Ask Prof Wolff: How Marx Defines Capital and Why It Matters
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- čas přidán 10. 05. 2022
- A Patron of Economic Update asks: "Do you think that it might be worthwhile disambiguating the differences (and general confusion) among assets, capital, and capitalism as defined by Thomas Picketty in 'Capitalism in the 21st Century' vs Marx?"
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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Love when Prof. Wolff takes the time to explain these concepts and share his deep understanding and authority on Marxist economics. Helps me go further in analyzing the world on a daily basis.
pathetic. Given that Karl Marx also believed in profit, surplus and endless growth.
Instead lets read Karl's Popper - Open Society and It's Enemies. Where Karl Marx's ass is properly kicked.
Drop the hat, get a reality check - industrial civilisation is not sustainable and terminal. While you sit here and yack everyday inside a pathetic echo chamber.
I think it's insulting that he talks as if everyone's a moron and can't follow along.
I guess maybe most of his following is on the slow side and needs this kind of dumb down explanation idk
@@CesarGarcia-og8rz hope you figure your stuff out dude
@@username19237 Well, to be fair to what Cesar Garcia is identifying here is that Wolff clearly is passionate about his subject, and the style of presentation can appear to have an aspect of frustration, an angst, that may appear to be mocking. But once you realize it's not aimed at the audience, leaving strong possibilities of that expression being connected to a critique of those running today's institutions, then you skip past any notion of condescension. Is it an extra step that might hurt the intended message? To be honest, yes. Others can express that angst in a manner that involves all of the audience instead of losing a part of it. In short, there actually is something here that Cesar Garcia is picking up on and does represent an aspect that others are feeling in the presentation style.
Thank you prof Wolff for the video
The definition of capital is simple: its anything you use to extract a profit from other people. That can be a gun, a stripper her good looks, your uni education, your trade skill, a business, the product or service you produce, or the money you have to loan to others. Capital is leverage.
When explained like this I can understand clearly (as opposed to dialectic materialism or something that I haven't got a clue about - but apparently it's important). Thank you 👏.
It’s in the inherent nature of capital to undermine traditional values and institutions because the point of capitalism is to make desire and capital align and those traditional values, institutions, beliefs etc were what gave strata/foundation to desire.
Prof Wolff's definition of capital for tonight's video seems to be that capital assumes capitalism, without which capital would have to be separated into 2 categories - physical capital (machines and tools) and financial capital. Both forms of capital are 100% artificial because they only "expand" when employed inside of capitalism. In other words, M-C-M' is the circuit of that expansion, and outside of capitalism that expansion would not occur.
Easy listening. Always wait the naration by Prof Wolf. Thank you
Enjoying these segments, they allow Dr. Wolff to go more in depth on academic topics that he might not get to while covering the news
I think the operative definition of capitalism in its current form is 'concentrated augmenting and hoarding of a managed flow of wealth and income.' Definitions based on machinery or value can at best now be used to describe stages in the process that are no longer of any hands on interest to the small number of principal beneficiaries of the system.
Prof Wolff, I am pleased to inform you and everyone here that the popular channel "Some News" just had an hour long video on inflation! They didn't have the employer/employee aspect, but they were not far off the mark.
I think this is the most important aspect of Marx, that his explanations seem more scientific. In looking at any problem it's not really up to us to define it, we have to see what the effects are, the causes, etc. So what Marx did seems to be to rewrite the Glossary of Terms in order to think more correctly about every variable there can be in capitalism. It also would explain why it's so easy to gaslight his ideas. The very definition of arguing semantics and why they are, by far, the hardest thing to correct...
This is so simple but you put it so well, amazing video 🙏
my favorite teacher
Great Work Keep going Sir
We love you Professor Wolfe 💯🌎
This is a brilliant video. The self expanding quality of capital in capitalism must be directly related to the degree of exploitation of labor, and this must assume (I think) that other transactions (buying and selling) in the production process are exchanges of "equivalents" (not including the labor involved in each of these 'equivalents.' If I sell you A and you give me B in the transaction, then A = B. As such, any profit (self expansion) must be due to the one ingredient that is able to be exploited - labor.
Im sure Piketty includes human capital. Sorry for the correction Dr Wolff
Money propagation is unique and differs from trade. When a loan is paid off (and even only partially paid off) it has ‘grown’ of itself. It can expand like this without limit, unlike a crop which will meet with limits on agricultural productivity and land mass limitations. It is also done without effort (compare with trade). It is the very essence of capitalism in this sense.
interest is wealth redistribution from labor to creditors (the rich) drawing from every scrap of economic activity and concentrating
Nonsense, interest is a percentage of the productivity of capital. Wages are the productivity of labor. And in most instances, capital and entrepreuneurial/managerial skill are FAR more productive than labor.
Thank you this is the clearest explanation I´ve received on the matter. Now, the question is whether we can create a system that also cares for the environment, that pays attention to the consequences. It is time therefore, to understand we've developed the means and understanding to create technology in a way that also supports the environment. It is also time perhaps to understand we've outgrown capitalism in the same way we did slavery and feudalism, not only morally or spiritually wise but in terms of sustainability.
Technology, like "progress," is a double-edged sword.
this is classic -Prof Wolff at his accessible best
Humans learn something new is self expanding value.
An interesting thing to consider: Jubilee, and prohibitions on ursury
*Often the absence of facts - 1st Began - As the absence of Education.*
_........ TRUTH MANGNIFIES FACTS - GREED decrease them!_
- m.
There's no pricing without servitude to an inanimate object.
can quantum theories affect this process, complex calculations of things/wealth being affected by weird stuff out of left field, sts, can capital or equity be trees, time, rivers, education, more trees?
United community is self expanded value.
Borrowing and lending doesn't require servitude to an inanimate object.
Way to go Tom!
Now corporations have “personhood” in court!
Wow, great explanation of "capital".❤ I feel like I'm waking up, because no one explains these words at all within capitalism. It's like we're speaking someone else's language who is taking advantage of our ignorance.
Self expanding values like education decline as the values of inanimate object grow like weeds around expanding values of ourselves.
The production process and management is not entirely the workers’ contribution, but also the owner and manager. So to say a little more fairly, the production side needs both parties. However, the problem as Marx tried to describe is in the reward distribution. It has been the norm that owners and managers dictate and reap most of the rewards and that is simply unfair. This leads to the question of who determines what fair is. This needs a political and legal reform, or ultimately the mass organization of the workforce. Unions did some of the work, but they have been on the decline. Workers Co-ops are the real solution but that requires a huge capital that is beyond the worker’s budget. The government role in creating money should be used to fund workers’ co-ops, but that power has been rigged as well. Looks like the reform must be multifaceted and could take a long time and effort. Knowledge is power and the collective human will could for once be a positive force.
So if the goverment prints 100 bucks in total in the entire world. And one person has all that money. And then that persons lends out that 100 bucks at 50% for a return of 150. Did the loaner just create 50 bucks out of thin air?
The new word for capitalism as far as im concerned is Oligarchy.
The word ” CAPITA” means head.
Earlier that means Head of cows or sheep. Unfortunately sadly the capitalists added to that Heads of slaves and human beings.
The capitalists include in there wealth how much human being( slaves )the have.
So... if "you gotta spend money to make money," you're probably spending money to buy capital.
(Or a printing press, but the Treasury Department would probably take exception to that).
So it matters because there's a profit motive? From my observation of countries, even those that are communist (e.g. Vietnam), they are still driven by such a motive.
It would be nice if the answer were expanded a little more, to see the bigger picture of what is being said.
Where's the capital without people ? People are the capital, money is servitude to an inanimate object. We're money's capitalism. Squirrels don't pay rent.
piketty a wrecker confirmed
🐺🥇
If you get 20 an hour your boss likely gets at least 100 from your product each hour. At Walmart where we had about 100 employees on average per day and we did on a bad day $100,000 of sales, we only made about $100 USD per shift. I got my coworkers to do the math and then I was fired a few days later.
By this comment, alone, I can tell you've never ran so much as a lemonade stand. As an example, the average Subway restaurant does about $400,000 in gross sales per year. The owners of the franchise might net himself about 20% of that ($80,000). If the store is open 16 hours per day, with 2 people per shift, there are about 11,500 hours of labor being purchased by the owner of the business. Based on your idiotic comment, the owner would generate $1.15 million in revenue from his employees' labor, which he obviously doesn't. In fact, most of the time the ratio of worker wages to owner profits, even at minimum wage of $7.25/hour (the vast majority of employees make more than this) is about 5:1. This is actually a lower ratio than Span's Mondragon Corporation, by the way.
If your labor is worth $100/hour like you claim, why the hell do you sell it to Wal-Mart for $15/hour? That's because IT'S NOT worth that much. The Wal-Mart worker adds about $20 worth of value, and he's paid about $15.
@@jeremyrangel8138 that's simply not the statistics that they provide is with on their own computer system. We can see day to day sales and we know the margins on most products are about 40-50% soooo
@@DC-wg1cr The gross margins might be that much on a TV, but the margins on a head of lettuce is closer to 1%, and leaders like eggs and bread is negative. Regardless, your labor isn't somehow worth the entire value of Wal-Mart's profit margin. That's naive and childish ignorance. But, suppose you're right, and I'm wrong, and your labor is actually worth $100/hour. Why do you sell it to Wal-Mart for $15, if it's so valuable? Why don't all of the employees just quit Wal-Mart and start their own store, then?
@@jeremyrangel8138 To answer your last question, it's because they depend on that wage to survive. Wal-Mart knows this, and knows there will always be a "standing army of labor", to use a Marxist term. That's how they get away with paying so little, their employees are (one of?) the largest recipients of welfare. That's right, the U.S. government subsidizes Wal-Mart's ability to pay its workers a non-living wage.
But Wolff switched from defining Marx's definition of capital to defining 'capitalism' in the examples. No example for capital was given here. Capitalism as a system got examples. Looking for something on the word 'capital', it's then typically for Marx defined with an abstract term "social relation" which is not some innate obvious phrase, but clearly a coined term for an abstraction that itself could use a clear definition and not some hand-wavy examples. What Marx wants is a definition of capital to be the C in his M-C C-M transitions that emphasize a connection to labor, hence Marx saying "capital is dead labor" -- which doesn't really help define Marx's capital. A definition of capital and/or social-relation is needed to make it clear to those forced today to deal with neoclassical economic framing of the word versus intangibles.
"Capital is a Social Relation -- Capital is not just wealth, but wealth in a specific historically developed form: wealth that grows through the process of circulation. As an aside, it should be noted that wealth itself is a social relation, not just an accumulation of things. For example, if you owe someone a favour, then that is something personal between the two of you; if your debt is determined by a third party or by some social ritual such as a birthday, then that is a social relation. Wealth is a social relation in the same sense, and its various historically developed forms are social relations. The issue is to understand exactly what kind of social relation is capital and where it leads."
Trump is the exception to the rule of expanding capital. Anyone who lent to him had their capital shrink.
I strongly disagree with you. Capital - head or top, I am, tally. You have the best description for capital. You say, “your brains, your muscles, what you produce“. You alluded to this just now when you said, processes. My definition for capital is derived from the three syllables in the word. I challenge you to find any word with the letters “CAP “in them that mean something other than your head, or top.
I agree with your definition that the merchant is a capitalist. However, not every capitalist displays bad behavior as corporations do.
@@Guitarpima read Capital
@@countthemoon4956 read.
@@Guitarpima if that is true, how did you miss the entire point?
@@countthemoon4956 if you were going to complain about somebody not making a point, it would be helpful if you had a point to make in the first place. My point was clear. My reply was clear.
The definition of capital is simple: its anything you use to extract a profit from other people. That can be a gun, a stripper her good looks, your uni education, your trade skill, a business, the product or service you produce, or the money you have to loan to others. Capital is leverage.
This is a lesson on how to complicate something that is actually very simple. Capital is simply somebody's savings, no more, no less. We forego consuming (save) some of the things we produce in order to have the means to produce even more things which we CAN consume. Capital is itself productive, and serves to raise our standard of living beyond that which we could enjoy by simply consuming everything and not saving anything .
I think I follow your argument but don't agree with your conclusions. Back to your example of the guy who buys and sells chips. So the chip maker dies and his family is sick of the whole enterprise so they're happy to sell the factory to said chip seller who now owns the means of production and has workers to manage. He has gone from being a trader to a "capitalist." What is the big deal? Maybe his workers are highly skilled but are immigrants who would otherwise be scraping chewing gum under dining tables in restaurants for a living due to eg language barriers. These people now have a better job but in what universe should they unite and claim any fraction of ownership of the means of production. And not for one second am I saying that they're not being exploited which is a different discussion.
The hat doesn't fir or match.
Capital can also be your last name. How does Trump get bankers confidence for years despite being so overdebted?
Is all value socially produced?
Professor Wolf, when can we do a bigger wealth transfer so I can sit on the couch, eat my potato chips, and reap the hard work of another person ? Communism is so much more relaxing than Other systems
You have just defined your relationship with your employer... your banker.... your landlord.... but blamed communism.
And perhaps there is timer in the bank,which reminds production relation no longer sustainable,time for change,the world to come is already pre determined,remember your very old grand daddy fight and come out of comfort and save yourself and yourlife,population gets convinced religiously which was needed to be done and continue too
While military man and new commissioner come to take new work and sex
Wish good times with struggle to Professor Richard Wolff
Red salute
There has to be a profit motive. That's basic economics. Why does anyone listen to this guy? I don't get it. He even explains that this is not capitalism or Capital as he was educated on for his PhD. It's really an oxymoron to say marxian economics because when it goes marxian it's not economics anymore
I don't think he is against making a profit. As you know he is a big proponent of worker cooperatives. Even those would have to make a profit to stay in business. I don't think he is against making a profit. It's not like capitalists don't damage things for instance polluting lakes or rivers by dumping toxic stuff in them. Many of them are responsible for climate change. Obviously you can disagree with Marx, after all he was writing in the 1800's. Same with Adam Smith who was writing in the 1700's Economists like our politicians back then couldn't forsee what the future was going to be like. I don't know much about Marx except for when I hear people like Wolf or Michael Hudson. It is amazing that so many people hold Marx responsible for the ills of the world. Is Marxism something you can practice. I don't think he would be happy to learn how people have turned his name into something to be terrified about. I am pretty sure that none of our politicians who say they don't want to turn the country into a Marxist state have not read a word of Marx.
@@sanford943 I don't think that's right. I think he believes a corporation needs to act first as a charity and a distant second as a profit motive functional business. He bashes non-profits because they are tax exempt yet democracy at work is a tax exempt nonprofit. On top of that he bashes corporations with a profit motive, yet he asks for donations while not paying taxes. How is profit okay for his non-profit, but he disapproves of other corporations doing the same.
Gee what Marx defined capital as being is fairly easy...and easily found since the
work is free online...
Money is a commodity...people seeking to acquire money are capitalists as money is capital.
Das Kapital v1 p27, p63, p 104-107
And again, Wolff attempts to distort a rentier economy with that of capitalism, which Marx
believed capitalism would solve, and about which he was wrong as Michael Hudson explains...
and which has also expanded. ( this doesn't involve production but at the same time, it
is no longer capitalism either. )
And all the rest is B.S....the Wolff trademark.
New to this is the distortion of Marx as an "environmentalist".
As for those who believe they are being educated by Wolff, there will come the point
when you will know nothing at all if you're not already there. ( and it is
questionable if you ever did. )
Whenever Richard Wolf opens his mouth, even whem hes given a free, long form podcast, he spouts nothing but superficial cliches worthy of a hippie dilettante, not the level a professor should be speaking at
🎯 The glory of capitalism has become the rape of Mother Earth. “We belong to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us,” is the only narrative that matters right now ❤️🩹🤝🌎