Editor's note: Film Sessions is a weekly feature here on Media Madness in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of Youtube.
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As I mentioned in my most recent journal, I'm currently up to my eyeballs trying to put together a flurry of Biden-centric articles about American politics, just to establish a baseline understanding with my readers as we pivot into a new (yet familiar) era of neoliberal authoritarianism. What I neglected to bring up in that post however, is that I'm also battling a head cold, getting my research notes together for a new episode of the No Fugazi Podcast with my co-host Nick Galea, and trying to finish a tedious but necessary cross-posting project on my main website, ninaillingworth.com. In other words, despite working twenty-one out of twenty-five days this month already, I'm behind my own schedule and I have little hope of actually finishing everything I wanted to do in January on time.
Still, like a fool, I insist on trying my best, and so for this week's Film Session blog, I'd like to return to a man who needs no introduction (in part because I introduced him quite thoroughly only two weeks ago) - Marxist economist, Richard D. Wolff. The twist here is that I'm going to post two short videos starring professor Wolff, one from his YouTube channel, and one from the Gravel Institute. In return, it is my hope that you'll forgive me for keeping my analysis brief, and skimping a bit on the additional resources this time; after all, many of them will be repeats from my last post about Richard Wolff's work.
First up, we're going to stick with our Biden-centric theme and examine an eight minute, "Wolff Responds" video called "What Biden's Immediate Economic Program Should Be."
The first thing I want to note is that I told you that I agree with most, but not all of the things Wolff says in our last article about him, and that kind of applies here in a very odd way. Because the professor put the word "immediate" in the title of his video, and yet his presentation doesn't start with, or even mention the absurdly obvious need to literally pay Americans to stay home until we can put Captain Trips (coronavirus) in a shallow grave, I unfortunately have to cry foul here. The fact of the matter is that the number one crisis, social, economic, or political, facing pretty much every person in the labor class the world over right now, is stopping Covid-19, and until that happens, some of the good ideas Wolff does suggest in this video, simply don't matter - and in fact, one of them, a federal jobs program, would be a colossally bad idea "immediately" in light of the struggle against the virus as it stands today.
Frankly however, I've watched enough of professor Wolff's videos, debates and lectures to know that he's not a heartless eugenicist who doesn't care if workers die, and in fact his three big suggestions for Biden in this video would all be important parts of an agenda to help people survive the fallout from coronavirus after we've got it under control. In other words, the real problem with Wolff's video essay might literally just be that he put "immediate" in the title, and he forgot to say "once it's safe to even go back to work" somewhere in the presentation.
With that understood, what are those three suggestions? Keeping in mind that Wolff is clearly focused on things Biden could in fact accomplish in office, he wants the administration to pursue a massive federal jobs program to fight unemployment, significantly increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help pay for a recovery, and end the trade spat and saber rattling with China before it turns into a real war that's bad for everyone, the labor class included.
To be clear, nothing Wolff is calling for in this video is really all that radical and I suspect that's very much on purpose given his feelings about Palooka Joe's economic team. A federal jobs program is a big part of how we got out of the Great Depression, rich people have so much money they're inflating speculative asset bubbles all over our economy, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out any money we spend on f*cking with China, is money we can't spend on a post-Covid recovery. And yet, I think we all know that our capitalist overlords will refuse, and call these simple and achievable measures extreme.
To that I say? Bullsh*t. If you remember back in the Spring when America was being lead by a reality TV show fascist who tried to pretend Covid wasn't even real, even quasi-mainstream observers were talking about coronavirus signaling the end of capitalism as we know it; and yet today, as the bodies climb even higher and the crisis (both social, and economic) deepens, those same folks would call professor Wolff' suggestions here too extreme? Hell no; Biden asked the country to give Democrats control of the Senate so he could fight Covid-19 and restore the economy. Well he now has the House, the Senate and the Oval Office - it's time to stop pretending a mask mandate on federal property is a real solution and put the people's money, where Palooka Joe's mouth has been. Check out the video with professor Wolff below:
What Biden's Immediate Economic Program Should Be
Our second video in this "Cheater's Week" edition of Film Sessions once again comes to us from The Gravel Institute, which is showing promising signs of an ongoing collaboration with professor Wolff that has me really exciting. It's called "How Capitalism Exploits You."
I chose this video to round out our discussion this week because once again, I think Wolff and the Gravel crew have managed to produce a (very short) feature that successfully attacks the "common sense" right wing ideologies that underpin the work of propaganda outlets like PragerU. In this case, the bogus reactionary idea that finds its way into Wolff's crosshairs is the belief that your boss is doing you a favor by employing you, and as such has a morally supportable right to profit from your labor. Not so says Wolff; capitalism is by its very nature about theft and exploitation - theft from who? You.
Ultimately, given that I specifically said you'd be better off using your time on Youtube teaching Marxist concepts, than debunking PragerU one video at a time, and this video is quite literally five minutes of Marxist labor theory, I feel obligated to include it here today:
- nina illingworth
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!
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