From The Old Socialisms To The New

On this week’s Economic Update, the entire program is devoted to how old socialism's rapid growth and global spread in the 19th and 20th centuries entailed a focus on the state. Key issues were: (1) would the socialist state limit itself to regulating capitalist enterprises and the market (as in many Western European nations) to enhance the well-being of the employee class or would the state itself own and operate enterprises and replace the market with state planning (as in the USSR), and (2) would the socialist strategy to acquire state power be reformist and electoral or revolutionary and armed. Concrete experiences in and with both kinds of old (i.e. state-focused) socialism led to self-criticisms from which a new socialism has emerged for the 21st century. The new socialism criticizes the state-focus of the old and prioritizes the transformation of the workplace over the social positioning of the state in and for the socialist vision and strategy.   The d@w Team Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff is a DemocracyatWork.info Inc. production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads and rely on viewer support to continue doing so. You can support our work by joining our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/democracyatwork Or you can go to our website: https://www.democracyatwork.info/donate   Every donation counts and helps us provide a larger audience with the information they need to better understand the events around the world they can't get anywhere else. We want to thank our devoted community of supporters who help make this show and others we produce possible each week. We kindly ask you to also support the work we do by encouraging others to subscribe to our YouTube channel and website: www.democracyatwork.info