Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

Written by Richard D. Wolff

Narrated by Shawn Compton

Capitalism as a system has spawned deepening economic crisis alongside its bought-and-paid-for political establishment. Neither serves the needs of our society. Whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve.



One key cause for this intolerable state of affairs is the lack of genuine democracy in our economy as well as in our politics. The solution requires the institution of genuine economic democracy, starting with workers managing their own workplaces, as the basis for a genuine political democracy.



Here Richard D. Wolff lays out a hopeful and concrete vision of how to make that possible, addressing the many people who have concluded economic inequality and politics as usual can no longer be tolerated and are looking for a concrete program of action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Feb 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781977339317

Richard D. Wolff

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor at the New School University in New York. Wolff hosts the weekly hour-long radio program Economic Update, which is syndicated on public radio stations nationwide.

Reviews for Democracy at Work

[Pre-Owned Politics · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dr. Wolff has been a great critic of American capitalism and has compelling ideas about how we can transition to worker owned co-ops to have more democratic control over the workplace. His YouTube channel “Democracy at Work” elaborates more than this book.

[Sam Austin · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Any individual that would write a book like this, has clearly not done any kind of objective research and honestly is either very ignorant or has a political agenda. The second option is most certainly the one that I would be on, but to try and stay positive... hopefully this was written out of ignorance and desire for book sales....

[ahjol · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hello,I am your one of your readers who from China.
I have translated two of your books from English into Chinese.
I would like to know if you would like a Chinese version of your books.

[Atticus Foster · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Concise and informative. I now have not only a much greater understanding and vocabulary around democratic workplaces (I'd never even heard of WDSE workplaces). This book also does not shy away from placing the blame squarely on capitalism, something I find a lot of books are hesitant today. Reading this will give you a firm sense of hope that we can find a better way to work.

[Joy Cichewicz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A new view of our current unsustainable direction and multiple views on ways towards addressing it

[Marcelino Decena · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very informative. Democracy remains the best form of government and best hope for mankind.

[Eve · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The text is from 2012, it was still good to see it all laid out since I've been watching D@W on YouTube since like 2016ish, and saw some promo for it earlier, along with the phrase democracy at work.

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The author doesn't have the balls to call his book communism at work but that would be a more apt title. Capitalism has been examined to death and we know about all its shortcomings so there is not much new here. The idea of worker run businesses is not exactly groundbreaking either. Maybe the idea of excluding cleaners from the surplus appointing committee is new (if somewhat wacky).

What annoys me about these books is that they never offer a critical approach to what they are proposing (at least this one has a comment at the end that flaws in this solution inevitably exist). Why not strain your enormous brain a little and discuss some potential ones? For example the main problem with all these utopian solutions I can immediately see is that they all start with the delusional premise that people will act in a coordinated and selfless way like ants. The reason capitalism works is that it starts off with the opposite premise. And it works because that's the reality.