Richard Wolf explains Marxist Economics (again)

This is a 40-minute discussion between Zain Raza and Professor Richard Wolff on a wide range of topics, but focusing on the effects of the U.S.‘s retreat from Europe on Germany, in particular.

Prof. Richard Wolff − The Decline of the US Empire & Germany's Economy by AcTVism Munich (YouTube)

At about 35:00,

“Zain Raza: We have seen the emergence of AI like China’s DeepSeek, which you mentioned, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. And there’s a major transformation taking place across the global economy. Many industries are being affected. The world economic forum’s “future of jobs” report 2025 anticipates that, by 2030, AI and other information-processing technologies will transform 86% of businesses, leading to the creation of 170 million new roles worldwide, while making 92 million existing jobs redundant. Can you talk about whether the promise of technology to free humanity from drudgery and mundane tasks, so that it can engage in creative and intellectual pursuit, is finally being realized by this AI-transformation?

“Professor Richard WolffProfessor Richard Wolff: Yes, I will give you a very old answer, because this is a very old question. And the old form of the question is: every technology—whether it is the power loom or modern chemistry or atomic energy or electricity—any of the major breakthroughs were always defended on the grounds that they could relieve labor drudgery—the need to sweat your body to feed your body, all of that—and they have always disappointed.

“America is arguably one of the most advanced technological societies and I can assure you, as an American worker—which is what I am—we are exhausted. We work more hours. We work faster. The liberation of technology is something we can only think about in the future because no-one in their right mind would talk about it now.

“In other words, the problem has never been technology. The problem is capitalism. What do I mean? It means you only install a technology—a new one—if, and to the degree, that it enhances the profits of your business.

“I’m now going to give you a simple example, simple arithmetic.

“Imagine you’re a producer. You have 100 workers in your factory or your office or your store and a new technology comes across—AI, it doesn’t matter—and so suddenly, to produce the same number of goods, to charge the same price as before, you don’t need a 100 workers, you can make do with 50. The capitalist says ‘wonderful!’ He fires 50 workers, and he says to the others, ‘here’s the new machine; here’s the new technology. You now produce twice what you used to produce.‘ He sells the same output at the same price, so he gets the same revenue, but he enjoys a wonderful profit because the 50 workers he used to have to pay, he doesn’t have to pay anymore, so he keeps that portion of the revenue for his own profit. All right.

“Now, that means that 50 people are unemployed. They are desperate. They will go look for work, because otherwise they don’t live. And they will offer to work at a lower wage or they will work harder or they will work more hours. They create the difficulty for the working class because of what the employer did.

“Now, here’s the punchline.

“Suppose it [were]n’t a capitalist business. Suppose it was a worker co-op run, by communists or socialists or just decent people. Here’s what the alternative was. Taking the machine, which makes every worker twice as productive and give everybody a 4-hour working day instead of an 8-hour working day. Because, in a 4-hour working day, they can produce the same number of goods, sell them at the same price, bring in the same revenue as before. The capitalist profit won’t go up, but the workers would have enjoyed a spectacular increase in their leisure, in their time to be creative, to have a family, to be active politically in the community. More people would benefit much more from that way of dealing with technology. And then we would have seen what the technology promised: the liberation of human beings from labor. The reason we don’t have that, is not the fault of the technology, it’s that we’re holding on to a capitalism that has outlived its usefulness in human history.”