Richard D. Wolff

For other people named Richard Wolff, see Richard Wolff (disambiguation).

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Richard David Wolff (born April 1, 1942) is an American Marxian economist known for his work on economic methodology and class analysis. He is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs at the New School. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Utah, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum in New York City.

In 1988, Wolff co-founded the journal Rethinking Marxism. In 2010, he published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, which was also released on DVD. In 2012, he released three new books: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books); Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick; and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books). In 2019, he released his book Understanding Marxism.

Wolff hosts the weekly 30-minute-long program Economic Update, produced by the non-profit Democracy at Work, which he co-founded. Economic Update is on YouTube, Free Speech TV, WBAI-FM in New York City (Pacifica Radio), CUNY TV or Cuny Television (WNYE-DT3), and available as a podcast. Wolff is featured regularly in television, print, and internet media. The New York Times Magazine has named him "America's most prominent Marxist economist". Wolff lives in Manhattan with his wife and frequent collaborator, Harriet Fraad, a practicing psychotherapist.

Early life and education

To escape Nazism, Wolff's parents, both Jewish German citizens, emigrated to the United States during World War II. His father, who was acquainted with Max Horkheimer, was a lawyer in Cologne, Germany, but became a steelworker in Youngstown, Ohio. The family eventually settled in New Rochelle, New York, just outside New York City. Wolff states that his European background influenced his worldview:

Wolff earned a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in history from Harvard College in 1963. He moved to Stanford University to study with Paul A. Baran, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in economics in 1964. Baran died in 1964, and Wolff transferred to Yale University, where he received a second master's degree in economics in 1966, a Master of Arts in history in 1967, and a Doctor of Philosophy in economics in 1969. As a graduate student at Yale, Wolff worked as an instructor. His dissertation, "Economic Aspects of British Colonialism in Kenya, 1895–1930", was published in book form in 1974.

Academic career

Wolff taught at the City College of New York from 1969 to 1973; there he began a long-term collaboration with fellow economist Stephen Resnick, who arrived in 1971 after being denied tenure at Yale for signing an anti-war petition.[verification needed] Wolff and Resnick, along with Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Rick Edwards, were part of a group of economists sometimes referred to as the "radical package"[This quote needs a citation] hired in 1973 by the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA), where Wolff had been a full professor since 1981. Wolff retired in 2008, and that same year he joined The New School as a visiting professor; as of this date,[when?] he remains professor emeritus at UMA.

The first co-authored academic publication by Wolff and Resnick was "The Theory of Transitional Conjunctures and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism,"[original research?] in which they presented principles and arguments that informed their later works. They formulated a non-determinist, class-analytical approach for understanding debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. They have discussed Marxian theory and value analysis, overdetermination, radical economics, international trade, business cycles, social formations, and the Soviet Union; and have compared and contrasted Marxian and non-Marxian economic theories.

Wolff's collaboration with Resnick began with an engagement with Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar's Reading Capital and extended to an interpretation of Karl Marx's Capital Volumes II and III, presented in their work Knowledge and Class. According to their analysis, Marxian class theory is understood to involve the study of the conditions under which specific forms of performance, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor occur. The authors propose that while there could be a wide variety of forms of surplus appropriation, the Marxist tradition typically focuses on addressing ancient (independent), slave, feudal, capitalist, and communist class processes.

In 1989, Wolff joined with a group of colleagues and students to launch Rethinking Marxism, an academic journal that aimed to explore and further examine Marxian concepts and theories within economics as well as other fields of social inquiry. He served as a member of the editorial board of the journal for more than two decades. Currently, as of April 15 2025,,[when?] he continues to serve as a member of the advisory board of the journal.

In the spring of 1994, Wolff become a visiting professor at University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. As of this date,[when?] Wolff continues to teach graduate seminars and undergraduate courses and direct dissertation research in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and, most recently, in the graduate program in international affairs (GPIA) at The New School.

Wolff was a founding member of the Green Party branch in New Haven, Connecticut, and the party's mayoral candidate for that community in 1985. In 2011, he advocated for the creation of a new political party with broad left-wing support in the United States. Since 2008, Wolff has given public lectures in various locations in the United States and abroad. He is a regular lecturer at the Brecht Forum. Wolff is also often a guest on television and radio news programs and, within the United States, has made appearances on television and radio programs and contributed to various publications and websites. Furthermore, in 2011 Wolff hosted a weekly radio/TV show and podcast on economics and society, Economic Update, at WBAI in New York City.

One of his students, George Papandreou, served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011. Wolff remembers Papandreou as a student who "sought then to become both a sophisticated and a socialist economist." However, CUNY Economics professor Costas Panayotakis observed that "after being elected Greek prime minister in the fall of 2009 on a platform that excoriated austerity as the wrong kind of policy to be adopted at a time of deep economic crisis, George Papandreou has reversed himself and, faced with a debt crisis, called in the International Monetary Fund and implemented an austerity program widely criticized for its severity."

Projects

Wolff is a co-founder of Democracy at Work, a non-profit that produces media and live events advocating workplace democracy and critiquing capitalism. The organization is based on his 2012 book, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Wolff also hosts the nationally syndicated program Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff, which is produced by Democracy at Work.

Reception

In a review of Wolff's book Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, Hans G. Despain, writing for Marx and Philosophy, argued that the ideas presented in the book "deserve wide support and wide debate to repoliticize the American population and rejuvenate the American workforce and citizens."

Personal life

In addition to his native English, Wolff is fluent in French and German. Wolff lives in New York City with his wife, Harriet Fraad, a psychotherapist. They have two children.

In an interview on The Jimmy Dore Show in January 2021, Wolff stated that he is a distant relative of the German political activist Wilhelm Wolff, to whom the first volume of Karl Marx's Das Kapital was dedicated.

Works

  • Wolff, Richard D. (1974). The Economics of Colonialism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01639-5.
  • Stephen A. Resnick; Richard D. Wolff (1985). Rethinking Marxism: Essays for Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy. NY: Autonomedia.
  • Wolff, Richard D.; Stephen A. Resnick (1987). Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. ISBN 0-8018-3479-1.
  • Resnick, Stephen A.; Richard D. Wolff (1987). Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-71021-1.
  • Fraad, Harriet; Richard Wolff; Stephen Resnick (1994). Bringing It All Back Home: Class, Gender and Power in the Modern Household. Pluto Press. ISBN 0-7453-0707-8.
  • Wolff, Richard D.; Stephen Resnick; David F. Ruccio (1988). Crisis and Transitions: A Critique of the International Economic Order. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-0757-0.
  • Gibson-Graham, J.K.; Stephen A. Resnick; Richard D. Wolff (2000). Class and Its Others. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. ISBN 0-8166-3618-4.
  • Gibson-Graham, J.K.; Stephen A. Resnick; Richard D. Wolff (2001). Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-2709-0.
  • Resnick, Stephen A.; Richard D. Wolff (2002). Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93317-X.
  • Resnick, Stephen A.; Richard D. Wolff (2006). New Departures in Marxian Theory. NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-77025-4.
  • Wolff, Richard D. (2009). Capitalism Hits the Fan. Olive Branch Press. ISBN 978-1-56656-784-8.
  • Wolff, Richard D.; Stephen A. Resnick (2012). Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262018005.
  • Wolff, Richard D. (2012). Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1608462476.
  • Wolff, Richard D. (2016). Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1608465958.
  • Wolff, Richard D. (2019). Understanding Marxism. New York: Democracy at Work. ISBN 978-0359467020.
  • Wolff, Richard D. (2019). Understanding Socialism. New York: Democracy at Work. ISBN 978-0578227344.
  • Wolff, Richard D. (2020). The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself. New York: Democracy at Work.
  • Wolff, Richard D. (2024). Understanding Capitalism. New York: Democracy at Work. ISBN 978-1-7356013-6-6.

Films

References

Interviews

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