Conjuring the Spirit of Marx with Dr. Richard Wolff.

One thing I credit Trump and his administration for is their transparency. I know this seems an antithetical statement to make given certain allegations. But, due to Trump’s complete lack of political subtly, their inner workings seem clear enough to me: he knows he can’t lure back the industries he promised his voters, because the market, as he champions it, won’t permit it. So, in order to continue stimulating the economy, he must exploit resources on American soil in protected areas and perpetuate the great trickle-down myth that tax breaks for the rich will incentivize them not to reinvest overseas or purchase luxury goods or buy up large tracts of real-estate, but to create American jobs and buy homemade craft items and leave the people their land... This, of course, is laughable.

There is no recourse for the economically disenfranchised voters who compromise the Republican base but to either maintain their hopeful illusions or focus their anger on a culture war, which Trump has strategically inflamed and the left have been happy to engage in to their own undoing. It’s very hard to side, after all, with a party increasingly associated with YouTube propagated instances of college campus tantrums and the self-righteous suppression of free speech. And this is unfortunate too, because it not only subverts the party but the Universities and an important role in which they could play, that is, to promote dialogue-- without fear of reprisal from either side—that addresses the underlying tensions in a system that continues and will continue to build, unless Truth about an alternative system can be detached from the emotion its often abhorrent history creates and meaningful policy measures acknowledging that Truth are voted into place.

Where am I going with this?

…Marxism

And here, this brilliant professor, Dr. Richard Wolf, who can so clearly elucidate Marx’s theories as they apply today. The video outline is posted below.     
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• Brief biography and history of Marx’s work and its immediate impacts.
• What Marxism attempts to address
  • the roots of systemic problems under capitalism
    •  Homeless
    • inequality
    • Concentration of political power
    • Growth and recessions.

• How it attempts to address the problems
  •  the reorganization of society
• Philosophical underpinnings
  • Dialectal materialism
    • Ideas—spiritual and political-- arise from humanities material needs for survival.

• Historical materialism
  • Society grows, then dies as a result of internal contradictions.

• One contradiction of capitalism
  • Employers must continually seek cheaper labor in order to compete in a free market, while the market depends on labor to purchase goods it produces, even as wages continue to fall.

• Capitalism has become dependent on credit to keep it afloat.

• Political upheavals across the globe as a result of the criseses of capitalism.
• The fear of changing systems and innate desire to hang onto destructive modes.
• Response to Marxist manifestations of authoritarianism
  • Transitions must go through a number of failures and experiments.

• Proposed solution:
  • Workers should control means of production
    • Democratize the enterprise.
• Response to “I earned it.” The shareholders and %1.
  • Did they really?

• Capitalism is barbarism
  •  Obscene imbalances
    • 62 people in the world have more wealth than bottom half of people on this planet.
  • Ecological Destruction
  •  Terrorism          
    • Justifies an endless use of resources to combat a vague enemy.

​So, that’s Marxism simply put.

Another thing I really like about this Dr. Wolff is he’s willing to engage in a debate and not with just anyone either but in a hostile environment with hosts looking for soundbites and a penchant for otherwise inviting on buffoons to make a caricature of leftist thought for their audience. If you ask me, Fox news may have slipped up this time. Decide for yourself. 

​“I’m not in favor of taking [wealth] from the rich to give to the poor. I’m in favor of not distributing it unequally in the first place.”