Richard Wolff, celebrated economist, professor, pundit and author, is coming to St. Petersburg’s Palladium Theater in benefit for WMNF Community Radio on Tuesday, November 10.
Wolff’s analysis of capitalism from a Marxist perspective easily dismantles critics of workers’ rights and regulation by simply using data and historic analysis. Discussions about wage theft, minimum wage, and even Democratic Socialism invariably invoke his theories.
“Professor Wolff cuts through the blather that clouds modern economics in mystery. He calls ’em as he sees ’em”, says Rob Lorei, WMNF’s News Director. “And with his considerable gift for plain-speaking he describes the economy- not from the view of Wall Street– but from the point of view of Main Street and tells us what we really need to know.”
Professor Richard Wolff’s show, Economic Update, is at its core, and exploration of the American Dream and the many ways capitalism shuts most people out of it. He is a master of showing the relationships between seemingly disparate facts, and the impact on people today. It airs every Tuesday morning at 10am on WMNF.
Like Noam Chomsky, Richard Wolff reframes the way to think about history and the way we can understand economics. He uses the idea that labor is a commodity, originated by Karl Marx, and updates it to reflect our current economic systems. He introduces the influences of class hierarchy into examining how economic policies are created and whom they benefit.
He told Bill Maher in an interview in 2014,
“Marx was never a thinker about communism or socialism. Never wrote a book about it. His analysis was about capitalism. He is interested in understanding what about it is positive, and what about it isn’t so positive…Marxism, in the way Marx wrote about it, is the analysis of capitalism, from the perspective of the critic.”
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. He taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), (Sorbonne).
He has co-authored many books on the political economy and theory with Stephen Resnick, and has authored numerous articles as well. He not only has his regular radio show, Richard Wolff’s Economic Update, broadcast nationally, but appears regularly on talk shows such as Real Time with Bill Maher and Moyers & Company.
Tickets are $15 in advance/$20 at the door, and are available at the Palladium box office.
