Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics
Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where
he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is
currently a Visiting Professor in the
Graduate Program in International Affairs of the
New School University, New York City. He also
teaches classes regularly at the
Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne).
Education
BA in History from Harvard College (1963);
MA in Economics from Stanford University (1964);
MA in History from Yale University (1967); and a
PhD in Economics from Yale University (1969)
Published work
Over
the last twenty five years, in collaboration with
his colleague, Stephen Resnick, he has developed a
new approach to political economy. While it retains
and systematically elaborates the Marxist notion of
class as surplus labor, it rejects the economic
determinism typical of most schools of economics and
usually associated with Marxism as well. This new
approach appears in several books co-authored by
Resnick and Wolff and numerous articles by them
separately and together. Common to all of Professor
Wolff’s work are two central components. The first
is the introduction of class, in its elaborated
surplus labor definition, as a new "entry point" of
social analysis. The second is the concept of
overdetermination as the logic of an analytic
project that is consistently non-determinist.
Professor Wolff was also among the founders in 1988
of the new academic association, Association of
Economic and Social Analysis (AESA), and its
quarterly journal
Rethinking Marxism.
Since 2005, Professor Wolff has written many shorter analytical pieces focused chiefly although not only on the emerging and then exploding global capitalist crisis. He regularly published such shorter analytical pieces on the website of the Monthly Review magazine and occasionally in many other publications, both print and electronic. The wide circulation of the shorter pieces coupled with the deepening crisis brought many invitations to present work in public forums.
Public presentations
Especially since 2008, Professor Wolff has given many public lectures at colleges and universities (Notre Dame, University of Missouri, Washington College, Franklin and Marshall College, New York University, etc.) to community and trade union meetings, in high schools, etc. He also maintains an extensive schedule of media interviews (on many independent radio stations such as KPFA in Berkeley, KPFK in Los Angeles, WBAI in New York, National Public Radio stations, the Real News Network, the Glenn Beck Show, and so on).
Professor Wolff’s public speaking engagements
and media interviews usually
focus on one or more of the following topics:
a. The Current Economic Crisis: Origins and
Consequences
b. The Current Economic Crisis: Why Bailouts Fail
and Alternative Responses
c. The Current Economic Crisis and Globalization
d. Economic Crisis and Socialist Strategy, 2009
e. The Difference Among Economic Theories
(Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian)
f. The History of the Marxian Theoretical Tradition
g. The Contemporary Relevance and Unique Insights of
Marxian economics
h. A Class Analysis of the Rise and Fall of the USSR
Professor Wolff lives in New York City with
his wife, Dr. Harriet Fraad, a psychotherapist. They
have two adult children.
