearning by people living in a capitalist socialism is a yearning by people living in a capitalist economic

28:02 system whether private or state capitalist to do better than what that capitalism permits and enables. And that can mean having uh work that is more socially meaningful, less physically and environmentally destructive, more secure, delivering an adequate income for yourself, having uh the lifelong education, leisure, and civil freedom to pursue real participation in politics. Socialists want to be able to explore and develop their full potential as individuals and members of society. So, so these are the qualities that you think we we should center when we think about what a capitalist versus socialist world would look like. Yes. But I can also be more specific which that book tries to do. Yes. Uh in terms of the economics, it is a way of understanding what is in this country. I don't know how in European uh language

28:51 this is handled. But in the United States, the closest concept that people understand is called a worker co-op. And the basic idea is that the people who come to do the work as individuals hired confront an employer who is themselves. The collectivity of the workers is the employer. That's how you overcome the split between employer and employee. And if you institute that then you have gone beyond not just capitalism but the slavery and the feudalism because those are the three systems unlike earlier village systems and so

29:38 forth that we also know are alternatives. It's the feudalism, the slavery, and the capitalism that are the exemplars of the dichotomy between those who make the decisions and sit at the top and who are rich versus those who do the work and sit at the bottom and are not rich. And the the socialist dream therefore wasn't not just to go beyond capitalism but to go beyond any system that incorporates that split because that split re makes it impossible to realize liberty, equality and fraternity. Yeah. One thing that uh Markx uh was criticized for often um was

30:24 not providing a a clear enough explanation of what alternative structures to capitalism might look like. And it's one of the things that you've tried to do in in your work is is is is fill that gap and say, well, okay, well, I if these are if we've analyzed what this system look like, what what could alternatives look like? And give people a real picture of that. Yes. Exa. Exactly. Uh, listen, you're making me feel very good because you're explaining to me that I got across what I was hoping to get across. Well, I hope so. Uh, um, I I want to give you I want to hit you with the uh the the most common defense of capitalism, though, which is people might admit um that it does not provide equality. Um, it does not provide fraternity. Certainly, I don't think anyone would argue it provides fraternity. Um but I mean even the the

31:10 the great the Adam Smith uh quote about the butcher and the baker kind of assumes that there is no fraternity and we don't need fraternity because our self-interest is going to produce prosperity for all. But what they would say is ah yes but you can't argue uh against what it produces which is prosperity which is a vast uh outpouring of wealth. There's often some version of a chart showing you know that human uh human wealth or or you know exploded you know in a certain amount. I'm sure you've seen the chart where GDP, you know, explodes with the with the onset of of capitalism. Uh you yes, you say that there are billionaires next to people suffering pover poverty where you are in New York. Um but also look at all the you know look look at New York of today versus in New York in 1850. Absolutely. It's it's a well well

31:56 rehearsed oftenheard argument uh from a wide variety of of people. So yes, I acknowledge uh absolutely uh this argument. Here's my response. I find it a clever maneuver of the defenders of capitalism to make that argument. And the reason why I feel that way is that every one of the gains, everyone of the gains they refer to, whether it be in the diet or the work conditions or the housing quality or the schooling, whatever it is, what was unique, and that's true in the history of England. It's true in the history of

32:41 the United States. It's true of the history of the world today. Capitalists were always against it. They had to be fought against massive opposition to grant any of these things. If you look, I'm going to give you an example, but there are so many we could spend the next 10 hours doing, but I'm going to give you one. Here in the United States, I don't think you have this in England, or maybe I'm wrong. We have an official legal minimum wage. The federal government started in the Great Depression, the 1930s, uh, to pass laws mandating a minimum wage. Okay? So, we've had that since, to be exact,

33:27 1938. So, almost a century. It was passed under enormous pressure from below from the the the union movement in the United States, the CIO during the 1930s abetted by two socialists and one communist party and they all worked together and they got the president. They threatened the president uh Franklin Roosevelt that he wouldn't get wouldn't be president much longer unless he did this. and he was smart enough to understood they were not bluffing him. Uh his political career depended on it. So he went to work and he got the bill passed. It took him years during which

34:14 the opposition was the capitalist class of the United States. The chambers of commerce that's their official organization and subgroups of them and industrial groups of them fought it. They delayed it. They were very successful. Uh the idea had been around for decades. They had postponed it, blocked it, delayed it, diluted it, and finally it passed. Okay. Did their opposition stop then? Not at all. I'll give you the latest stage. The last time the Congress looked at and passed on the minimum wage was in the year 2009 and it was then set at $725 per hour which is what it is now as

35:03 I'm speaking to you. So, we have had 16 years of a minimum wage at $7.25. During every one of those 16 years, the price level in this country went up, sometimes as little as 1 or 2%, sometimes as high as 9 or 10%. But we never raised the minimum wage. And why not? We had Republican presidents and Democrats in the Congress, in the White House, but one thing the two parties managed to do was to savage the people living on a minimum wage. It is extraordinary. Then the only thing more

35:51 extraordinary than the history I've just summarized is the clever Madison Avenue advertising move by the capitalists who blocked it, who delayed it, who postponed it, and who minimized it to turn around and want the rest of us to applaud them for doing it. Wow. You either have to be very ignorant of what happened or very needy of finding an argument you can hold on to. Now, it it seems like what you're saying there is in response to this argument of all the wondrous things that capitalism has delivered that it's claiming credit for things that it doesn't deserve. That if you look at public health, the sewer system, electrification, uh public

36:36 education, minimum wages, workplace safety, a lot of innovations, um they capitalism doesn't deserve credit. these things occurred in spite of capitalism due to the the uh struggles of of uh workers. I want to use our remaining time to talk a little bit about current events because uh you recently uh had uh an interview on Democracy Now that actually became the most viewed clip in the history of Democracy Now on their YouTube channel. 5 million people have watched this. everyone is deeply inspired by you where you uh you you argued um uh very much that the United that you you were talking about Trump and you you know you were talking about Trump's tariff plans and you argued essentially that uh we need to understand Trump's economic plans, Trump's make America great again agenda as a kind of desperate and futile

37:22 attempt by a dying empire to preserve its global power. The American economy is in trouble. The American empire is in decline. We don't want to discuss it in this country. We engage in denial and instead we are striking out at other people. A sad way of handling a decline. Uh one of the commenters in that on that video put it nicely. The United States is like the Titanic. Too big to turn, too slow to react, in denial about sinking, and there aren't enough lifeboats for every passenger except the 1% ultra rich. Um so, uh tell us help help us understand. We've been talking about uh peeling back myths, helping people understand what is really going on. Uh Trump is very much a case where a story is being told that is at odds with uh reality. Yeah. You know, it

38:08 is I am far from the only person. I don't I don't want to leave the impression that I'm the you know, I see it and everybody else misses it. I I don't believe that. I am one of a growing number of people, which by the way is very I was born in the United States. I've been here all my life. I've lived here. I've worked here. I'm married. I have two children. All the rest of it. Uh, I'm 100% American citizen and happy to be so, it's not in any way that I'm unique, but even though I'm pleased that I'm now part of a much g, let me put it this way because it may interest you. The left perspective is stronger in the culture

38:53 of the United States today than at any time in my lifetime. and I was a student and got activated in the 1960s etc etc. So uh I am I am not complaining. I am having a very good time in many many ways such as the viewers the number of viewers we're now able to get etc etc. It's quite a move to go from the classroom as a professor, which is what I've done all my life, to now being in this much larger arena, uh, uh, let us call it, uh, by what it is. But here's what I would say to you. We just had a presidential election. We had three candidates, Trump, uh, Biden, and Kla

39:38 Harris. None of them, not none of them ever uttered the word empire. Ever uttered the phrase declining empire, challenged empire, uh empire at a crossroads, anything like that. We live in a country that needs to deny that the rise and fall of the Greeks and the Romans and the Persians and if you pardon me the British could be followed by the rise and the fall of this empire. I mean what is it we think we did after 1945 with the end of World War II? Clearly the British Empire was finished. India just finished it off in the the immediate aftermath and what they didn't do the ma

40:24 mau did in Kenya etc etc and the United States replaced it instead of the British pound we had the US dollar instead of the British navy we had the American dominance nuclear etc etc et so we've had a very nice run really good kind of second half of the 20th century and the early parts sort of of this century, it's over. It was never a question of when it would die. It was only a question of, excuse me, it was never a question of whether. It was only a question of when anyone with even the slightest knowledge of earlier empires would have had to understand it. But here, the nation is in complete denial. And you may be much

41:11 better able than I am, having lived in your society, to understand that mentality. I sometimes when I go through London am involved in experiences which I shake my head and say they still don't want to admit that their empire is over. Right? We are at a much earlier state. We have more excuse for denial. But that's all we have. We have denial. The the closest we came was MAGA. this vague notion that there was a greatness that we had to reestablish. But he's very careful. Mr. Trump is very careful. He knows that the mass of the Americans already feel that

42:00 they've gotten the short end of the stick on a declining empire. They get it. They really do. It's only the academic world, the PR world, the the the media, the government. They need to tell a different story. And so their story, and this impacts your audience, their story is that the rest of the world and particularly Europe, has cheated us, has abused us, has manipulated us, and we've had weak leaders, Republican and Democratic alike, who permitted this travesty to be performed on us. And Mr. Trump getting on the biggest white

42:47 horse he can find, trying not to fall off because he's a bit overweight, trying to give the image of the leader who is going to punish the miscreants in Europe who took advantage, who's going to punish the Russians and punish the Chinese. What better way than to hit them all over the head with a tariff? with a wonderful gesture of a leading. None of this is going to work. None of it. But he's he's putting on a spectacular show and he will be able to go to the capitalist class of this country telling them with justice that this is the only way to hold on to this

43:37 empire a few more years. We we are dealing and this is so hard for others to understand and I have that trouble here in this country too. I try to get Americans to understand. You're not dealing with a government that is strong. You're dealing with a government that is desperate. And that can be very dangerous and very troubling. But it to understand it, you've got to see it in that way. Otherwise, you cannot make any sense. Mr. Trump doesn't understand what he's doing. His advisers, who include people I know personally, try to explain it to him, but he is the showman. And when there's a dispute between the show

44:23 and what they tell him, he goes with the show. And look, it got him into the presidency. It would be stupid for him to change what he has done. And he knows it and he's staying with it. Yeah. I mean, you you argued on democracy now that it was that the story he's telling of being ripped off by foreigners and how we're going to rebuild American prosperity with giant import taxes, a mass deportation program, and tax cuts for the wealthy is, in your words, completely fantastical. So, you know, as as an economist, I mean, you understand that that none of this can can actually work. It can't deliver what Trump says he's going to deliver to the American people. Well, you know, I I'm careful. I I don't believe in predictions uh whether a Marxist makes them or anybody else. Uh so I'm not going to make a

45:10 prediction for you. If you were to say to me as people have, is there a zero probability that he can come out of this? I would answer no, it's not zero. It's higher than zero. You know, he could have un It would be lucky. It would be luck, but he could be able to somehow stave off a recession, stave off the inflation that his tariffs are bringing to us as I speak to you. He could overwhelm the the retaliation that's coming from the rest of the world and somehow pull all this off. Is that possible? Yeah, that's possible. That is

45:55 possible. I could if I had to and I've done the efforts chart out how it might just but you know you're talking about a probability of a probability of a probability. And if you know anything about mathematics when you do that you get a very small probability. You know 10% of 10% of 10% gets vanishingly close to nothing very quickly. That's where he is. It's a tremendous bet. But again, he's able to say and he is saying to the people around him at the top of the business community, I'm the best shot you've got. And the the truth of it is they believe

46:41 him enough not to throw him out. And if he loses them, he'll be gone. But I I I think it's fairly safe to say that most American workers uh are being sold a bill of goods that that you know they're unlikely to that the true Trump agenda is you know enriching the richest, cutting benefits for the poorest, deregulation um you know cutting environmental regulations and and really a lot of people are are going to be deeply hurt uh by the Trump agenda when he promises prosperity. Yeah. and and look the working class he wouldn't be elected today. I mean he has in in a 100 days or whatever it is now three months he has lost a sign he still has I don't want to take

47:26 away from him he still has the people that like the story he tells whose anger and upset gets worse but their allegiance to his story also gets stronger. There is that group but there's another group more in the middle. He's lost them. if they were to vote today, they wouldn't vote him in. I want to just ask you one more thing because you wrote a uh a wonderful piece on the economics of immigration uh recently. And uh one of the things that you said is that essentially the the story that is told by Trump and other nivists about immigration is is wrong. You called it a cruel hoax. This was in the Asia Times and you said deportation, this mass deportation, this idea that uh you know we're going to free up uh you know houses will become become cheaper. we'll all be better off if we if we take

48:13 all the people who shouldn't be here, we get rid of them, you said represents a nationally self-destructive program based on a faulty grasp of immigration economics. What once made America great um was its successive waves of immigrants. What underscored the America's econom economy's strength was its ability to absorb and integrate uh these waves uh and create a productive melting pot. I feel that even many Democrats today aren't aren't willing to to be forceful in their defense of the contribution of immigrants. So, I was hoping you could clarify for us what you think people get wrong about the economic impact of immigration. Here, it's an example of of something advertisers know. Sometimes the best approach is not to be too close to reality because the reality defeats you.

48:59 Come up with a really wildly different story that people will be willing to embrace. I think that's what immigration is and let me explain. The United States has 330 million people. It is one of the richest economies in the world etc. You know all that the number of undocumented immigrants in this country is estimated to be maximum tw 12 million people. Now, in the simplest universe of the of all of analytical thinking, there is no way that a population of 12 million of the poorest people on the planet, which is what most immigrants are, are the cause of the difficulties of a population of

49:46 330 million. It's silly. There it is. It is nuts. But that's that's the genius of the of the argument. You take something that is so crazy nobody has ever thought of it before. We all know what immigrants do. I live in New York City. You know what immigrants do? They're they clean the dishes in the back of the restaurant. They work at the car wash and and rub the fender of your car after the machines have sprayed the chemicals all over it. They have the worst jobs, live in the worst housing, have the worst problems, uh you and have the worst relationship with the police on and on. Nobody wants to do or be anything to do with them. And they don't

50:32 affect anything we we do other than having to view their pathetic lives occasionally when we make the wrong turn in our automobile. That's what the reality is. How do you make that into the cause of your difficulty? The answer is you can't. So, you need to use language. The immigrants have the I'm quoting our president invaded us. Oh my goodness. An army of maids and dishwashers. Yes. An army possessed of of cloth on the back of your car. You know, they're the ones who clean the bed pans in the hospital, who clean the toilets in every public facility. That's their job. That's what they get. And they don't get paid well. And they get

51:19 treated horribly because if you don't pay them properly for the weak work that they gave you, what are they going to do? They're undocumented. They can't go to the police and complain. The police are the last people who ever hear about it. So, what do you do? You make them an invasion. Then you make them into criminals. The FBI statistics show crystal clear that the rate of crime, all crime among natives is greater than among immigrants. And for no difficult reason, an immigrant who commits a crime is in much greater trouble than a person who isn't. All of the logic has to be pushed aside. They're criminals and we're going to get rid of them. and you tap into, here's the most important.

52:07 Over the last 40 years, the United States has become deindustrialized. I'm not sure the Europeans get this, even though you've had the same thing happened to you. We're done. Our, you know, Ohio, Pennsylvania, all the areas of concentration of American industry are wastelands. They're gone. And that all happened after 1970. They all went abroad and the American working class lost its job. Most particularly white men because they were the ones in the unions. They were the ones who fought bitter battles. They're the ones who got the good wages. And they were the ones that were replaced when you either automated them out of existence or you

52:54 moved the jobs to China and to Asia and so on. At the same time, this is so important. At the same time that you destroyed the white male working class, you had a movement with different roots, a civil rights movement for black people and an anti- uh anti-exism movement among the women demanding not to have the glass ceiling, demanding not to be treated as second. and the genius of the right wing. And I take my hat, if I wore one, off. Here's their genius. They link these two. One is the cause, the other the effect. Your job was lost

53:40 because those white pe uh white women and those black and brown men took your job. The Democrats gave them your jobs. gave them programs to help them de diversity, uh, inclusion, all of that junk is that they were taking your junk. These immigrant invaders made common cause with the evil Democrats, screwing you out of your life and your children as well. Very well done. And guess what? The Democratic Party had no idea how to deal with this and so they developed a a lame

54:30 meism which has landed them in the in the place they're in now. Well, um we we deeply appreciate uh you coming here to join us uh today, Professor Richard Wolf. If people want to understand the world around them, if people want to know more about the uh as I say, the often mysterious economic forces that are buffeting them uh to and fro. Um your weekly economic update takes current events, takes the news, steps back, helps helps put it in context, helps people sift through propaganda to see through these kinds of stories like the one uh that you were telling that that uh Trump is so good at at selling to people. Um but people won't be fooled. They won't be hoodwinkedked if they pick up books like uh understanding capitalism, understanding socialism, democracy at uh work. This one I have

55:17 which is contending economic theories. Professor uh Richard Wolf, thank you so much for joining us on Curtains today. Thank you very much for inviting me and and I do want to tell you that I appreciate enormously that you have the courage to have these conversations. It's the best hope for the future that I can imagine. Well, a as you said uh earlier, you know, there is it is exciting that there is there does seem to be a space opening for left ideas, for socialist ideas that wasn't there for a long time, starting with Bernie Sanders, you know, our magazine has found a great readership. Um, and if Trump does, if all of this does, you know, kind of fall apart and rebound, um, it does create a a possible opening for the left to tell an alternate story. Well, that opening already exists and I

56:03 am a product in many ways of it. And as I said, your message is resonating. I don't know if you read the comments on your YouTube videos, but there are so many people who appreciate what you do and we we do. So, thank you. Look, I already had a big ego. It's only getting larger. Yeah. Okay, then don't read them. Thanks for watching. This video is a product of Current Affairs magazine, the country's leading independent left print magazine based here in New Orleans, Louisiana. Go to currentfairs.org to find out more about us at currentfairs.org/subscribe to subscribe to our absolutely gorgeous bimonthly print edition. Get it in your mailbox. You can also subscribe to the current affairs news briefing, the current

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