The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself

by Richard D. Wolff

The coronavirus pandemic, the deepening economic crash, dangerously divisive political responses, and exploding social tensions have thrown an already declining American capitalist system into a tailspin. The consequences of these mounting and intertwined crises will shape our future. In this unique collection of over 50 essays, "The Sickness is the When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself," Richard D. Wolff argues clearly that "returning to normal" no longer responds adequately to the accumulated problems of US capitalism. What is necessary, instead, is transition toward a new economic system that works for all of us. “A blueprint for how we got here, and a plan for how we will rescue ourselves” - Chris Hedges “A magnificent source of hope and insight.” - Yanis Varoufakis “In this compelling set of essays, and with his signature clarity, intensity, accessibility and deference to historical and present perspective, Wolff has issued not just a stark warning, but concrete reasoning, as to why this time really should be different.” - Nomi Prins “One of the most powerful and incisive voices in America. As an economist he transcends that “dismal science”, he is a tribune of Main St, a voice of the people.” - George Galloway “Wolff clearly explains the ways that capitalism exacerbates unemployment, inequality, racism, and patriarchy; and threatens the health and safety of workers and communities - i.e., most of us.” - Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Ph.D. “If you care about deeper measures of social health as Americans suffer the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, you will find here a wealth of insight, statistics, and other ammunition that we all need in the fight for a more just society.” - Adam Hochschild “The current failed system has a noose around all of our necks. Richard Wolff offers an economic vision that gets our society off the gallows.” - Jimmy Dore

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, Essays, Sustainability, Science, Society

214 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2020

About the author

Richard D. Wolff is an American economist, well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology, and class analysis. He is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum in New York City. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD. He will release three new books in 2012: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books), Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press), and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books).

Reviews

[Chris Boutté · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think that I’ve ever loved a book so much that had me pissed off from cover to cover. Richard Wolff is one of my new favorite people, and I was introduced to him through a podcast. He’s an economist who is a fierce critic of capitalism. This book is a collection of essays and other pieces of content Wolff made during the first year of the pandemic, and it showcases how the wealthy took advantage of the system while so many people were struggling to survive.

The stories in this book will make you want to kick something (preferably inanimate) due to how many messed up things were going on as well as the hypocrisy from people who love capitalism. The corporate welfare during this time was out of control, and the people taking the money are the same people that tell us to just work hard and not accept handouts. Even if you disagree with Wolff’s solutions, I don’t think many can argue with the fact that most of what he discusses is pretty messed up.

[Bremer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the full review here: https://bremeracosta.medium.com/the-s...

Richard D. Wolff is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University. He holds a BA in History (Harvard College), an MA in History (Yale University), an MA in Economics (Yale University), and a PhD in Economics (Yale University). For the last twenty-five years, professor Wolff, in collaboration with Stephen Resnick, has expanded the “Marxist notion of class as surplus labor,” while rejecting the concept of economic determinism, found in most schools of economics. Besides writing, teaching, and lecturing, Wolff is one of the founders for the Association of Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) and its quarterly journal (Rethinking Marxism).

On September 20, 2020, Richard Wolff published “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.” In this collection of over fifty essays, Wolff examines the deepening economic crash, systemic racism, and the coronavirus pandemic, and how they have all coalesced under an unjust economic system.

[Note: The most recent data from this review are from 2020]

American wages have stagnated since the 1970s while the cost of living has steadily increased. The federal minimum wage, for example, is $7.25. It has remained at $7.25 since 2009. Meanwhile, 2,153 billionaires own more wealth than 4.6 billion people from around the world (making up 60% of the global population). In the US alone, the three richest people own more wealth than 50% of the population. As inequalities rise, millions of ordinary citizens are chasing the American Dream into a deepening hole of student, credit card, mortgage, and auto loan debt, while stressing out over job security, flat wages, and eroding benefits.

Many American corporations have moved their businesses overseas rather than providing American workers with protections, salaries, benefits, and retirement packages. They are driven by maximizing their profits, not with helping the people of their own country.

In developing countries, there are fewer (health, safety, environmental, and so on) regulations imposed on corporations. There are also natural resources to be exploited, which indigenous populations often depend upon for their daily survival. Poor workers in developing countries are often coerced into working for these corporations under unfair conditions. They usually work for pitifully low wages and long hours.

Christopher Ryan, in Civilized to Death, provides an example of what these conditions are like for locals, who are forced into this kind of dehumanizing work. “Multinational corporations routinely expropriate land in poor countries (or ‘buy’ it from corrupt politicians), force the local populations off the land (so they cannot grow or hunt their own food), and offer the ‘luckiest’ among them jobs cutting down the forest, mining minerals, or harvesting fruit in exchange for slave wages often paid in company currency that can only be used to buy unhealthful, industrially produced food at inflated prices at a company-owned store. These victims of market incursion are then often celebrated as having been saved from ‘abject poverty.’ With their gardens, animals, fishing, and hunting, they had been living on less than a dollar per day. Now, as slave laborers, they’re participating in the economy. This, we’re told, is progress.”

In America, around 30 million citizens have no medical insurance. They cannot afford the astronomical costs of insurance, especially if they are suddenly confronted with a medical emergency. 100 million Americans who do own insurance still struggle with “high deductibles and/or sizable co-pays.” And many American workers, despite the state of their insurance, don’t have sick leave. They can’t afford to take time off from their job if they feel sick. Then there are millions of undocumented immigrants who are afraid to go to medical facilities because they don’t want to be locked in cages, separated from their intimate families, and deported.

When many workers become sick and have to quarantine, they aren’t given enough (if any) money to cover their costs. A lot of workers, especially those with families, live from paycheck to paycheck. They have no economic incentive to go into quarantine if they get sick. All through the Trump Administration, corporate profits were protected, such as with tax reliefs. Essential workers, whose health is threatened daily by the pandemic, receive inadequate protections, if they receive them at all.

Viruses have always been around throughout the centuries. They are not uncommon. During the 1918 flu epidemic, more than 700,000 people died from H1N1. “H1N1 resurfaced again in 2009 as ‘swine flu.’ Other recent viruses include SARS (2002–2004) and MERS (since 2012).”

Systematic preparation for future outbreaks of dangerous viruses is a social necessity. Producers of ventilators, masks, hospital beds, and so on, should have stockpiled them. There should have been extensive planning for a distribution of supplies and a training of volunteers to cope with sudden outbreaks.

“To block disease transmission, plans should have been made to accommodate supervision, distribution of supplies, etc. likewise, the consequences of social distances — lost jobs, closed businesses, disrupted supply chains, crippled purchasing power, chaotic credit markets, etc.–should have been planned for.”

Capitalist industries failed to prepare for this public health crisis because they had no incentive to prepare. Their goal is primarily to increase their private profits. The Trump administration didn’t compensate for the failures of the corporate sector because political interests often overlap with corporate interests.

Viruses happen periodically in history. They are not new, but they can be devastating when they are not researched and prepared for. The only rational, humane response to the inevitable threat of a pandemic is to plan to minimize death, sickness, damage, and loss. The US government should have (but did not) produce a necessary supply of masks, ventilators, hospital beds, gowns, protective gear, and testing kits. They should have invested more into medical research, economic support for citizens, and public health measures.

In a capitalist system, however, profits are more valuable than efficiency. Capitalism tends to move overtime toward instability and inequality. Minimum wages, universal basic income, progressive tax structures, redistributive schemes, and so on, may slow, stop, or reverse these tendencies temporarily.

In our present system, corporations first accumulate massive amounts of debt. Then they borrow vast sums of money at lower interest rates, trying to cope with past economic crashes (which recur every four to seven years on average), while building toward the next crash, and the next.

When the pandemic sent the economy into a full-or-partial lockdown, with businesses closing down and profits stopping, corporations could not pay off their debts. As a result, Wolff wrote, “Defaults then undermined and froze credit markets that traded securitized corporate debt, the derivative instruments insuring that debt and those securities, and so on.”

Toward the end of April 2020, 30–40 million Americans were estimated to have filed for unemployment. 10–12 million undocumented immigrants, who were not included in this figure, might have lost their jobs as well, but couldn’t file for unemployment insurance out of fear of deportation.

Capitalism has been an economic system for 300–400 years. Its modern form dates back to England in the 17th century. Then it spread from Europe to America, from America to Japan, and so on, eventually becoming a global system. Wherever capitalism settled, every four to seven years on average, there has been an economic crash.

Our current crash is already the greatest economic crash since the time of The Great Depression. The Great Depression began in 1929 and ended in 1941. In this century already, from 2000–2020, there have been three economic crashes, each named for their triggers. “The trigger in 2000: dot-com stock prices. In 2008: people failing to pay mortgages. In 2020: a virus.” These recurring crashes are due to an unstable system but only the symptom is named for each crash. Nobody addresses the system itself.

Richard Wolff wrote that “We have a system that doesn’t work for most people. It produces grotesque inequality, it is unstable, and it has proven incapable of securing our safety during a global pandemic. This virus came at a time when we should have and could have known that our economic system was vulnerable to crashes. Make no mistake, blaming the virus for this crash muddles the issue. The problem is the system.”

Nobody will know the true devastation of this economic crash for many years. Hundreds of thousands have died, millions are sick, millions are unemployed, countless businesses are shut down permanently, renters are being evicted from their homes, industries are collapsing, families are falling into deeper debt, depression has risen, suicide has risen, and on, and on.

The Trump administration downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus, scapegoated other countries (like China) rather than accept responsibility, undercut funding for medical research before the pandemic began, ignored outcries for help early on, pressured employees to return to their jobs without providing them with safe work environments, provided barely any economic support for struggling citizens, failed to adequately plan for distribution, all while playing political games about election frauds to manipulate a diehard base.

Workers are urged to return to their jobs to help out the stock market economy. They are even hailed as essential. But they are not provided with protection, supplies, or livable wages. Stimulus bills are given out of political deliberations rather than economic necessities.

Over the last half-century, in both the US and UK, neoliberalism overtook Keynesian capitalism. Private capitalists used the ideology of neoliberalism to cover their attacks on Europe’s social democracy and America’s New Deal programs. With goals of privatization and deregulation under neoliberal policies, manufacturing work moved to low-wage countries, unions were brutally attacked, automation replaced human workers, and more illegal immigrants were hired because they were unprotected (unable to legally contest unfair conditions such as unpaid wages, poor wages, and an absence of benefits,). Meanwhile, venture capitalists, executives, shareholders in multinational corporations, and so on, through capital gains, dividends, merger fees, bonuses, and higher salaries, enriched themselves at the expense of the majority of the population.

A small minority of the population controls (owns and runs) public and private enterprises. They reap most of their profits from their enterprises, while working to undo whatever reforms the working class has struggled to achieve. Reforms may have been hard won over many decades, but they will not often endure under consistent neoliberal assaults. These enterprises are anti-democratic in nature. Inequalities and imbalances will recur unless the system is changed to be more democratic.

On March 27, 2020, the first stimulus package was truly disappointing for the average American. The 2.2 trillion dollars spent in The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was paid for with government debt. This debt only encouraged the corporate sector to borrow more money from banks, insurance companies, wealthy individuals, foreign governments, and so on, even after already being laden with debt from previous crises during the past twenty years. Ordinary working Americans will have to pay back the interest to the initial loan with their taxes, while all they had received was a pitiful one-off check.

The US treasury has borrowed vast sums of money, trying to force the economy back into its pre-pandemic state. Monetary authorities have lent money at extremely low interest rates to corporations and banks. The economy before the pandemic was not an ideal state. Global capitalism hadn’t healed itself from past crashes and was building toward another one before the virus hit. The pandemic was a trigger for a crash that was inevitable. Pre-COVID capitalism has always valued private profit over public health and safety. These priorities eventually led to vulnerabilities and instabilities.

On July 2020, over 50 million Americans filed for unemployment in the last 16 weeks. The number is still rising. Many who are unemployed want to give back to society, to produce, to meaningfully contribute. Many desperately need to work to support themselves and their families. They need to eat, to have access to healthcare, to be able to afford shelter, and so on.

During the Great Depression, a Federal reemployment program was founded by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. People who lost their jobs could get new jobs, helping to build up national infrastructure. From 1935 to 1943, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) had given jobs to over 8.5 million people. They worked to build parks, schools, bridges, housing, airports, and roads.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica: “The agency’s construction projects produced more than 650,000 miles (1,046,000 km) of roads; 125,000 public buildings; 75,000 bridges; 8,000 parks; and 800 airports. The Federal Arts Project, Federal Writers’ Project, and Federal Theater Project — all under WPA aegis — employed thousands of artists, writers, and actors in such cultural programs as the creation of art work for public buildings, the documentation of local life, and the organization of community theatres; thousands of artists, architects, construction workers, and educators found work in American museums, which flourished during the Great Depression. The WPA also sponsored the National Youth Administration, which sought part-time jobs for young people.”

It is possible for millions of people to return to work. The federal government can create a program of reemployment, where citizens can use their unique skills to teach, perform, and build. They can be trained to create more sites for testing. They can aid in distribution, administration, education, construction, manufacturing, and cleaning, working with dignity and respect. Sadly, though, many politicians believe more in private enterprise than in public reemployment, even when the economy has undergone a market failure.

Read the rest of my review here: https://bremeracosta.medium.com/the-s...

[Chi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharp and timely critique of capitalism’s failures.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prof. Wolff is an compelling lecturer who I often hear on the Thom Hartman program and I thought I'd give some of his writing a try. This book is a collection of his essays and I found the topic interesting but the reader was boring and it began to get repetitive toward the end. The basic gist of the book is that capitalism reinforces economic disparities, racisms and class warfare. The solution is to incorporate more socialisms/democracy into the US economy to deal with these issues but also to reduce destructiveness of capitalism. I liked the ideas he put forward but a lot of them would take a titanic shift in US business management to implement, so your mileage may vary.

[Mitchell Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this bundled collection of essays and expository commentary renown marxist economist Richard Wolfe draws upon history and recent modern events to offer poignant criticisms and alternatives to the worlds dominate social-economic system.

Thought out listening to these essays I found any preconceived notions of capitalism and socialism were routinely challenged. Wolfe, despite an overt bias, crafts intelligently precise arguments against capitalism and its proponents through the systematic dismantling of its undeniable outcomes. The thing I appreciated most was the pragmatism his proposed alternative solutions entailed.

My key take aways are the following;

Dogmatic worship of capitalism minimizes legitimate critiques and prevents necessary reforms. This has lead to cascading systemic inequality and societal degradation for which corporate and political leaders bear responsibility.
Capitalism's proponents operate in bad faith to demonize and exploit government depending upon its needs to ensure profit maximization.
Neoliberalism is predominantly a capital driven agenda to consolidate wealth and power ensuring class disparity through enterprise manipulation.
Capitalist economies operates on a cyclical pattern of collapse on time scales averaging every 4 - 7 years. Since the turn of the century there have been 3 economic crashes; 2000 dot com bubble, 2008 housing crisis, 2020 covid crash, all of which symptoms of the prevalent and unsound economic system.
Socialism proponents should highlight capitalism's inherent flaws while also addressing its main arguments for its preservation by; denouncing post crash nationalistic virtue signaling, exposing the scapegoating of political theater, and advocating for a concerted transition toward the democratization of labor and enterprise.

[Don Diego · Rating 1 out of 5]

This "book" is just a collection of articles that it's safe to assume the author is supporting. I struggled through the book until I realized it wasn't getting any better. The articles, and implied book premise, is a classic example of a non-sequitur fallacy - an illogical conclusion off of a premise.

The articles enumerate the several failures of capitalism, but then jumps to the conclusion that therefore socialism is a better form of economy? That is such an illogical leap that it really hurts the author's credibility.

The articles also argue that the major economic impacts of the COVID pandemic weren't really due to COVID, it was due to a failed capitalist "system". Some articles praise China and South Korea's response. Somehow these articles miss the fact that all economies were hit hard by COVID, including their beloved socialist countries and I guess even a beloved Communist China? This is such a laughable premise that I thought it was going to be presented as a joke.

The fallacies go on - criticize capitalism, focusing only on the negatives and not the positives, and simply state that therefore socialism is better.

I have some hope that readers can easily spot the basic logical problem throughout this book of articles. Clearly no government or economic system is perfect, and therefore they must be judged relatively. It's fair to point out the issues but pretending one system is perfect demonstrates ignorance.

[Brian Mikołajczyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Economist Richard Wolff analyzes how American capitalism has failed American citizens during the time of the pandemic. His overall thesis is that the problems presented during the pandemic were a result of the exploitative capitalist system we have where workers are the sacrifice of corporations. Our labor laws are not up to par with the civilized world.
This is a collection of essays throughout the pandemic on various aspects of the socioeconomic impacts of our capitalist system.
A great read!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Let´s learn from the failures made during the corona virus pandemic. Let's handle the basic needs we have as a society in a way that would be successful and would not be interfered with by a capitalist system that puts the priorities somewhere else -namely, on profit-. Profit is not always our absolute number one objective. To believe that is to be a dogmatic economic fundamentalist."

Richard D. Wolff

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wolff on the economy in a time of Covid. I mean he isn't wrong about the way the system works but I think he overestimates the fragility of the system. The thing keeps lumbering on no matter how bad things get. I want a change but I think Wolff believes it will take less to sink this system than is warranted. Still, I agree socialism would be a hell of a lot better but the beast of capitalism is sturdier than I wish.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timely book and critical read for those looking to re-evaluate the current situation in the United States. I found the format interesting, conversational and digestible. While some pieces seemed repetitive, I can overlook this. The repetition drove the main points home and, because many different examples and scenarios were used, served to highlight the broad potential for application.

[Aleksei Uljassov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to believe that all this COVID-19 panic happened five years ago...
Anyways, Richard Wolff goes into good detail with easy to follow text on how capitalism failed the US citizens, well not all of them, according to the book the rich minority is doing better than ever, where as all the other people have to struggle on a whole other level.

[Mathieu Durand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting concepts, but a lot of repetition. The book could probably be cut in half. It's also a lot more about criticium of capitalism than it is about alternative solutions. Beside worker coops, the is not a lot of other proposals.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never get tired of reading and listening to Dr. Wolff. He provides a consistently clear and precise critique of American capitalism and its pernicious effects on millions of Americans, citizens of other nations, and the land, sea, and air of the planet itself.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t realize this was a collection of lectures and economic update episodes, so some of this information is redundant throughout the book, but I still think this is a great overview looking at the COVID-19 pandemic through a socialist lens.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wolff is very good at putting complexity simply, but you suspect he's oversimplifying at times. A lot of solid diagnosis of capitalist crisis around the pandemic, and an infuriating amount of missed opportunities. Unintentional period piece.

[Matt Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I largely agree with a lot of Richard Wolff's analysis of the world and the American system, the style of this book, collected lectures and essays made it somewhat repetitive, with some of the sections adding little to what had previously been stated.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essays.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://greusche.medium.com/negative-...

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a collection of essays, was hoping for something more standalone.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable but the various essays do not completely make their case.

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75. Informative but painfully repetitive at times

[Bob Frantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The message was sound but this isn’t a really a book but a collection of articles in which the same subject was covered over and over. Interesting just repetitive.

[David Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the pandemic didn’t provide enough evidence for you that America has a number of serious problems, then Richard Wolff is here to walk you through what you’re missing. For, according to him, the spread of a new virus wasn’t so much the problem in and of itself as it was the latest catastrophe to come along and reveal the many structural deficiencies of capitalism.

The book is composed of a series of articles written by Professor Wolff over the last few years一although, most of them come from 2020 and, for a while, allow readers to see the professor’s reactions to the pandemic in real time. And he’s so right about all of it: the amorality of markets, the profit motive and its concomitant harm and destruction to the masses, the need to decommodify certain industries like healthcare, transportation, and housing.

Being a compilation of articles, there is a fair amount of repetition here, and I’ll admit that while he’s correct to point out that employers failed to take necessary steps, like stockpiling face masks, to save money, I didn’t need to hear this twenty times.

Still, even some familiar pet programs like worker co-ops get a new gloss at times. Wolff introduces the Marcora Law from Italy, which provides another avenue for democratizing the workplace. Under this legislation, workers on unemployment could take their checks as a lump sum and begin their own cooperative with other laid off workers. And the article “How U.S. Politics Sustain U.S. Capitalism” almost reads like a parable about how mainstream politics prevents conversation or legislation that is too radical.

Seeing how people have languished while out of work with increasing drug overdoses, alcoholism, and pain and anxiety in general, his case for a federal jobs program couldn’t make more sense. Unless the real goal is to aid capital by leveraging scores of the desperate unemployed in an effort to evade worker complaints. But that would never be the case.