Oct. 28 lecture to look at continuing economic crisis in U.S.

Richard Wolff, professor emmeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor at the New School University in New York, will speak from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, in the Fairhaven Auditorium.

Wolff's lecture is titled “Economy in Crisis: Fantasies, Realities, Possibilities.”

Millions in the United States face ever deeper income and wealth inequalities, ecological dangers, politics corrupted by money, Wolff says. We are living through the worst economic decline since capitalism's great 1930s depression. Reforms enacted then failed to prevent today's crises. A real solution requires more than reforms. We must change how we organize our enterprises (offices, factories, and stores). We can run them democratically, not dependent on state subsidies, taxbreaks and loopholes. Each employee can have an equal vote on what the enterprise does, how, and where, and what is done with the profits all help to produce. In his lecture, Wolff will explain his idea that democratic enterprises -- long overdue but already visible in worker cooperatives across the country -- offer our best way out of today's economic crises.

Co-sponsored by the WWU Center for Law, Diversity & Justice.