According to the standard account, capitalism—whatever your criticisms of it—is synonymous with freedom. Other systems, we are told, necessitate central plan...
You don't have to say "means of production" to communicate marxist ideas. The whole point is to have a working-class movement, you're suggesting "well you can't talk to workers about marxism, you'll scare them off!" It's pretty easy to communicate ideas that promote class consciousness in plain language, which Teachout assidiously avoided doing. The "boss makes a dollar, I make a dime" stuff is an easier sell than the liberal, technocratic regulation stuff. But she does it becase her politics are anti-marxist. She thinks there can be a left-liberal coalition around an anti-corporate, anti-corruption agenda, which necessarily means a cross-class coalition -- so her avoidance of class struggle language is intentional. I think that's bad politics for the left. We should try to build the working-class movement, not compromise our agitprop to be inoffensive to bourgeois liberals.
And it's not merely inferred, she says it explicity at one point, "Without anti-monopoly regulations to restrict their size..." That's a pro-capitalist "solution" to keep capitalism on life support.
Wolff's video is not a "starting point", it's an explicit refutation. Teachout's methods are wrong and propogating them is counter-productive, because they convince people there are things you can to fix capitalism.
You don't have to say "means of production" to communicate marxist ideas. The whole point is to have a working-class movement, you're suggesting "well you can't talk to workers about marxism, you'll scare them off!" It's pretty easy to communicate ideas that promote class consciousness in plain language, which Teachout assidiously avoided doing. The "boss makes a dollar, I make a dime" stuff is an easier sell than the liberal, technocratic regulation stuff. But she does it becase her politics are anti-marxist. She thinks there can be a left-liberal coalition around an anti-corporate, anti-corruption agenda, which necessarily means a cross-class coalition -- so her avoidance of class struggle language is intentional. I think that's bad politics for the left. We should try to build the working-class movement, not compromise our agitprop to be inoffensive to bourgeois liberals.
And it's not merely inferred, she says it explicity at one point, "Without anti-monopoly regulations to restrict their size..." That's a pro-capitalist "solution" to keep capitalism on life support.
Wolff's video is not a "starting point", it's an explicit refutation. Teachout's methods are wrong and propogating them is counter-productive, because they convince people there are things you can to fix capitalism.