Interview with noted economist, Richard D. Wolff: Part Two

So what happened after World War II? The half of the rich and the half of the business class who had never bought Roosevelt’s argument – that thought the Unions, Socialists and Communists were not strong enough to pull off what they threatened – were furious at paying higher taxes and furious at having the government assume the huge role of the economy implied by social security, unemployment insurance and becoming the major employer in the country. They went to work after the war to destroy the movement that they knew had brought Social Security, the labour movement and the jobs program into being. That was their target and that was their strategy.

They got rid of the Communists and Socialists by way of the anti-Communist hysteria we now call McCarthyism. [They] portrayed the two not as a movement for improving the conditions of Americans, but as a traitorous fifth column of the Soviet Union.

Next up was the labour movement; it started in 1947 with the Taft-Hartley bill that severely constricted the freedom of labour unions to function. Over the last 50 years the labour movement has lost membership every year. From representing roughly 35% of the private labour force in the United States, today the AFL, CIO and other Unions together represent less than seven percent of private sector workers. They have become weakened to the point of utter ineffectuality.

So it wasn’t that we didn’t have a movement here like in Europe, it was that the business community, the Republican party, the wealthy in America, the media that they owned all went to work to decimate those organizations, political parties and trade unions that were the backbone of what we got in the 1930’s. [These] are the same backbones of the demonstrations and strikes in Europe and that’s why our reactions so far are different, but that is only temporary.

What the Occupy Wall Street movement shows, is that all of that can happen again. It only takes the determination of people badly affected by this crisis to understand the history that I just recounted and to see the need either to rebuild those old organizations or to build new ones in order to get those changes in policy that our own history teaches us we can have, we did have in the past and that we can have again.

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Visiting Professor at the New School University in New York. With frequent co-author, Stephen Resnick, he has published many books and articles on economic theory, economic history, and alternative economic theories. Their latest is Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012). Wolff’s recent work (books, articles, speeches, and interviews) critically analyzes capitalism’s severe global crisis since 2007. That work and proposals for solutions are gathered at rdwolff.com and democracyatwork.info.

Konstantine Roccas is an observer of local and international affairs and governance, but also writes about anything else that piques his ire. He enjoys a half kilo of Greek yogurt daily. He writes for the Arbitrage Magazine. More of his work can be found at myriadtruths.blogspot.caand he can be followed on Twitter @KosteeRoccas.