Capitalism, Harvard And Goldman Sachs

"I am a critic of Capitalism. I don't like it, I don't think it works real well and I think the human race can do a lot better. Is that clear?"

_{Longfellow Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge MA
source: Wikipedia}

Those are the opening words of a lecture by Richard D. Wolff from 2017 with the title "Capitalism Has Failed". If you've read some of my posts, you'll know that this man has been a great source of information to me. Unlike myself, mr. Wolff did finish his education and did so at the most famous schools in the world: Harvard, Yale and Stanford universities. The funny thing is that, while these most elite educational institutes are designed te deliver the next generation of political leaders and captains of industry, he turned out an outspoken Marxist.

Now, I won't go on an in-depth critique of capitalism this time, but I'd like to share some of Richard Wolffs experiences to illustrate how deeply sick the current state of the world economy, and how capitalism is responsible for that, or rather how our unshakable belief in the market-economy is responsible.

From his introduction at Harvard University he tells about the speech from the director to the assembled freshmen of his first year, at 17.5 years of age. The director asked the attendants to look at the person to your right, and then at the person to your left. He then said to realize that one of them will become a next captain of industry and the other will become a future political leader, the next president maybe. "Here at Harvard we do not educate you, but we are preparing you to run the world."

He also said that at Yale one of his classmates was a woman named Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve; it's clear that these universities are meant to teach anything but Marxism, and they indeed don't. Another thing I heard from mr. Wolff, in another talk, is that taking economy class essentially meant taking capitalism class: other economic models are mentioned in the sidelines, as failed experiments in the past, as examples of how not to organize an economy.

_{Richard D. Wolff in 2015 - source: Wikimedia Commons}

I can't verify any of these anecdotes of course, but I have heard similar stories by other people who attended these institutions; they really seem to act as the breeding ground for the next generations of our leaders. If so, it would be only natural that the things taught there would be the things necessary for keeping the (belief in the) current order of things intact. Marxism doesn't fit that bill. And that's because Marx and Engels wrote the best criticism on industrial capitalism as they saw it emerge around them. And that's all they did: they admired the system greatly for it's ability to accelerate the process of creating material wealth and comfort, but also saw the fatal flaws inherent in a system in which laborers would be alienated from the capital and eventually even the work itself. They foresaw the crisis of overproduction we are in the middle of right now, as well as the inherent instability that we now experience every 4 to 7 years, the frequency in which small and large "downturns" happen.

Wolff said often that every American President since F.D.R. made the same promise, could make the same promise because of this boom-bust-cycle; "if you vote for me and follow my plans, I promise to get us out of the current economic downturn". So left and right, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, they all devise their own narratives about how we got here and how we get out of here. But it's all fake.

Back to Harvard; very recently he talked about a disturbing development concerning Harvard and Goldman Sachs. Harvard University's president, Drew Faust joined the board of Goldman Sachs, only a couple of days after she resigned as president of Harvard. She receives an initial one time payment of $500,000 .00 plus an annual retainer of $75,000.00, for which she has to attend a couple of board-meetings. Wikipedia proves to be very up-to-date in this case:

Faust retired as President of Harvard College in June 2018, succeeded by Lawrence Bacow. Just four days after retiring from her position as president, she joined the board of Goldman Sachs. She retains her title as a professor of History at Harvard.

Wolff goes on to explain how the University of Harvard screws the common people of Massachusetts, and how the rich use the university as a large post for tax deduction. They donate billions to the educational institute, money they would otherwise have to pay taxes on. Wolff then makes the connection on how this mechanism hinders the political process to raise the minimum wage in the state. If you have some time left, I'd invite you to listen to this speech; it's good and eye-opening to see how deep the mechanisms to protect the status quo are rooted in society and to see it illustrated by current events. It starts with the Harvard memories and the specifics about the Drew Faust promotion to the board of Goldman Sachs, but the rest is pretty interesting to.

_{Global Capitalism: Immigration & Trade War [July 2018]}

This video is part of the Democracy At Work YouTube channel, where Richard Wolff releases many videos on the current state of the economy as seen fom a Marxist viewpoint. I'm not a Marxist as none of the "isms" are all right and none of them are all wrong. But these times call for a serious and critical look at the market economy that's clearly failing.

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