Capitalism is unstable, capitalism is unequal, and capitalism is fundamentally undemocratic.
I want people to make their own choices about how they live their lives, the professions they lead,
where they want to work, and what they do. And capitalism offers that potential. Slavery it did it with masters and slaves, feudalism did it with lords and serfs,
capitalism does it with employers and employees. Capitalism, private property, is necessary although not sufficient to a free and open society.
Please come up to the stage debaters two young men in the prime of their lives, Richard Wolff, who will be
who will be defending the proposition socialism is preferable to capitalism as an economic system
that promotes freedom equality and prosperity. Gene Epstein will be taking the negative on that. Each candidate, the way this will work
is that each debater will have 17 and a half minutes, and that last thirty seconds
when it comes you'll understand why it's there, but each of them will have 17 minutes and 30 seconds
to lay out an initial case. They'll do five minutes each of rebuttal. I'm gonna beat them up a little bit with a moderators prerogative on some questions,
then we're gonna open it up to 30 minutes or more of audience Q&A. Five minutes each of closing statements—seven and a half and again those 30 seconds,
you know this is where the world changes in those 30 seconds, and then we will take another vote, and we'll see who is the big winner.
Gene could you please—and if you haven't voted yet, you've got about five seconds to go.
Please make a vote. Either vote for the proposition, against it, or undecided. You need to vote now in order to vote later. And without further ado let's have Richard Wolff come up
and explain to us why socialism is preferable to capitalism as an economic system that promotes freedom, equality, and prosperity.
Richard Wolff you have the stage.
Thank you all for coming I assume that socialism is the reason
that you came either for it or against it and I hope that the things I have to
say will make some sense of it for you I did want to comment on the notion that
Reason magazine is free and that the understanding Marxism book costs money
and I want to urge you not to invert from the price what the values of these
things are that would be a mistake it would be confusing the price with the
value and for those of you that know something about socialist theory that's something you want to avoid okay
socialism preferable to capitalism my basic argument is that's a very low bar
that's not asking much and I want to make that case as strongly as I know how
but I have a problem in the very beginning as I always do traveling
around this country talking about this and that is we are like bears in this
country coming out of a hibernation about seventy years of it since 1945
when everything changed from in a society in which socialists communists
Marxists occupied all the normal positions in society as teachers and
workers and bureaucrats and unionists when we had a new deal that celebrated
many of the objectives socialists have always supported it is across the United
States had a big picture over the war the clerk's office where you bought
stamps and there was Uncle Sam with his hat arm and arm with Uncle Joe which
stood for Joseph Stalin after that there was not so surprisingly a terrible reaction the business
community and the right-wing in America was horrified that for the 1930s we had
had a program of raising taxes on corporations and the rich in order to
fund the creation for the first time in American history of Social Security unemployment compensation the first minimum wage and a public employment
project that hired fifteen million people the rich had to pay and the mass