Understanding socialism with Richard Wolf

Chris Hedges talks to economist Richard Wolff about his new book ‘Understanding Socialism’. Wolff explains how in the socialist dream, work is something that we should want to engage in, that means something to us, that brings us into relationships with other people that we value, that make us better people as we interact with them; “it’s a transformation of life.”

[rt.com]

2 of my favorites in this discussion. A little bit of socialisms history before moving into the present.

You spend a large part of your life at the work place where there's no democracy within a country that proclaims itself to be a democracy.

Some of the reform Professor Wolff is explaining is much like what Chavez and Maduro have done in Venezuela. China is now implicating some of these measures also. Where you bring the citizens into the political realm within regional politics, forming cultural arts and such lost during the last tyrant rule under the western back government. Creating local farming to combat hunger as illegal sanctions harm many in the population.

Wolff then explains what Venezuela's fall back entails. The struggle with attempting to combine socialism with capitalism. As the capitalist structure still fairly intact, it, the capital structure, wealthy and elite, collaborates with outside entities to suppress the growth of a fully functioning socialist system. Even with the nationalism of what might be the largest oil reserves, and 2nd largest gold reserves, the capitalist and outside entities have been able to limit the abilities to fully support the socialist system. This is where China may have an advantage over Venezuela. Of course being used as a vassal of the western world is a major plus.

In the second half Wolff correctly, in my opinion, compares what happen in Germany to the Trump movement within a facade of patriotism and nationalism.

Consumerism is a false tool towards happiness used by the capitalist to engulf us in its failures. An addiction many blissfully go about without recognizing as we rack up debts in which with each recession many fall through the cracks that always benefit the wealthy, at the expense of those who manage to keep from falling through the cracks. We are never bailed out, but those who rule over us are.

See. Courage. Reject. Stand up. Support our fellow men and women. We can do better than what we have.

!My fellow humans! This is why they, both parties, suppress our votes. This is why our governments attack, especially Latin American governments, counties based on some sense of socialist governance. And their media tools fill us with false narratives and lies as they do. If we were to get a sense of the power people could benefit from their game would be over. For the capitalist ruling elite this can not be tolerated.

"Out Of The Illusion ---- Video Versions"