Anyone else get the impression that Richard Wolff is “hiding his power level” so to speak and is actually way more radical than he lets on? He seems to be more of a co-op, market socialism guy on the surface because he talks about workplace democracy a lot, but i remember him during an interview with Hakim saying pretty positive things about economic planning. Recently he has also been praising the People’s Republic of China a lot in various interviews, and in the latest interview i watched him give to Briahna Joy Gray he even snuck in a Lenin quote at the end (uncredited of course saying just “a famous political leader once said”) basically paraphrased the well known “there are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen” line. Is he a closeted ML or what? Is his focus on workplace democracy just a smart strategy to appeal to “baby leftist” Americans and introduce them to basic Marxist concepts without scaring them away?
I get the feeling he’s playing a little more liberal than he really is in an effort to not turn too many people away from the ideas. He’s really pragmatic while also being idealist and sticking to Marxist/ML concepts.
One of the most interesting things I find about his perspective is that he went to school with a bunch of the neoliberal ghouls currently helping the empire turn in on itself, and he calls them out on it.