My How To Fix Democracy conversation with the Marxist economist Richard D. Wolff about the future of American capitalism

My How To Fix Democracy video interview series has featured interviews with some of the world’s leading politicians and academics including the former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Nobel prize winning economist Angus Deaton and the crusading journalist Maria Ressa. But the interview which has garnered the most views in this series is with the economist Richard D. Wolff — amongst the most lucid critics of American capitalism

It’s no surprise. As I said to Wolff in the interview, his time — the time for democratic socialism — has arrived. So I’ve transcribed the whole interview below and I will follow up, in a separate post, with some thoughts of my own.

Andrew Keen: Rick, easy question to begin; what is capitalism?

Richard Wolff: Capitalism is a particular way of organizing the production of goods and services. It differs from the other ways human beings have found to do that such as slavery or Feudalism or ancient village structures. It’s a particular way; it’s part of a series that human race has evolved through. Like all of the others, it had a birth, it evolves over time, and then it dies.

Andrew Keen: But is it premised on the free market? Is that in economic terms it — its defining quality?