Special Comment: Is Obama a Socialist?

Monday 06 December 2010

by: Richard Wolff  |  t r u t h o u t | Special Comment

In this special comment, Professor Richard D. Wolff explains exactly why President Obama is not a socialist.

Over the last 25  years, in collaboration with his colleague, Stephen Resnick, Wolff has developed a new approach to political economy. While it retains and systematically elaborates the Marxist notion of class as surplus labor, it rejects the economic determinism typical of most schools of economics, usually associated with Marxism as well. Common to all of Professor Wolff’s work are two central components. The first is the introduction of class, in its elaborate surplus labor definition, as a new "entry point" of social analysis. The second is the concept of overdetermination as the logic of an analytic project that is consistently nondeterminist.

For more from Professor Wolff, read his numerous articles posted on Truthout and visit his web site.

 

 

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Richard Wolff is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. He is the author of New Departures in Marxian Theory (Routledge, 2006) among many other publications. Check out Richard Wolff’s documentary film on the current economic crisis, Capitalism Hits the Fan, at www.capitalismhitsthefan.com. Visit Wolff's Web site at www.rdwolff.com, and order a copy of his new book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do about It.

Comments

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Asscott Bush NATIONAL

 Tue, 12/07/2010 - 10:25 — Vic Anderson (not verified)

Asscott Bush NATIONAL SOCIALIST, maybe!



The right wing calls

 Tue, 12/07/2010 - 13:46 — Anonymous (not verified)

The right wing calls liberals, progressives, or anyone left-of-center a socialist in their ongoing fear mongering and spreading of lies. They are distorting the concept of socialism and in turn shoving it in the face of the public. Obama is a centrist, barely left-of-center- not anything near a socialist. The truth is if Obama was a socialist, he would have advocated a hell of a lot more than he did for UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE REFORM, the stimulus would have been much larger, there'd be no question of extending unemployment benefits, and millionaires and billionaires sure as hell wouldn't be getting tax cuts right now.



1) Why are the silly

 Tue, 12/07/2010 - 19:24 — fred fep (not verified)

1) Why are the silly pictures with facebook aphorisms above the longer comments. I realize both contain some kooks, but really: must everyone give facebook such carte blanche to be our big brother?

2) As to too big to fail corporations being saved. This is hardly socialism. In some ways it is veering towards corporate control. Oligarchy or fascism. By definition. About time right wing lemmings learned definitions correctly