Ask Prof Wolff: Religion and Capitalism
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- čas přidán 22. 09. 2022
- A Patron of Democracy at Work asks: "In his book "One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America, Kevin Kruse talks about an alliance between American capitalists and conservative religious leaders, going back to the 1930s. This alliance pushes capitalism in churches under a biblical veneer of 'free-market Gospel.’ Capitalists supply the money, and the churches supply the voters as well as a moral gloss on unregulated capitalism, resulting in the enormous political power that we see in the 'Religious Right.’ Do you agree with his ideas? Is this sort of alliance unique to America or does it happen in other capitalist countries? "
This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.
Submit your own question to be considered for a video response by Prof. Wolff on Patreon: / community .
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Thank you, Professor Wolff and Democracy At Work, for addressing this very question. I often ponder the connections between religion and capitalism. I feel as though I learned socialist values from my upbringing, which included the church. And yet, in the end, the church as an institution endorses capitalism.
I remember when you first presented the theory, the big picture, slavery> feudalism> wage slave capitalism...when I first heard that I was astonished! I enjoy you revisiting this and blocking in the details, appreciated mate.
I first heard Richard in 2011 on Free Speech TV with Capitalism Hits The Fan,and it took me me a while to pick my jaw up off the floor (so much truth)!
What details...what truth? This for both of you and the "theory" is false since
feudalism has nothing to do with capitalism as Wolff himself has said.
Marx used the word "exploitation" to focus analytical attention on what capitalism shared
with feudalism and slavery, something that capitalist revolutions against slavery and feudalism never overcame.
- Richard D. Wolff
The contradiction can not be more obvious since capitalism can not be either feudalism
or slavery, while simultaneously being a revolution against them. (and slavery was abolished by
Great Britain in 1833 and by the U.S. with the passage of the 13th article of amendment.)
This is similar to the contradiction that capitalism can not simultaneously be responsible
for China's economic rise, and also the decline of the U.S.
Then we have: Money is a commodity...people seeking to acquire money are capitalists as money is capital.
Das Kapital v1 p27, p63, p 104-107 ( except it is no longer a commodity and hasn't been since 1933
although this truth didn't become clear until Aug 1971. )
Rounding this out: " The Rentier Class Has Sought to Make America’s Neoliberal Privatization and Financialization Irreversible"
Apparently, no one here acknowledges the "rentier" class or understands that it is NOT capitalism...
the understanding that "Marxism" is a "critique of capitalism" while failing to include this "distinction"
is simply distracting from the actual problem.
So what is astonishing about Wolff's claims, is that you would have to disregard these
contradictions and the actual historical evidence in order to "believe" them, and these are a small
fraction of the errors and distortions Wolff employs to reach his understanding of economics
and history.
Of course, the worst of these contradictions rests with the very foundation of the description
of "socialism" since you can not claim exploitation of workers on the one
hand, as well as disparage "private property or the private ownership of the means of production",
without denying a worker's right to the fruits of their own labor...whether physical and/or intellectual,
since this is a foundational concept, the attempt is an endorsement of slavery itself, and can
not be interpreted in any other way.
Now THAT is "astonishing"!!!!
Thanks very much professor Richard Wolff from Spain
I want to share my observation in Muslim majority countries. Traditionally Islam is against interest and making money without work but now there are religious scholars who are actively trying to integrate Islam in banking systems just by suggesting some cosmetic changes in banking and those scalars are getting a lot of appreciation from capitalists in form of awards and important positions. Now there is growing market of "islamic banking" which is just different packaging of traditional banking systems.
Thanks for this take. Seems like the Saudis, Emirates + other oil producing Arab states are pretty happy embracing capitalism, tho I know the average subjects don't get to enjoy much of it
@@RobinHerzig Thanks for reply buddy. Now muslim countries are mostly under the rule of capitalism. In pakistan first islamic bank was introduced 8 -9 years ago and if you finance your car from that bank you will be paying 10 -15% more than traditional banks and yet they are marketed as interest free bank.
@@HubaibElahi Sounds like fraud to me. Advertising as “interest free” but charging 10 -15% above the regular bank rate… doesn't matter if you call it interest or fees, or something else (maybe Islam-related language?), it's corrupt.
Bet lots of ordinary believers fall for it.
@@RobinHerzig yes its just like adding different label and increasing price
David Harvey's book A Brief History Of Neoliberalism has a lot of good stuff on this topic regarding the US specifically and how the symbiotic relationship came about. Bakunin also has incredibly insightful writings on the topic but they're dispersed across a lot of things.
Thank you so much for this
I tell people that capitalism is the one religion that trumps them all, they all follow it and use it. Capitalism is the faith system all faiths follow.
Maybe money is a religion more than capitalism. Also the cult of hoarding, selfishness and self-centism
Now, by force, it's totalitarian, GLOBAL. We're Sloooow on purpose, ask the Rockefellers.
@Rachel Thompsom: Not according to this Christian! Capitalism is destroying our economy with its cycles of recession then recoveries. It is a system that will destroy itself. Unfortunately, it will be the system that brings this world to its demise. As a Christian, I cannot defend that. It conflicts with what Jesus taught.
There is a time for a dominating system and it goes through the usual phases of birth, growth, decline and death. Right now, Capitalism is in a state of decline.
@@adamiskandar5107 Capitalism, to me, seems to be the latest rendition of the old master slave/lord serf organization of societies which goes back to prehistory. Controlling the money/or equivalent in one form or another such as the bronze age city-state temple systems, is the end game. Capitalism is the latest way to lord over others. The most money buys the most power such as the moneyed class's capturing of governments. Same game, different name but its always rich sociopaths playing king of the hill behind closed curtains..
Interesting answer. This makes sense
Can recommend The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey 👌 many thanks to Prof. Wolff for all his work.
THANK YOU Prof Wolff. "A Religious Endorsement of Capitalism". A VERY Important topic to understand...
Around The World and through All Time, one of the most common refrains is, "God Is On OUR Side..."
How VERY - Sad, Pathetic and Dangerous.!!! -StayWell Everyone 😊
The words "One Nation Under God" didn't emerge until 1954...FDR killed
capitalism in 1933...and unless god is a "socialist" all that resulted was religion
biting the hand that feeds it.
Dear Mr. Wolff. On the occasion of the death of Queen Elizabeth can you do a video about the role of the Monarchy in history and how it affects today ideologically the consolidation of the economic system? Thank you in advance!
Sorry, but this is a recruitment site for "paying" members...
"It's a tiny insignificant cult and you ain't in it."
Im 30 and in my life time Mecca changed from a city which was a reminder of the struggle of slaves and the powerless to an islamic version of Las Vegas
Again a very illuminating talk by Prof. Wolff. Thank you very much.
Mr wild is an excellent profesor he know his history well and economics also he is a bright man love to hear him often. He si also a cultivated man! I am great ful to have known him at least by the internet!
Does anyone know the name of the book Prof. Wolff refers to at the beginning of the video? The one by Kevin Krauss? I can’t seem to find it online
We’re struggling with impending mass extinction because of these things. All that focus on unmitigated economic growth had somehow turned civilization into a Heat engine … & overheated the planet. And it all started with Papal Bulls issued in 1430& 1452 directing European imperialists to go forth, explore & discover new lands and to “enslave in perpetuity the inhabitants thereof “. That, in addition to “go forth and multiply… played into the numbers game. And all that for the supposed “greater glory of God”. Romans ( Medicis) might have gotten spooked that China had circumnavigated the earth in 1421. Reconquista!
Once in a while, I watch your presentation. And I lit them. I am wondering if there is any way I can cut the ads before I watch Uoutube. Your presentations are always i can enjoy without ads' interruption.
They both go hand in hand. Each one helps the other. The monied connection between the two is intricate at different levels. All the way from the church donation, collection plate$ to the community political enabling, deal making, controlling, both on the small and large scale. They actually benefit from each other, while helping each other control and pacify the populace. They twist fundamental beliefs both toward The Church & Capitalisms cause.
Yeah this is at the local level, but with the institutional tv evangelism + youtube mega-maga pastors I think it's way more pernicious than just this 💰
The concept of Heaven, of reward after death, is anti-political and anathema to direct action politics. Joe Hill - The Preacher and the Slave, a wonderful version can be found on YT by the late great Utah Phillips
Liberalism is the ideological justification for capitalism and you cannot separate liberalism from religion, it is inherently religious in concept. Liberalism goes back to the "divine right of kings" of feudal times, which was an ideological justification for feudal property relations which in reality arose out of necessity from the economic conditions of those times, but was justified on religious grounds. Divine right of kings holds that the purpose of the state is to protect the king's "inherent god-given rights". Liberal ideology never questioned this notion of "inherent god-given rights" but simply argued that they should be extended to everyone. This contrasts with Confucian tradition in Asia which, while still having religious notions surrounding the king's right to rule, rejected the notion that the king''s right to rule was "inherent" but instead viewed it was bestowed based on merit, based on what ruler could best serve the public, and the state's stability depended on its ability to serve the public.
Confucian tradition in this sense is thus radically pragmatic at its core, despite also having some religious basis, viewing statecraft as fundamentally about building a state that can best serve social interests, while western tradition is instead much less pragmatic at its core, focusing on these arbitrary "god-given rights" to the point of outright rejecting pragmatism. Westerners will argue to you, for example, that millions dying of a disease is preferred over the government implementing lockdowns, because these lockdowns violate the divine rights of the individual. These "god-given rights" supercede pragmatism in western society while in much of eastern society to be given "god-given rights" was justified on the basis of pragmatism, i.e. the gods allowed those to rule who had merit to serve the public, and so this tradition while often being surrounded by religion or mysticism is not inherently religious at its core but pragmatic, while western liberal tradition is inherently religious at its core outright rejecting pragmatism.
The rejection of pragmatism leads liberalism down to road of idealism and thus inherently the religious nature of it feeds back into itself. Liberalism views human history as driven by great ideas of human thinkers, and rejects any sort of environmental, material analysis. In the mind of liberals, the reason why capitalism exists today yet did not exist a thousand years ago was just because smart people had not thought of it yet. Hence for liberals, the most efficient economic system is not depend on material conditions but on the best ideas, and so in their mind, a modern day capitalist economy could have been implemented ten thousand years ago if only somebody had thought about it. And hence, in the mind of liberals, all economic systems must inherently have the ability to be eternal and unchanging, because if they are solely dependent on human ideas, then how they shape and reshape the environment should not matter.
One cannot both believe that "capitalism is eternal" (i.e. "the end of history"), capitalism is "universal" (suggesting every country should adopt it independent of their conditions), and be a materialist at the same time. These things are incompatible because saying an economic system is universal and eternal inherently states that environmental factor plays no role in economic factors. This originates from the idealist view of liberalism which has its roots in Christianity and mind-body dualism, viewing humanity as having a "soul" separate from the material realm and not influenced or determined by it, i.e. humans have the "free will" to make society anything they want it to be because they are _above_ material phenomenon.
This mind-body dualism is the origin of the breaking apart of "political economy" into the separate components of "politics" and "economics". Liberalism genuinely believe that the political system (realm of debate on human ideas) is inherently separate from the economic system (realm of production of the material means of subsistence of human life). I'd recommend people to read _Anti-Durhing_ as Engels does a decent just tearing down this notion, demonstrating that the political system inherently is derivative of and dependent on the material economic system, and thus cannot be separated. But in the mind of liberals, it can be separated.
They not only separate but view the reverse of the materialist. Liberals see the economic system as derivative of the political system, they see the ideas of the politicians, written down in laws, as what is the ultimate determining factor for the economic system, and hence inherently view human ideas, the "human spirit", as having primacy over the natural world. This is inherently a religious notion as idealism cannot be separated from mind-body dualism, and mind-body dualism cannot be separated from religious thinking.
At its core, Confucian tradition instead is pragmatic, and thus, the religious shell could be stripped away and a scientific justification for its pragmatism could replace it. This is, indeed, what happened in China, with Confucian pragmatism becoming replaced by Marxian pragmatism. The core of statecraft did not change. Both Confucian society and modern day Marxian society both have at the core of their ideology that the goal of the state is fundamentally to serve and promote public interests, but the latter has stripped the religious content of the former. This is not possible in capitalist society because liberalism is on "principles", liberals will consistently reject pragmatic actions in favor of preserving "divine principles".
COVID is the perfect example of this. In China, thousands died of COVID, in the US, well over a million, despite having a fraction of the population. Americans will constantly claim China is worse, though, because their lockdowns were "draconian" and "authoritarian" and "violate individual god-given rights". In their minds, the US, where over a million died, is the more desirable society, because it protects God-given rights even at the expense of its own people. While the Chinese instead are the reverse and public opinion of the US in China has drastically declined as a result of COVID in China with the Chinese viewing the mass death in the US as a disaster and evidence of a failing system and not something they should wish to emulate.
You cannot have such a strict, anti-pragmatic viewpoint on the world, without religious thinking. You cannot look at millions dying and say this is justified "on principle" without mystical thinking, placing abstract concepts above actual real-world material outcomes. This is why atheism has historically had a relationship with public interests, countries that focus on public interests more tend to be more atheistic. Modern Russia is more religious than socialist Russia, China is far more atheistic than most liberal societies, even among capitalist societies, the ones that are more social democratic like the Nordic countries tend to be more atheistic than the more free market ones like the US.
The purpose of science isn't just to understand. The purpose of understanding electricity is not just so that we can explain why lightening strikes occur, but to harness the power of electricity to build electronic devices useful to advancing human society. The purpose of understanding is to control, and this control gives humanity more freedom within nature since they are less controlled by nature but can control it. If you believe in science, there is no pragmatic reason this should not be applied to human society, that we cannot scientifically study human society, gain an understanding of it, and try to implement this scientific understanding in the form of a rational, scientific central plan to regulate society for public interests.
Yet, if you are a liberal, you have to reject such a thing. Science should be applied to every field but to human society. Humans are inherently viewed as above scientific understanding because they're not viewed as "natural" but viewed as possessing a "soul" which exists above and beyond nature, that they have a "free will" not determined by environmental factors that could be understood. In neoclassical economics, this is just reformulated as humans having an inherent "rationality" which must be expressed freely in the market for the economy itself to become "rational", and thus any interference on this "free will" must inhibit this inherent abstract "rationality," which would inherently harm the economy as this inherenty abstract "rationality" is viewed in neoclassical economics as being disconnected from the material world and impossible to be derived from it, that science cannot create a "rational" economy because rationality originates from the "human spirit" which cannot be understood scientifically.
You cannot separate liberalism from mind-body dualism which has its origin in religious thinking. You can separate the philosophies of other societies from its religious roots, but it is so difficult to get westerners to understand socialism because they have religious thinking at the very heart of their politics. This is arguably one of the reasons why western societies entered capitalism before eastern ones. By having some emphasis on public interests, even if it was not fully adhered to, Chinese feudalism was a lot more stable than European feudalism. Chinese feudalism would sometimes become unstable and the sitting government would fall apart, but this would always be followed up with land-redistribution to the peasants to increase societal stability. This wasn't to be found in European feudalism, which never took peasant interests into consideration and would constantly kick them off their land, creating the free labor force necessary for capitalism to flourish.
In this sense, China fell behind the west because it did feudalism too well, its feudalism dealt slightly better with class contradictions and so its feudal society was more stable and dissolved at a much slower pace. However, in the modern era, China is developing and thriving much faster than western societies as western societies are so religiously devoted to capitalism which got them ahead that they believe capitalism is eternal and refuse to change with the times as they reject pragmatism "on principle", and are now the ones stagnating and in the long run may even fall behind.
Freedom is the justification for capitalism. No other is needed.
I immediately contrasted what you wrote to what Tom Mackling wrote above. The approach taken cannot be more different!
Richard - we need a massive fundraising/organizing mission 2 re-educate the least educated society in the free world when it comes to history & economics & the way things really r - the fact that we have such a delusional society who relies on the idea of our destiny rather than on diplomacy or planning for a goal - we r like bulls in a china shop w our world policing failed polices & now the entire world all diplomats all top economists u & so many brilliant minds who we DON'T listen 2 much to our demise have been sounding the alarm that the US is in a changing world order & that our lack of diplomacy or creativity when it comes 2 dealing w the east or anyone else is now on full display as the future of humanity lies in the balance of us doing things completely differently moving forward
socialism is the most feared word in the US where we r programmed v early on that it is the death of a country - what we leave out is that the leftist leaders across Latin American have been ousted by US coups regime changes arming of opposition movements we do this everywhere but that seems important as people r freaking out over the border crisis we literally had a heavy role in creating
Y can't we play well w anyone in the sandbox - Y is the billionaire class meeting yearly at Davos on how to save the world when they refuse a single sacrifice - reading "Davos Man" highly R'd listening to the author in an interview on YT or reading the book - it is the most depressing idea that among these people is NO courage to stand up & say we have the ability to shift & remain the .0001% while also ensuring that we erase the suffering of the BILLIONS across the world
Given the "new deal" and "fiat money" and the unconstitutional, illegitimate and criminal
government that was required to make it happen...you should be afraid, VERY AFRAID!!!!!
Also look up Tawnys 'religion and capitalism'.
Profesor Ricardo Lobo
very similar to monarchy, monarchs are the heads of the religion that they endorse. so for example the british monarchy has the king or queen as the head of the anglican church of England, so to be against the king or queen is to be against that religion so basically if you are an anglican you dare not go against god's anointed representative on earth.
And which other "monarchy" in Europe did that?
@@jgalt308 you can google it don't take my word for it, btw I did not mean to offend but perhaps should have used better words
@@eziodeldegan414 Not necessary, since Henry VIII was the only king to
separate from the Church...even the Holy Roman Emperor, was subject to pope,
ergo not head of the Church. Why would you think "facts" would be offensive?
there is no hate like christian love... There is quite a divergence with the doctrines of the christian religion from the "teachings" of the so-called Jesus character of the new testament. Go read it for yourself and compare it to what religion does in practice. It's impossible to square the two.
It's my theory that much of "christian" thought is derived from the writings of "Saul of Tarsus". As you may recall, Saul had an "epiphany" on the road to Damascus and became the Apostle Paul. I personally think he did so not for the faith in the "jesus teachings" but for the reason that he saw it as a means to profit from the need most people have to believe in something. Perhaps he was the first "Christian Capitalist"...lol...what a contradiction that is!
religion is great at giving you the moral certainty that its good actually to commit horrific acts
It happens because it's up to Humans how to interpret religious teachings. Things would be simpler if we judge a person by his words and actions rather than what religion he/she professes.
The title made me swoon and salivate. 😄
0:20 His name isn't Krause, but Kruse.
"One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America"
By Kevin M. Kruse
The work and author is correctly identified in the show notes. Apparently
Wolff can not afford an accurate voice to text transcription program, or
an accurate text editor...and there are numerous "errors" in every program
segment...some are actually funny. Of course, if that's your thing, feel free
to keep going...but that is a bit like missing the forest from the trees...for
Wolff uses the word "capitalism" incessantly and has yet to get the meaning
correct.
@@jgalt308 Corrections and clarifications are the thing of many people. I'm not sure why anyone would oppose them. If it's not your thing, don't do it. If it is, what is the meaning of "capitalism" that Wolff doesn't get correct?
@@jaredprince4772 You are correcting a talk to text program on a site where
the majority can't read...and the close captioning would have to be on...
which would produce all manner of "mistakes"...meanwhile, for people who
can read...the correct info is contained in the first line of text above...you don't
even have to click on the show more.
All of this is repetition...and why did you stop...why not correct the whole transcript...
Wolff uses "volunteers" and think of how much fun you would have?
And the question is NOT what Wolff gets incorrect regarding capitalism...since he has
never gotten anything correct. And for him, Marxism is a critique of capitalism...so
he doesn't get that right either, but since you asked...I'll let Michael Hudson
explain it to you.
@@jaredprince4772 MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, most people think of all kinds of capitalism as being the same and the assumption is that industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century somehow was always financialized because there were always banks but financial capitalism is you just pointed out is a political system and as a political system it’s very different from the industrial capitalism dynamic. In industrial capitalism, the whole aim or the hope of the industrial capitalists in the late nineteenth century, especially in Germany and central Europe was that banking would no longer be just usury, it wouldn’t be just consumer lending to exploit labor, and it wouldn’t be lending to the government somehow.
The financial system would recycle the economy savings and money creation and credit into industrial production and would finance the means of production to make that productive instead of predatory and parasitic as it became and that seemed to be the way that industrial capitalism was evolving up until World War I. Everything changed after that all of a sudden you had the financial system take over as a result of the crisis caused in the 1920s by the German reparations debt that couldn’t be paid and the inter-ally debt that was insisted upon to repay the United States for the arms that have supplied Europe for a century into World War I. Well, the result was a huge depression.
The allies said, well, we didn’t expect to actually have to pay the United States. If we have to pay the United States, then we have to charge reparations on Germany and for a decade there was a debate between John Maynard Keynes and Harold Moulton and others saying that these debts can’t be paid. How are you going to handle a situation where the debts can’t be paid?
The finance capitalists then were the basically the ancestors of today’s neoliberals and they said any amount of debt can be paid by any country if it just lowers the living standards and squeezes labor enough and that’s what basically the philosophy of the IMF ever since world war II when third world countries can’t pay the debt, the IMF comes in with an austerity program and say you have to lower wages, you have to break up labor unions, if necessary you have to have a democracy, and you can’t have a democracy unless you’re willing to assassinate and arrest the labor leaders and the advocates of land redistribution because a democracy means basically rule by the financial sector centered in the united states. And so finance capitalism ever since WWI and especially WWII and especially since 1980 is the nationalistic doctrine of American banks and the American one percent, and the American financial sector that is sort of merged into a symbiotic unit with the finance insurance and real estate.
In other words, finance capitalism instead of trying to promote overall economic growth for the 99 percent, instead of financing the industrialization of an economy with rising productivity and rising living standards, is now cannibalizing the industrial sector, cannibalizing the corporate sector. As you’re seeing in the U.S., finance capitalism is the economic doctrine of deindustrialization that has occurred in America in England and is now occurring in Europe.
Well, the problem is how do you survive if you’re not industrializing, if you’re not producing your own means of subsistence and how are you going to get this from other countries? Well, the answer is you don’t go to war with them like countries used to go to war with each other to grab their money and their land, you use finance as the new means of war so finance capitalism is the tactic of economic warfare by the United States against Europe and the global south to sort of draw all of the economic surplus of these countries in the form of debt service and the debt service is supplied by basically economic rent seeking from land rent, natural resource rent, and just plain interest charges on economy. So, none of these are really the result of industrial profits that are made by employing labor and uh selling its products at a markup.
Finance capitalism is not based on surplus value like industrial capitalism was. In fact, it destroys industry and in this cannibalizing of industrial capital, it basically dries out the economy and makes it unable to break even or even to function and in the United States today, for instance, if you look at the balance sheets of corporate revenue much of it is spent on stock buybacks. You buy back your own stock or dividend payouts. Only eight percent of corporate earnings are spent on new capital investment research and development: factories, machinery, and means of production to employ labor.
How did General Electric (GE) go broke? Basically, Jack Wells said let’s use our income not to continue to invest in making more electronic goods and services and appliances, let’s use it to buy our own stock that’ll push up our stock and essentially, we’ll just sell off our divisions and we’ll use the money of selling off our washing machine companies and stoves and sell it off and we’ll just pay it to the stockholders. That’ll push it up and by the way his salary was based on how much he could push up the stock of GE and he was paid in the form of stock options. Well, all of this is now the normal corporate behavior in the United States and corporations are no longer led by industrial engineers as they were a few centuries ago in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
( continued ) They’re led by financial engineers of the chief financial officer and the ideal of these corporations is to make money financially not by industrial investment….. so on the narrow microeconomic level finance capitalism is a way of basically selling out a company and giving the proceeds to the stockholders and the bondholders but as a political system, because it is so destructive of the economy as you’ve seen in the United States and you’ve seen in Britain through de-industrializing it, it becomes belligerent in an attempt to make other countries just as equally paralyzed by making these countries pay tribute to the U.S. and England and the financialized economies by means of financial engineering, by means of debt service, by means of selling their mineral resources, their public utilities, their land, their roads all to foreign investors-basically to who borrows the money that’s just simply created in the U.S. and to save all of their money in their central bank reserves in the forms of loans to the U.S. treasury holding treasury bonds which is how the international monetary system worked until just a few months ago when everything changed.
So if you’re England and America right now you can look at President Biden’s speeches and he said well, China is our number one enemy because it’s competing unfairly. China is actually subsidizing industrial development by having its own infrastructure. It gives free education instead of privatizing education and making its labor pay for it. It has public health instead of privatizing social medicine like we do in the United States and making employers and workers pay for it.
Well, industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century was all in favor of strong government infrastructure. The ideal of industrial capitalism was to keep the wage costs of production down not by reducing wages but having government provide a basic infrastructure to cover the basic
needs of employees. The governments would provide free education so that employers didn’t have to pay for it. The governments would provide medical care so that employees didn’t have to pay for it and employers wouldn’t have to pay employees enough money to cover the education costs and to cover the medical care costs. The government would build roads and infrastructure and everything to facilitate the overall cost of doing business by industrial capital.
Well finance capitalism is just the reverse. Finance capitalism wants to privatize and take education, medical care, roads, turn the roads into toll roads, and take all of these and privatize them and make them financial corporations that will essentially pay out their economic rent to the bondholders and the stockholders and this economic rent adds to the cost of education and everything else that workers need to live on so the result is to make it a high cost economy and that’s why Biden has said China and Russia are America’s enemies because the only way that America can succeed given our privatized economy, given the fact that Americans have to pay up to forty three percent of their income for rent, given the fact that eighteen percent of America’s GDP is for medical care, given the heavy student loan debt-only if other countries tie themselves in the same knot, only if other countries impose the same economic overhead on their labor force and on their industry can there be equal competition.
If other countries have a mixed economy and are more efficient because they have an active government providing basic needs, that’s “autocracy” and that’s the opposite of “democracy.” Democracy is where everything is privatized and ultimately the one percent own everything.
Autocracy is any government that’s strong enough to have its own public investment. Any government strong enough to tax or regulate the financial sector is called “autocracy” so the U.S. in the 19th century would be called an autocracy as I guess the Austrian school called it
- civilization is basically an “autocracy.”
There never has been an unmixed economy without government regulation, without a government investment, although Rome began to get to that point at the end of its empire and we all know what happened to it. So basically, finance capitalism is a predatory international economic policy aimed at draining the rest of the world all to pay the leading one percent of wealth holders in the U.S. and their satellite oligarchy in England and a few European countries.
Does anyone know the name of the book and/or the spelling of the author's name?
"One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America"
By Kevin M. Kruse
Religion ALWAYS endorses capitalism and will never support a socialist revolution because religious denominations themselves are capitalist enterprises. The Catholic church is sitting on trillions of dollars of assets, the Mormon church as over 200 billion in cash, the same with other denominations. Any respectable socialist revolution would nationalize those assets. For that reason, church denomination will always be against socialism. Just as the Catholic church as always funded anticommunism.
Dr.Wolff, just some years back Pope Francis came out declaring capitalism "evil".
Too bad that god can't handle money then, huh...seems that Wolff also
has the same problem.
@@jgalt308 The pope gets money for free for life. He's beyond Socialism and Capitalism. He lives in his own utopia.
Capitalism is what it is. Mostly used to capitalize on others misfortunes. But it can be used for good just as socialism can.
@@jgalt308 It's actually your problem. Prof. Wolff understands very well about money, religion etc.
Another "willfully ignorant, functional illiterate" insists on demonstrating
the description while believing he has made an argument.
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
The notion of the free individual v slave (to King) had to arrive first. That was the Judeo Christian God. There was always capitalism…. Kings and pharaohs didn’t make what they needed, they didn’t deal with the slaves… they had middlemen (capitalists). When we talk about capitalism today… most people mean… ‘anyone’ can produce something (if they have access to a bank loan). That means the pharaoh doesn’t choose who is the capitalist…. There can be millions of capitalists. That is a critical distinction when you are talking about Christianity and capitalism. Christianity led the way….from the few….to the many….capitalists. It led the way to a large private sector middle class. That large wealthy class is a threat to the pharaoh or King. That middle class can cancel the Pharaoh or King. That’s why if you are a Pharaoh or King or Marx…. you don’t want a large group of capitalists (entrepreneurs).
Now we roll into the future
And ain't it a son of a bitch
To think we would still need religion
To keep the poor from killing the rich
"In the Beginning" by Todd Snider
In the USA, the great land of legalized capitalistic exploitation, religion is a benefactor and an enabler besides being a placebo for the stress of moral ambiguity (at best).🙃
Except there is no capitalism in the U.S. since FDR, gave you fiat, the government ceased operating under its
legitimate authority and the socialists did the rest.
Is it like saying, rich or poor it’s God’s will.
I apologize I meant profesor wolf
New International Version
All the believers were together and had everything in common. Acts 2:44
Wow,it has long been my contention that this and Acts 4:32-35 were the original economic blueprints for Christian and eventual enlightened human race behavior (grace- mercy -forgiveness),it also dovetails with the Golden Rule and the ahimsic (non-harm) aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism.Sadly this is lost by christianity in mammon worship and the "sanctification" of ego enslavement (i.e. we've allowed ourselves to be run by a succession of religious,political and economic bullies throughout history)
@@bubbastill2040 The triumph of Western Propaganda. How do we escape/wake up from it?
Proff Wolff you need to have a serious chat with David Harvey. His recent video was ridiculous. "There's a snake in the grass."
💐👍
Religion
Reli gi on
Rely us on
Money, has an owner, law says we serve the owners, via their legal tender of us.
Our time and skills banks USURPED by bankers of our time and skills for the owners benefit, not the servants thereof.
If religion supports whichever economic system is in power at the time, how then, can it be said to be objective truth? Christianity in particular has had a history of supporting slavery and genocide, as well as the opposite. A divinely inspired book should leave no room for contradictory interpretations.
A.G.I Will be mans last invention
Capitalisms abuses are forces of mathematics and nature that can only be overcome by intentional manmade means. Religions and governments are intentionally manmade but I haven't seen them try to avoid the bad parts of capitalism.
I think we need a different discussion.
Is Capitalism itself a religion?
This is not a joke, I think it is, especially in the light of the way people react if you criticise this religion, it is blasphemous to do so.
Our economic system is Market Driven Anarchy, our religion is capitalism, let's get this into perspective.
How much human labor is in a barrel of oil?
One barrel of oil has the same amount of energy of up to 25,000 hours of hard human labor,
which is 12.5 years of work. At $20 per hour, this is $500,000 of labor per barrel.
This would directly contradict the claim that it is human labor that is directly responsible for
producing anything.
Since the beginning of time, people have gradually consumed more and more energy alongside technology advancements. Consumption was initially around 3 kWh per day per person and was mostly used for nourishment. Because of the necessity and possibility of heating for warmth, consumption in prehistoric times rose to 6 kWh primary energy per day.
In the Middle Ages, people in Europe wore more clothes and created more elaborate houses and churches, increasing the daily energy consumption to 24 kWh. Today, we use less than 6 kWh for pure nourishment, with more than 12 kWh for the preparation and transportation of food. US and German citizens consumed in 2020 about 202 and 110 kWh per day, respectively.
The 2020 data on energy consumption (BP) and population (PRB) show that the average daily energy consumption of a person in India is still just 18 kWh. But China at 77 kWh is already above the world average and will consume approximately the same amount of energy as industrial nations in the next few decades. In 2020, the world primary energy consumption was 71,4 GJ per person for a world population of about 7.7 billion people.
It means a world average consumption of primary energy of 58 kWh per day per person.
If the world population increases to 10 billion as expected, and all countries advance to match the present consumption of US, the world energy demand will eventually increase nearly fivefold.
@Account NumberEight I have yet to read a comment from J G that is not such a tower.
Ah, the "willfully ignorant, functionally illiterates" demonstrating "democracy at work"
and one can not help but marvel at the precision of their logical reasoning and
critical thought.
Now they have clearly exhausted themselves falling far short of the twitter brained limit.
I hope you are not supportive of the PTB's green and depopulation agenda by pointing this out but not the insane consumption by the ultra rich few whose militarism caused much of the problems we see in the world today. True Democracy is the triumph of the many over the few and would lead us to a fairer world in which a true Human Civilization could be built. Our current system is still very much governed by the 'Law of the Jungle'.
@@adamiskandar5107 The point being made is clearly stated.
As for your claim that "true democracy" is the triumph of the many over the few,
has always been true and it has never led to a fairer world.
And the rule is "might makes right" which has also always been true.
The understanding required involves the following:
1. Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology
9,253,314 viewsFeb 1, 2011
(March 29, 2010) Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky gave the opening lecture of the course entitled Human Behavioral Biology and explains the basic premise of the course and how he aims to avoid categorical thinking.
The first two lectures should be enough...( direct links are being blocked by YT )
The relevant points are, competition, cooperation both forced and selective, cheating and the game theory response to it, altruism, genetic and reciprocal, deception and self-deception.
The last two are covered in Trivers: The Folly of Fools... and Scott's: Against the Grain provides a useful take on the effects of civilization and the changes in the behavior it produced, due to the expansion of centralized populations that the agricultural revolution of the late neolithic made possible.
@Account NumberEight OK
Hypocrisy is strong amongst religious and political people!
This is another commenters idea, but how does the invisible hand compare to the hand of God?? Isn't amazing how the greed of each individual creates such an abundance of goods and services?....I mean, capitalism works so freakin great, I can just hit a few buttons and a package of what I need shows up the next day...sometimes the very same day???
You're not looking close enough at the pain and sufferiing that goes into that marvelous utility you speak of,or for the lion's share of humanity and history for that matter.History is the proof,learn some sometime.............
@@bubbastill2040 History shows capitalism works the best...especially for the poor. You commies always talk of history...but ignore the disastrous results of communism, where hundreds of millions died at the hands of their own countrymen.. Go eat your cat..commie..
@Account NumberEight Funny how, on a commie channel, filled with scuzzy Marxists like YOU....lauding capitalism is considered trolling!!!!!
@Account NumberEight Great observation!
@@adamiskandar5107 Otherwise, you commie dopes just sit back and believe Wolff's bs without question.
When Bush propa ganda for Iraq war, H esaid God ask him to do that. It's pure nensense, itn't it?
Just don't scold the priests they are very different, in the village of my mother-in-law, there lives a priest who adopted about 10 children of alcoholics and drug addicts my mother-in-law sews and mends clothes for him for free because he has no money he has the main flock - poor Russian old women
Capitalism is a religion
🔥🚬🥇🚬🔥
Protestant Christian are not this man cap of tea, without Protestant Christian he would have perish in some German oven probably ...
How presumptuous of you!
An interesting and refreshing take would be discussing the relationship between capitalism and atheism...
Indeed.
In the name of Jesus, in the Bible it is written "No man can serve two masters: for either he. will hate the one, and love the other; or else. he will hold to the one, and despise the other, Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew 6:20. amen.
And the Bible also says that Usury is a sin! But it is connected to just about everything in America. I think it would be hard to find a church in America that was not built with Usury....correct me if I'm wrong!
@@abdulrahmanraheem423 Hard, yes. But not impossible.
@@DarkDivineDepth If it's not impossible then get to it.
What about Religion(Christianity) and Liberal Democracy? This is also applicable ie Christianity influencing modern-day Liberal values.
Capitalism is a 'religion'.
How so? Religion begs and capitalism produces...and that which does not produce is NOT capitalism.
Edit: Capitalism is a religion, to some people.
@@sylviewalker7560 Only to those who have no clue what it means,
and that would include Wolff. Even Marx understood that "industrial capitalism"
and production was the essential element, and he expected it to "replace"
the "rentier" economy and the "aristocracy" that was the "class" he was
citing. Unfortunately, his expectation was wrong, the rentier economy has
been expanded to include, Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate.
@@jgalt308 You talk as if Capitalism is defined and unchangeable. It is not. It seems that your 'believe' in Capitalism is even stronger than those who believe in religion.
@@adamiskandar5107 Again..."It is not" is not an argument. And no belief is required.
The following was written by St. Augustine...
[It] is not merely legitimate for a man to possess things as his own, it is even necessary for human life, and this for three reasons. First, because each person takes more trouble to care for something that is his sole responsibility than what is held in common or by many-for in such a case each individual shirks the work and leaves the responsibility to somebody else, which is what happens when too many officials are involved. Second, because human affairs are more efficiently organized if each person has his own responsibility to discharge; there would be chaos if everybody cared for everything. Third, because men live together in greater peace where everyone is content with his task.
This precedes the "socialist" attempt to define "capitalism" as suggesting "exploitation"...
1600 years later...yet to argue that "the private ownership of the means of production"...
is NOT the preferred, natural ambition...is to advocate for slavery...and there is no
way to present this as morally superior...regardless of the rhetoric used in the attempt.
A stream of consciousness, sort of:
(or a little bit of psycho babble, that isn't quite either completely psycho or simply babble, but perhaps to many, might still qualify as drivel):
To everything,
Turn, turn, turn,
There is a season,
Turn, turn, turn,
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
I could be wrong of course, but like a farm yard animal I guess, I sense that a storm is coming, and I think it may soon be time for, well, a turning of the soil, a revolution.
Now the question is, how sweetly and how gracefully can we dethrown the evil madmen who wickedly misgovern our world, and who mistakenly assumed our lives were theirs to take?
I think it is time good people. But let us not act rashly or in haste, but rather establish within our ranks the wisdom and grace to make certain our victory over the demons who now plot and struggle to destroy us.
Quietly, calmly and gently let us begin to prepare ourselves for what must come.
I am sure that both God and the merciful Jesus Christ will greatly aid us in our struggle against Satan and those who serve him.
But yeah, it's time to prepare for some adversity, for we will likely have to assert our right to live unmolested by their sadistic coercions and cruelty and evil.
Right and wrong will be clear enough. Love, support and defend one another. Stand united, trust in God, and refuse to bow to tyranny.
We are not their slaves, and they are not our masters. They are not our betters, and we are every bit as worthy. They claim the right to own our world and our lives as well, but they are mistaken and this is not their world anymore. For from now on, this world belongs to every child, woman and man that is humble in attitude.
We can and must learn to live in kind and respectful harmony with one another, and in humility towards that which is greater than us all and in whom all reside. We are many and nonetheless we are also one.
Caesar (Satan, the Beast) is no more my friends, and I have set you free. Yes, his attendents still scurry about, and wonder how they might command you, but they have no power, and I have set you free. You are free to do as you will, but be gentle and kind, modest and respectful, merciful and mild, loving and gracious towards one another and also in your own self regard and in the bearing of your own nature that you must endure to percieve in the illumination of God's awareness.
Fear not, Love and God bless
Very well said my friend!
@@bubbastill2040 Thank you!
@@bubbastill2040 Has preaching about 'good' achieved any real change? What does the Christian right in America stand for?....in terms of doing 'good' or just being fair to the rest of the world? I see very little difference compared to the current administration. Maybe you need to do more to convince us?
@@adamiskandar5107 Maybe you didn't see what I saw in the comment,but in a word no,JUST preaching does little good,doing REAL good is the goal.I was born into the christian right in the USA 57 years ago,endured GREAT hypocrisy and abuse,became a Unity christian (we believe in the commonalities/unifying aspects of all religions) and accepted the truth of reincarnation at 22.I am a vegan and abhor harm or exploitation or abuse of any kind,and I try to live those beliefs with every thought and action.That's what it will take for the rest of the world to do,or at least the dominant number of humanity to do to REALLY change this world for the better
@@bubbastill2040 OK, I respect that.
Please do a video on “the invisible hand of the market” exploiting the phrase the invisible hand of god
This is a good question....as the invisible hand of capitalism works so amazingly, it's almost the hand of God!!!! Amen sister..amen..
I don't think it is necessarily religious, when Adam Smith used the term he was talking about the law of value. Smith originally proposed the idea that market economies are self-regulating because people acting in their own self interests in the context of market competition which tends to push market prices towards their "natural price", i.e. how much work actually is physically required to reproduce them, which leads to stable allocation of resources despite no central planner regulating it. This leads to enterprises pursuing their own growth for their own self interests, leading to overall economic growth, while at the same time resources are distributed according their actual costs of production, making markets fair to the public.
Marx fully agreed with this notion and termed it the "law of value". In Marxian political economy competitive markets are not viewed as unfair since exploitation does not occur in the market but within the workplace. Of course it is possible to get a bad exploitative deal on the market but with market competition this cannot be the norm.
That doesn't mean Marxism is fully compatible with markets as Marx also rejected markets as an eternal phenomena because he saw markets as having a tendency to monopolize/centralize over time as businesses grow larger and larger due to technological advancements and this constantly raising the barrier of entry and pushing out small businesses. He referred to this gradual process of centralization as "socialization". So he saw a post capitalist society as inherently based on publicly owned monopolies.
The main problem with the use of the "invisible hand" is that its modern use is rather disconnected from the Smithian use which referred to the law of value. Marx and Smith treated economics almost like physics, you started with analyzing the physical and concrete resources that were required to produce and reproduce commodities and try to figure out how market economies dont simply collapse due to unregulated distribution of these resources and look at what factors lead to stable allocation. You can in a very real sense tie Smithian economics to actual physics equations since it discussed things like "work" which has real concrete definition, and there was a whole branch of study called "econophysics" which also tried to introduce other aspects learned from physics into classical economics for even more accurate and concrete models.
Modern day economics disconnects economics from such a concrete basis and just constantly refers the immeasurable "ordinal utility" and that the "invisible hand" maximizes this "utility" due to the actions of the "rational consumer", which we know doesn't actually exist.
Modern economics is incredibly, incredibly abstract with hardly any real basis in the real world.
@@amihart9269 Marx says "exploitation"...you take that as a given...I say giving somebody a job is Godlike..
@@amihart9269 Yup, things like Marxism, and socialism, that coined "capitalism"
is why B.S. economics ignores the "empirical" and has no basis in the "real world".
You are right, faith in the market is much more meaningless than faith in God. The market is a human creation and it should be subordinated to the good of mankind, and not exist on its own.
Elizabeth u are genious
Money.. The.. Most.. Evil
Thing.. Ever.. Created by
Man.. Fancy.. God's.. Who
Love Money... Created by
Men..
Capitalism promotes division.
If Jesus was alive today he'd be a stock broker. :D I'm pretty sure...
Ok, so sometimes religion and capitalism are compatico and sometimes they are not. Didn’t really hear anything shocking here
Just another anti-capitalist video by Prof Wolff without offering a solution or a legitimate alternative system.
@@TC-eo5eb The solution is to question what you’ve been educated and indoctrinated to believe, because it may be a twisted form of religion that doesn’t resemble the original one or a set of values that supports only one economic system, and which leaves out important values that might contradict that current system. In other words, seek the truth and question the norm.
@@TC-eo5eb Marxism just skipped past all that, making people slaves of the state directly
and becoming its own religion. Competition with god can be a real pain.
@@TC-eo5eb Dude he has dozens of videos discussing alternatives and he is a Marxist, there are thousands of books written on this subject. It's not Wolff's fault you're an incredibly lazy anti-intellectual.
@Account NumberEight Facts are facts. Offer us something other than the sky is falling. Give us a legitimate alternative to capitalism...............I'll wait.
You misuse the camel verse from the Bible. When Jesus says Rich he means rich with things of this world not just money.
seriously i feel so sorry for this guy, his critique is always on point but his solutions are BUNK :(
.thank you for this. most people don't realize how involved religion is in authoritarian capitalism. you only mentioned monotheistic religions though. it's interesting to me how dualistic faiths are so involved in capitalism. but in recent years the hindu religion (or people who call themselves hindus) has become more authoritarian as well. Buddhists seem to be holding steady as well as Sikhs.
It's hard to use polytheism to support authoritarians. RSS has recently begun to talk to Muslim leaders in India. It's just not like monotheist exclusionary beliefs.
authoritarian socialism and atheism was the EX URSS