Economic Update: How Capitalism Distributes Power

[Music] Welcome Friends to another edition of economic update a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children I'm your host Richard wolf I want to remind you that we have a volunteer Charlie Fabian who is ready and willing to take suggestions clippings ideas you have for segments on this program you have been doing it we have been going over them and we have gotten a lot of benefit from them so please continue here's his email charlie. info4 [e-mail] once again Charlie . info4 [e-mail] today's program is going to cover child labor and its Resurgence here in the United States the remarkable decision of college athletes to become unionized starting at Dartmouth College no less and the kind of strikes that are hitting 501c3 charitable organizations Museum art centers and so on because that's an enormously important phenomena also sweeping the United States and then in the second half of the program we're going to be examining the relationship between capitalism and capitalists on the one hand and the control and organization of political power in the United States and in other countries and see how that shows the importance of the power discussions in modern society okay let's Jump Right In child labor is an old problem of capitalism wherever capitalism has settled in it has done so by exploiting children in the early days of Britain's capitalism where modern capitalism really began back in the 17th 18th century child labor was common much of the literature is about it those of you that remember the novels of Charles Dickens are full of the labor of children then over time as capitalism spreads to other parts of the world child labor is almost always part of the story to this day there are child labor violations all over uh parts of the world world where capitalism is relatively new parts of Asia Africa Latin America in particular but in many countries particularly those where capitalism existed for a longer time there were social movements after a while protesting child labor so that finally the movements became strong enough it took decades so that laws were passed Pro prohibiting child labor about a 100 years ago they won here in the United States but before that there were some struggles that we can learn from the people who pushed against allowing child labor were as you might suspect the children themselves and their families who wanted child labor were the employers and the employer class and the arguments they used were truly stunning when we now look back on them here was one of them we're doing poor people a favor by allowing their children to come to work in our factories and our offices and our stores because if we didn't hire those children those poor families they come from would be poorer still that's right employers came up with the notion very modern that a job is a gift that they give to people rather than an exploitation of those people well the mass of parents wouldn't have it and they got laws passed prohibiting child labor the employers scream that if we can't hire children at low wages we'll go out of business and there'll be no jobs for anybody not adults either don't tap a mess with our profits is basically what they were saying same argument employers always use but the mass of people wouldn't have it well now that American capitalism is facing real competition around the world now that the American Empire is in Decline they want to bring and who's that they the employers they want to bring child labor back across the United States in a dozen states already there are laws on the books or laws being pushed through Straight legislators to allow children first it was children of immigrants who aren't very well supervised now it's children in general starting with teens and then working their way down getting rid of work permits and inspections to catch child labor where it's illegal and remember while you can ship manufacturing jobs abroad you can't ship service jobs abroad so children can be used in those and here's a sad irony the boasting of a few politicians that they're bringing manufacturing back to the United States well it's more boast than real but one of the ways they're going to do it they explain is they're going to compete with the lower wages of the Foreigner by using children here to whom they can pay lower wages it's a remarkable sign of the decline and the decline in the quality of the capitalism left in the United States that it is undoing a hundred years of doing well without child labor by resorting to it again and the collapse of our public education system is pushing young people to go to work earlier as the schooling becomes pointless underdeveloped unsuccessful very dangerous tendency within our culture and we need to be aware of it and fight against it on March 5th the basketball team at Dartmouth College voted 13-2 to form a union of college athletes this is the first successful Union organizing drive and Union election for college athletes in American history it marks a remarkable new spread of unionization to yet more areas that before seem to be unable unwilling unable even to think about having a union colleges and universities are making billions it's in the billions of College athletics and they're giving the college athletes next to nothing out of it and the athletes are protesting they want a share they are putting their lives their health their careers their education on the line in order to be virtually pre-professional athletes and getting a piece of the money that makes possible in our culture is something they wanted so the ones in Dartmouth joined uh service employees International Union Local 560 which already represents Dartmouth students working in dining halls in the library and so on it's it's a sign that the students understand that they're also workers and as workers they're entitled or ought to be to Union representation just like any other worker it's a basic idea it's been pushed for a long time but now it's really catching hold 40,000 students across the United States have joined unions in the last two years it's a major growth area for us unions and why is it important well beyond everything I've just said here it is let me drive home another Point students are now going to have power over how they're treated as workers their hours their working conditions the medical coverage they will or will not get and so on they should have had this power all along they should have been participants in deciding these important aspects of their lives both as workers and as students and now they're going to have a lot more power organized than they ever had as individual student workers before and here's perhaps the biggest important we are breaking down the gap between educated people and workingclass people without much education Beyond High School in terms of unions there's a long history of unions being more about the people without a college education and less about people with a college education and what's happening through these activities of the worker students unionizing whether it be in the dining room or on the playing field or in the library we're breaking down that distinction these student athletes will be teaching other athletes the virtues of unions the benefit of unions students will now better understand when workers at their institution and in the larger society organize unionize strike and demand for working people aay in their lives beyond what they've had before the worker student Alliance that was dreamed of in the 1960s is actually coming into reality now and it's the leadership of people like this like these remarkable basketball players at Dartmouth College that is bringing that reality into existence and my last uh update has to do with h a small event with big implications up in Western Massachusetts there is by now a well-known Museum it's called Mass mocha to the people who live up in Western Massachusetts it stands for Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts an old factory complex in North Adams Massachusetts was converted when it closed down into an art space a museum workshops a remarkable place to visit if you're ever up there 120 members of their uh staff there workers at the Museum uh members of United Auto Workers Local 2010 struck Mass smoker uh on March 6th of this year and they demanded something really radical get ready $18.25 an hour as a minimum wage that involved basically a four to 4 a half% wage increase the museum was unwilling to give them that it would have cost $150,000 to meet the needs that that's all of these 120 members but the museum board of directors didn't see fit to Grant these workers in the museum a minimum of $18.25 cents an hour now why well to understand this absurdity we have to understand who runs the museums of this country they tend to be the very wealthiest citizens who seem to think it's a great honor to sit on the board of the museum or the symphony or the opera house or any of these other charitable organizations it used to be particularly the wives of the men who were CEOs of companies who would then do this kind of charitable work but the mentality whether it's men or women whether it's the CEO himself or his wife the mentality was the mentality of the big business people which is why they treat the workers in these nonprofit so-called Enterprises just as harshly sometimes more harshly than they treat them in their profit-making Enterprises why because they think those workers are lucky to be working in an artistic environment in a charitable environment in a creative environment and so they can substitute being part of that for paying the rent and the cost of living which of course the workers resent so unionized labor is now spreading to the charitables that used to be quite immune to that part and parcel of a massive Resurgence of union militancy strike activity demand of workers to participate it's changing America in a dramatic way we've come to the end of the first half of this program stay with us we'll be right back talking about capitalism and [Music] power welcome back friends to the second half of today's economic update this second half is devoted to a discussion of the relationship between capitalism and the leading capitalists in any society and power who has the power how is it used where is it managed these are very very important questions we all know that we live in the environment of capitalism and of the distribution of power but we need to take a look at it because of what is happening in that area of our society so I'm going to begin with talking about capitalism and the one kind of power which is the power to control what the mass media bring to us what the newspapers say what the television programs broadcast what the radio stations tell us Etc and nowadays of course adding social media to all of that well Once Upon a Time long ago we had a situation where in every city town or County there'd be one two or three people who would start a newspaper maybe start a radio station later on a television station or two or three or four of all of those and we could then tell ourselves which we did as a nation here in the United States that the media represented in some sense the diversity of opinion the diversity of condition across the country true it was always people who had a little bit of money who set these things up so right away poor people were excluded but that was American history from the beginning anyway but at least there was diversity and lots of different perspectives one might say if you keep forgetting that workingclass and poor people were pushed aside but that time is long gone capitalists have become not many and few and Scattered but a few and highly concentrated with corporations employing tens hundreds of thousands of workers many companies have become a few in Industry after industry we all know about that we all know what the initials are of those who survived the competition because they're the mega corporations of our time and media have not been immune from that literally four or five companies now control vast networks of radio stations television stations and newspapers it's gotten so extreme that the super rich among them pick cherry pick which of them they're going to want to control almost like the personal fif of an ancient feudal Lord I'm going to give you a few examples but you know that Jeffrey Bezos the multibillionaire uh who sits on top of the Amazon pyramid he purchased the Washington Post what a remarkable thing the most important newspaper in the capital of the United States together with the New York Times the two newspapers of record that anybody in the world wants to kind of know what's going on in the United States officially the public opinion those are the two newspapers they go to First The Washington Post and the New York Times so here an individual billionaire Jeffrey Bezos buys and owns the Washington Post as his personal property he decides no matter what he tells you he decides what does and doesn't go in there what he's happy with stays what he's unhappy with well we'll see and even if he delegates some of his authority to underlings they're his underlings and he can fire them and he will and he does as he sees fit Elon Musk purchased Twitter millions and millions of people will now see or not see what Elon Musk does or does not allow to go on to Twitter there's a whole set of scandals as people notice what they like disappearing or what they hate showing up we now see that billionaires are eyeing Tick Tock getting the government to ban Tick Tock because it's owned by a Chinese company although major Americans are invested in The Tick Tock and our part owners indeed some of the billionaires are trying to buy the Tik Tock because they got the government to tell Tick Tock that would have to sell itself to Americans Donald Trump's treasury SEC secretary Steve nett is working together with other billionaires to buy Tik Tock okay what's going on here enormous power what we do politically what we do around the world in Wars is shaped by what the media tell us these wars are about who's winning who's losing what the issues are you can see it right now swirling around Ukraine swirling around Gaza we give enormous power to billionaires and it has nothing to do with democracy there is no democracy determining what it is we see or don't see what it is we do in the way of opinion what we allow what range of opinion what disagreements what debates we ought to wonder about that that's a the product of capitalism creating this enormous wealth concentrating it in a very few hands and permitting them to buy and control something as social as what we even call social media that are mass activities shaping how we think let me turn to another dimension of capitalism and power these days it has become popular for our political leaders and quite a few journalists and politicians as well to talk about authoritarianism this bad thing we're supposed to locate in the behavior of people like uh Vladimir Putin in Russia or Victor Orban in Hungary or B excuse me bolsonaro in Brazil people like that and it led me to wonder authoritarian I guess it's the opposite of democratic it's when you have a power concentrated in somebody at the top and that that power is not accountable to the people below that's kind of the argument it's they're not democratically controlled From Below they're authoritarian so I wanted to point out in case you hadn't already figured it out that best example I can think of of an authoritarian we're always dealing with since Mr Putin is quite far away and so is Mr Orban and all the others that are usually called these names your local CEO of a big American corporation is quintessentially an authoritarian the CEO as a member of the board of directors which he usually is and I say he because the overwhelming majority of CEOs are men white men they are in an extraordinarily authorit Arian position think about it they preside over the employees in many of these large corporations we're talking about 10 20 50 60 100 200 300, employees they control the employees what does that mean they can hire them they can fire them they can raise their income they can lower their income they can give them good working conditions or bad working conditions and what can those workers do do they vote for the person at the top not at all the work the employees have no say over the boss who bosses them an entirely different group of people shareholders vote for the board of directors and they in turn hire the CEO but the people under the CEO have no authority over the CEO that's what authoritarian Aran means and we don't seem to object as a nation do we we are very critical of the authoritarians over there they shouldn't uh be so powerful they shouldn't be so unaccountable to their people below set aside how accurate a description that is but that's the idea and yet here we are most of us going to work under a CEO in most cases being affected by what those folks decide when 30 years ago the CEOs decided to move a lot of production out of the United States to China and other parts of the world millions of Americans lost their jobs they've been in trouble financially ever since they've been terribly upset but they don't seem to put together that that's because of the authoritarian power wield by the boards of directors and CEOs who are the people who made the decision to move the job who made the decision to replace workers with machines yeah they're authoritarian you don't have to go overseas to find them and the last issue I want to deal with is the problem capitalists have always had with the fact that the human race particularly in many parts of the world fought for over centuries something called universal suffrage the right of everyone to vote it took a long time even when people got to vote in a general way it was first only men with money white men with power it had to be fought for people without money to get the right to vote for women to get the right to vote for nonwhites to get the right to vote but eventually we got in many parts of the world Universal suffrage everybody gets a vote you me next door neighbor him her we all get it and that gave capitalist a terrible scare that's why they fought it for hundreds of years why because the vast majority of people are employees not employers US Census counts as employers no more than a maximum of 3% of the people people are employers the rest of us are employees so if there's going to be universal suffrage we know who's going to win the election the employees are the vast majority which means if we allow politics to be what it's supposed to be equal one person one vote we are giving sociey control politically to the employee class which the employer class won't have you know why because the first thing the employees could and would do if they really had power would be to change the outcome of the economy we wouldn't be giving an absurd power and wealth to a tiny number of people there wouldn't be Millions worried about putting food on the table when Elon Musk has more billions than than half the countries of the world we wouldn't allow any such thing it would be absurd so what the capitalists did is made sure they control politics you have in this country perfect example two parties both of whom are enthusiastic supporters of capitalism never question it never challenge it leaving the capitalist in the position to fund the two parties which they do who in turn guarantee to capitalist nobody will mess with your wealth what a wonderful system the billionaires fund the party and the party protects the billionaires in other parts of the community this is called a protection racket we won't call it that because we're polite but that's the reality through donations through lobbying through all the mechanisms we're familiar with the capitalists have gotten around universal suffrage made sure that the political system serves them a tiny minority so don't be surprised if the polls show that the people want X but the government is doing y that the people want Z but the president is doing Q they're disconnected because it's not the people who run the society it's the folks with the money and capitalism makes that a very small minority capitalism and power not quite the relationship you may have thought they had thank thanks for your attention and as always I look forward to speaking with you again next week

Channel: Democracy At Work

Views: 37,310

Keywords: Richard Wolff, democracy, work, labor, economy, economics, inequality, justice, capitalism, capital, socialism, wealth, income, wages, poverty, yt:cc=on

Id: 4Rr2p8Nn8Dk

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2024