← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Build and Fight: The Resistance Forms
00:33:12
In this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff discusses the economic causes and effects of the global demographic’s decline, the Trump administration's colonial plans for Greenland, and examples of resistance and fighting back as the...
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- [00:20]
Richard Wolff
Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. We have a packed program, so let's jump right in. We're going to be talking about the global decline of population. We're going to be talking about Mr. Trump's interests in Greenland. And most of all, we're going to be talking about the fight back, the resistance that is really mushrooming up inside the United States in response to the kinds of changes the Trump administration is trying to make. Indeed, we'll talk about that in the first half, and then we'll interview one of the key organizers of that resistance, David Cobb. In our second half, I want to remind everyone quickly that we have a book, Understanding Capitalism, that is a kind of companion volume to this program. If you like the program, I think you'll find the book a way to get deeper into the topics that we discuss here. I also want to remind you that a volunteer, Charlie Fabian, is awaiting word from you. If you're interested in making suggestions about the program, you can reach him at charlie.info438gmail.com okay, here we go. Around the world, demographers are becoming increasingly worried because populations are not reproducing themselves. And this is true in the United States, in Japan, and in most other parts of the world besides Central Asia and Africa, the two areas where population is growing pretty much in the rest of the world, the population is declining. We are simply not having enough children to replace those of us when we die. And it's a remarkable phenomenon, and it is something that is affecting all of us slowly, steadily, but irreversibly, or maybe it can be reversed. What's happening? Well, employers are beginning to get upset because they understand that the pool of employees they can approach to hire is shrinking. That's what declining population does. If you add the reality that the population we have is getting older, then it's clear that we are minus young people, that is, we are not producing them. And that's going to drive up wages as the employers compete for a shrinking population of employees. And I want to take a moment to make sure everyone understands why is this happening? Poll after poll indicates very clearly what's going on here. Modern masses of people. And remember, employers are a tiny percentage of the population in the United States. For example, According to the U.S. census, 3% of our people are employers. The rest of us are not. And it's the rest of us who are not having children. Because when you look at the data. There is a subgroup, small, that does have children, that is reproducing itself. And you know who it is, the rich. And there's your clue. We're not having children because the employee class doesn't have enough money to have children. The costs of living being what they are, the payment and wages and salaries being what they are. And you know what they are. They are what the capitalist system we live in gives. The mass of people, it presents us with wages and salaries. That's our income. And then the costs of having children. And they don't work. And so capitalism, in the words that Karl Marx might have enjoyed, its own internal mechanisms undercut its own survival. And we see what the crude employer class is coming up. Support for a denial of abortion. Force people to have more children. Vice President Vance is famous for going around the country saying, I, I want to see more babies. A quote, incentives give people a tax break. Take advantage of their economic difficulties by saying, we'll give you a little break if you go out and undertake an enormous expense called the child. Capitalism is a system that works in very devious ways and undermines itself in this way. The second economic update I want to talk to you about is based on a comment from one of you. A viewer of this program who took me to task, perfectly reasonable, took me to task for saying that Mr. Trump's interest in Greenland was to create a huge golf course. Now, I said that in jest. I didn't mean it to be literally. I don't know exactly what, in Mr. Trump's mind, I wouldn't dare guess at such a phenomena. In any case, I'm sure the interest in Greenland has many causes, not just one or two. And the viewer who corrected me wanted me to know that there is some evidence that oil and or gold might be lying below the intense ice underneath Greenland. I don't know. That's perfectly possible given what Mr. Trump says and does. That would be a perfectly additional reason why he might be interested. But let's be very clear. Greenland is either the property of the people who live there or is the property of the government and country of Denmark because of relationships entered into between the folks who live in Greenland and the state of Denmark. And that has been true for a very long time and contested by no one. Mr. Trump, if he is motivated by the oil gold possibility, is then doing something very old in the history of colonialism. He's worried that someone else might take it, and so he's going to jump the gun and take it himself. First Take it away from whoever has it, the local people or some other country that has a relationship. That's what Britain and France and Belgium and Germany and Russia used to do in the 18th and 19th centuries. They even went to war against one another over who would get what piece of what continent as they carved up the world. Is that what making America great again means? To go back to the warfare among powers carving up the world? The last two centuries have been devoted to anti colonialism, to the vast majority of people breaking out of subordination to a handful of European states. If the United States is on the way to doing that again, it will also reap the whirlwind when anti colonialism designates the United States as the new colonial aspiring power. Now to the major economic update for today. What we might call the resistance, or if you like, the fight back. We have seen in the early weeks of the Trump regime a major focus on on firing federal employees. Mr. Musk has been put in charge of the DOGE Department of Governmental Efficiency, which seems to mean firing workers across the board. Usaid, Social Security, Internal Revenue Service, you name it. They're looking to fire people and they have already fired thousands. It took a little bit not long before working class people began to realize this is an attack on them, on all of them, private employees as well as the public. Let me explain, first of all, some basic statistics. How many public employees do we have working for the federal government? Roughly 3 million. Out of a working population, a labor force of 160 million. 3 million are federal employees. Firing them does not solve the economic problems of the United States. It's even sillier than the idea, which the same people push, that if you get rid of immigrants, it'll really help our economy. It won't. Number two, you know what? The number of federal employees. Three million, 2.5 million. It's been around that number for at least the last half century. During that time, the population in the United States went from roughly to 200 million to over 340 million. A huge increase in population, but no comparable increase in federal employees. Wow. You know what that means? That the same number of people are servicing a much larger American population. And that's usually called an increase in efficiency. Why are you cutting the number, which hasn't grown very much in 50 years. It's a situation that's under control. Oh, wait a minute. The government needs to find a scapegoat, somebody they can beat up on to look like they're fixing the economy. Beat up on the immigrants. When you can't go much further on that. Immigration has almost stopped. Well, then find somebody else. And the federal employee is the scapegoat of the month. Wow. But I'm more interested in the fight back. I'm interested that workers are discovering that if you fire tens of thousands of public employees, they're not like immigrants. You can't throw them out of the country. So they're here and they're going to have to find other jobs. And you know where they're going to go? They're going the private sector, because that's the only one they can go to, unless they lie down and die, which they're not going to do. So they're going to go to the private sector and they're going to go to private employers and say, okay, give me a job. Why should I? Said the employer. I already have someone doing that job. Ah, said the ex federal worker. I'll do it for less or I'll do it under bad circumstances. You know what's happening in the federal government as you fire tens of thousands, you don't expect the work not to be done. You're going to put pressure on the remaining public employees who now face extra pressure. We call that speedup, extra pressure to do the work of those that have been fired without an increase in pay. Plus, their job is obviously less secure than they thought it was. Harder pressure, more work, less security. You are really screwing the federal employees over. Of course they're going to fight back to their credit. And let me quickly tell you, across the country in New Haven, Connecticut, the teachers fighting back, making demonstrations in West Haven, Connecticut, in front of the VA hospital, Veterans showing up saying, we're being fired from the va. A third of our employees here at the VA are ex veterans. You're firing the veterans. Is that respectful of what you said were the important people you claim to respect? There's no respect there. Across the country, lawsuits are being filed. Demonstrators everywhere. They're demonstrating in front of Mr. Tesla's showrooms, everywhere, tens of thousands of Americans. It's an important phenomena. Don't think that there isn't a fight back. The Democratic Party may be remarkably quiet, but the people, and especially the working people are fighting back. Stay with us. We'll be talking to an organizer of that fight back in a moment. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@infodemocracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back friends to the second half of today's economic update. I'm very happy and glad to bring back to our cameras and to our microphones, David Cobb. He's been on the program before, but today I want to talk to him about being an organizer for the fight Back, for the resistance that is developing across the United States to the programs of the Trump administration in general and the firing of federal employees in particular. David Cobb was raised in the rural south, grew up in poverty, worked construction, and was a deckhand before he attended junior college. A self described people's lawyer, David has sued corporate polluters, elected officials, run for public office himself, and worked closely with the Wiatt tribe on many projects in Northern California, including the workers co op project known as Cooperation Humboldt. David ran for Attorney General of Texas in 2002 and he was the Green Party nominee for president in 2004. For more about David's many activities, see his substack@www.redneckgongreen.substack.com and his podcast Redneck Gone Green with shane knight@YouTube.com democracyatwork David, welcome to the program.
- [17:52]
David Cobb
Thank you, Rick. It's always a pleasure to be with you and this is a profound moment to be in conversation.
- [17:59]
Richard Wolff
Good. All right. You and your associates are organizing in many ways, but you're particularly working on an opposition, let's call it a fight back of sorts against major aspects of US Society, particularly now as the Trump Musk regime undertakes its activities. Tell us about the organization you're building, its goals, its purposes, and what you have so far achieved.
- [18:33]
David Cobb
Well, thank you Rick. And if I could, I want to take one step back and acknowledge I self describe not only as a people's lawyer, but as a revolutionary. I'm a non violent revolutionary, but I am a revolutionary because I have spent my life attempting to restructure society. And the second reason on this program in this moment, I want to really Underscore my commitment to revolution is because I'm trying to empower, enable and inspire others to use that language. Because we are at a Gramscian conjuncture, the likes of which humanity has never seen. And so that's the big picture to say we are describing our work as build and fight. So it's both, it's not either or. And in that capacity, I have the honor of serving as the co coordinator of the U.S. solidarity Economy Network, where we do work on promoting practices that don't require the state to either allow us or prevent us from worker co ops, community land trust, mutual aid, et cetera, and advocating for policies that do engage the state at some level. Public banking, participatory budgeting, universal basic income. The point I'm making, Rick, is we need to recognize that we have a call to be incredibly experimental now, get rid of any dogma, stay committed to our core principles and values and yes, our ideologies, but not dogma. So it is with that that I wanted to describe that build and fight formula which emphasizes creating autonomous cooperative institutions while simultaneously engaging in organized resistance against oppressive systems. That's the fight part. So it's promoting both grassroots economic self determination, embracing dual power, and mass mobilizing to challenge not only the Trump administration and the horrors that are associated with that administration, but also the underlying systems of capitalism, white supremacy and ecological destruction.
- [20:48]
Richard Wolff
Okay, David, I would like to refocus a little bit on the Trump administration and how your organizing is dealing with that and what kind of progress you think you're making and what your focus is as you do that.
- [21:05]
David Cobb
So Rick, I think we have to acknowledge that the Trump administration and the MAGA movement are fascists. And this is not a talking point the way the Democrat party often uses it. I understand what I'm dealing with and so do my colleagues and the folks that we're working with. What that means is we have to resist and be non compliant. And so at the local level, we are working with folks across the country who are engaged already in both protests, demonstrations, but also engaging and exploring what disruptive tactics are to this administration.
- [21:46]
Richard Wolff
Can you give us a couple of examples?
- [21:49]
David Cobb
Well, for example, in Humboldt county, we, we are working directly with the municipal government to declare that we are not only a sanctuary city, but that instructing through our elected officials that the police department and sheriff's department honor the sanctuary ordinance that was passed by ballot initiative several years ago. This is what I'm getting at, Rick. We use all the tools that are available. If you are in a place where there is an ability to leverage electoral politics, do so. If you're not, then find non electoral ways to be disruptive. And I can't go into any more details on a program that has such a far reach as a lawyer, but I will say this. The tools of disruption are well known to us from the worker strikes of the 1930s, the work of the abolitionists, the work of the civil rights movement in the 50s, the global justice movement that I was part of. The point I'm making is we have to be willing to be disruptive and to go out into the streets, to go into the courts, to go into the ballot box and operate with the knowledge that there is no one thing that we can do and we have to be willing to be adaptable where we go. And that includes civil disobedience. Which is the reason I'm having to be careful with my language as a lawyer, Rick, because I'm literally encouraging people to be disruptive.
- [23:34]
Richard Wolff
Okay, let me ask you to help our audience understand. Both outside the United States and inside, there have already been voices raised asking the question, why aren't the American people in an uproar in opposition to what is happening? And I have tried myself to explain to them that they are. But you are perhaps in a better position to do that. What are you finding, you and your associates, in terms of what you might call the mood of the American people as they watch this new administration undertake its activities?
- [24:15]
David Cobb
So Rick, one thing that we have to share and come to terms with is there is a broad base of support for MAGA and it is growing. There is a broader and larger base of opposition, but most people have to date felt, disempowered, have felt that they don't know what to do. Having said that, I'm seeing a level of resistance that is sweeping the country and it is getting its sea legs faster than any other resistance movement I've ever been part of in this country. And I'm being sincere when I tell you I feel a level of hope and optimism based on what I'm seeing in places like at the People's Network for Land and Liberation, where people are both building liberated zones where we can meet our objective material needs and thinking about how to protect immigrants, undocumented folks, trans folks. I mean, I'm seeing it actually happen in local communities and it is for the most part authentic, spontaneous, but it is confederating before my very eyes. I again, I'll say it again, I have a level of hope about what we can do and not waiting for elections. I want to be super clear about this. We need to go into the streets now. We need to be protecting people now. And I'm seeing that begin to happen, and I hope you are, too.
- [25:48]
Richard Wolff
Here's my Would you say, and I know it's hard, but would you say that you're also seeing organization when you use the word confederate? Did you mean that there is an awareness and a progress, a real progress on the ground of linking up these different efforts in different regions around different key issues? Is there a coming together which is what, at least in part, the MAGA movement has been able to do for the various constituents? It has. Is something like an awareness of the need for that translating into real movement there?
- [26:34]
David Cobb
The answer is yes. And to be very explicit and clear, normally the formation for such a thing would be a typical political party. The challenge is that the Democrat Party is not providing that framework. So we're having to build it from the grassroots, the bottom up. I can tell you, yes, that is happening again. Just do an Internet search on build and fight. And the number of times that that language will come up or resist and build there, it'll come up in different kind of ways. But, Rick, that's the. That's what I'm trying to get at is it is beginning to cohere, but it is not yet coherent. And because I know you are truth tellers on this program, I have to tell the truth. I don't want to just rah, rah, rah, cheerlead something that's not true. What I'm saying is it is beginning, it is exciting, but it's not where it needs to be. I'm not ready for what's coming, but neither are you or your viewers or listeners. But we best get as ready as we can. That's what I'm encouraging. And yes, I'm seeing political formations coming together. I'm seeing the kind of discussion, and I'm reminded of the great revolutionary George Jackson, who said, settle your quarrels.
- [27:54]
Richard Wolff
Are you concerned about governmental counteraction, government repression, government efforts to stop or slow down what you're doing?
- [28:05]
David Cobb
I am absolutely concerned about government repression. The Trump administration and his billionaire cabinet are the most lawless, horrific administration that I've ever seen and I suspect that anybody else has seen. So, yes, I am concerned and can't stop, won't stop, Rick. Like, this is the moment, and we're going to have to come together and meet the moment with courage, with candor and conviction.
- [28:34]
Richard Wolff
It also means that there will have to be some awareness as you organize, I assume that there is repression, will be repression, and that self protective measures will need to be part of the strategy and development of a movement as it normally has been.
- [28:55]
David Cobb
That's right. And I want to be again, very candid. I've been to jail for justice. When I ran for president on the Green Party ticket, Rick, I used to joke that I ran on my arrest record. I'm proud of the history that I have as a nonviolent, civil, disobedient activist and my work as a lobbyist and my work as a lawyer. So this is the point. We are going to have to come to terms with the fact that history honors none higher than those who violate or who violate unjust laws. Right. We have to oppose that. And that means creating a level of security culture. It means creating a group of people that you trust. It means assessing where the high arrest risk situations are and knowing when to engage in them. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but I will say again, the Trump administration are fascists that you do not treat, you do not merely fight fascists at the ballot box. You have to fight them in all of the ways. And at the end of the day, Rick, the only way we can defeat fascism is by creating societies, cultures and communities where the seeds of fascism cannot grow. And that's the reason that it's important again to build and fight well.
- [30:19]
Richard Wolff
I want to remind everyone that the greatest socialist leader this country ever had, Eugene Victor Debs, ran for president from jail where he had been put. And a million Americans, which at a time this country was much smaller, voted for him in jail because he was better than the alternatives that the Republicans and the Democrats offered.
- [30:45]
David Cobb
All right, let me, you know, I gotta say to Debs, Debs also famously said, I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for things I don't want and get it. So there's a lot to learn from Eugene Debs and our forebears and what they did.
- [31:02]
Richard Wolff
I want to ask you, because you're an activist and you're on the ground, a last question. How do you understand the relative silence of the Democratic Party? I understand there are some Democrats that are speaking up and so on, but in general, as a political organization, a, do you find it relatively quiet and how do you respond to that?
- [31:29]
David Cobb
The Democratic Party leadership's silence is deep, deafening. Yes, there are a few notable examples. And I want to lift up Al Green. I want to lift up the few that are actually trying to use their voice and trying to use their position, but for the most part, they're silent. But I want to be really clear here. This is not unusual. At the end of the day, the Democratic Party leadership are committed to US Empire and to capitalism, and they would rather make peace with and find ways to negotiate and compromise with actual fascists. And it does not give me any pleasure to say that, but this is my assessment, and if anybody can show me historically that I am incorrect, I welcome that debate. But I am telling you, Rick, the silence of the leadership of the Democratic Party is to be explicit. And they are not coming to save us. We have nobody. Nobody is coming to save us, Rick. We have to do it ourselves.
- [32:35]
Richard Wolff
I wish we had more time, David Cobb, but I do really appreciate what you are doing and what you have done by explaining it to our audience. I wish you every success and I hope to have you back to talk about your progress before too long. Really, thanks again.
- [32:52]
David Cobb
Thank you, Rick. And thanks to the folks at Democracy at Work for the critical work that y'all are all collectively doing.
- [32:58]
Richard Wolff
I will pass on your kind. Thank you to everybody. Thank you. Bye bye. And to my audience, as usual, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.