Here is the video of the talk:
The first wrong assumption he makes is that capitalism hasn't brought about much freedom or improved the lives of the average person significantly. I would like to present to him the simple and well-known "Hockey Stick" graph that shows the explosion of prosperity after capitalism started settling in.
A common counter-argument to this from socialists and communists is: "Sure, there's been a tremendous increase in wealth, but where has it gone? There is a lot of wealth inequality, and the only difference now is that instead of lords and serfs, we now have capitalists and proletarians."
To begin, there is absolutely no comparison in terms of living conditions and property rights between the serfs who lived under feudalism in the Middle Ages and the average working person today. Back then, serfs didn't own any land whatsoever. They lived on the property of the lord they worked for. You don't see today's average person in free market economies living in the office or factory they work at. In addition, flexible hours and the ability to work from home are becoming more common. Secondly, according to the WHO, the average life-expectancy has also grown tremendously in the past several hundred years to 71.5.
Another faulty comparison socialists and communists often make is master and slave; employer and employee. To be a master over someone means to own that person. It's sort of ridiculous that I even have to point this out for some people, but employers don't own their employees. Under capitalism, they don't have the right to force people to work for them or to stay employed to them longer than was originally agreed to, and they don't have the right to control every aspect of their employees' lives. When an employer does something undesirable, that is a reflection on the individual employer, not the ideals of capitalism itself.
Now I want to discuss an inaccurate distinction he makes regarding business and capitalism. Near the end of the video, he refers to big businesses, where much of the decision-making occurs at the top, as capitalist enterprises, but refers to worker co-ops, where the decision-making is done by the workers who own these businesses, as communist enterprises. In reality, both of these types of businesses are capitalist, for the simple reason that they are both privately owned. The number of people who have a claim to the business doesn't make a difference, nor do the roles they have in the business, because it is still privately owned by those people. For example, if 10 workers decide to open up a co-op and share the profits and decision-making power evenly, this is still a capitalist business, since they each privately own 10% of the co-op.
Moving on to his next critique of capitalism in the lecture, he states how he (and many other socialists and communists) believes an uneven distribution of profits and control of a business toward those at the top is unfair. This is an oversimplified view for a few reasons:
Business owners have the right to decide how their businesses will be run, including matters related to compensation and organizational structure.
Much of the profits realized by a business are a result of the analysis and decision-making that occurs by the executives at the top, so it is not unfair for them to be rewarded proportionally.
Business in general isn't a zero-sum game, as businesses creating wealth doesn't prevent people from creating their own wealth.
During his speech, Wolff not only criticized capitalism, but he also mentioned what he believes is the main positive characteristic of socialism: the democratization of the workplace, because it will distribute the business's wealth and decision-making more equally.
This narrow-minded focus on trying to make businesses more democratic ignores a huge factor: that not all employees are equal in talent, ability, knowledge, personality traits and so on. Some jobs require more skills and responsibility than others and vice versa, not to mention some of the jobs being rather unrelated to each other. As such, it makes little sense to include many different employees with different backgrounds, skill sets and knowledge, in the decision-making process regarding issues that do not concern them in terms of the roles they are expected to carry out at work.
Additionally, making the workplace more democratic doesn't automatically mean making it more fair. What is fair are both parties (the employer and the employee) abiding to the terms they agreed to when establishing the relationship. Being the business owner, he or she doesn't have an obligation to include employees in making decisions related to the business if he doesn't feel it is necessary to do so.
This is not to say I oppose democratizing the workplace in general, however. It can create benefits such as increased efficiency and employee satisfaction if done properly, by taking into account the direction, culture and needs of the organization. What I do oppose is forcing business owners to make decisions related to their own businesses that they otherwise would not have made.
This brief article was intended to address the main assertions Richard Wolff makes in the video, not every aspect of socialism itself. If you feel I missed something, have any questions, or want to counter any of my arguments, feel free to leave a comment below!
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