While this video is several years old, it caught my attention because it was trending. It has to do with Marxist Richard Wolff answering a softball question for his fellow socialists about how to debunk capitalists who say that they earn their money.

The video is about four minutes long, and here it is, so shields up:

I’ll point out, first of all, the tone with which Wolff speaks: he comes off as a mustache-twirler. He knows that he’s villainous, and he’s embracing it.

He doesn’t believe what he’s saying, he just understands the potential to profit off the economically naive who only understand Marxism because it’s the only economic school of thought that they studied, and their interest mainly stemmed from having heard a one-sided argument in favor of it.

But try asking these kids what the difference is between Austrian economics and Chicago economics, and you’ll usually just be treated to a thousand-yard stare. They’ll just lump it all together with laissez-faire classical economics and just call it “capitalism”, because like typical Marxist cultists, they just split the world in two.

But eventually, these kids are going to grow up, and realize that while the Keynesian economic system we currently have is not perfect, it’s still vastly superior to Marxism, and that a person of reasonable ability can thrive when given the opportunities presented in the current economic system. Until then, they’re going to have the kinds of minds that people like Wolff continue to prey upon.

With that out of the way, let’s get into deconstructing Wolff’s Bolshevik.

The conclusion that Richard Wolff is trying to lead you to is that because you’re not coming away with 100% of the value that you produce, you’re not actually “earning” your money, because capitalism is ripping you off.

He speaks like a man who never owned a business. Or, at least, he speaks as though he’s trying to appeal specifically to those for whom running a business is some great mystery, like a form of magic known only to rich people.

Suppose you earned commission for bicycles that you sell at a bike store, and you get $20 for each $200 bike that you sold. In a fair world, wouldn’t you get the full $200 for the $200 bike you sold?

Sure, that would be a great deal for you, but it wouldn’t work for the business that had to buy the bikes from the manufacturer to sell in the first place, or pay the taxes, rent, and other various overhead costs of running the business which includes utility costs. What’s more, the store manager would also require compensation for his own work of managing the finances, ordering merchandise, and making decisions that the staff counts on to be spot-on because they want the business to succeed so they can remain gainfully employed.

Or, suppose that you worked on the production line that produced those bicycles that have an MSRP of $200. If each person on the production line made $20 per hour, how many bikes must be produced per day to cover the wages of factory staff, such as yourself, and cover the overhead costs of running the factory? Perhaps the bikes must be sold to stores for as much as $120 just to pick an arbitrary but perhaps realistic number.

You might be getting the idea that the profit margins for running a business are razor-thin. They usually are, and many of the businesses that fail, fail by inches. Business ownership is no walk in the park.

And what’s more, the idea that a person is being ripped off because they’re getting paid what they agreed to be paid is intellectually destitute.

The next sentiment that Wolff could be dragged across rusty nails over is his implication that shareholding is some sport that rich people engage in, in an effort to extract value from the system without producing value, themselves. As though there’s no connotation of risk in trusting someone else with some of your value in the hopes that they’ll increase their value, and share some of that increased value with you. Nope, in the minds of the typical soy-cialist, the stock market is some mysterious box that goes “brrrrrrr”, and then rich people get richer.

I’m going to let you in on a little something: I’m a shareholder in my own employer. It wasn’t hard, either. All I had to do was opt into it, and a part of my paycheck is automatically invested. Does that make me some kind of wizard in the eyes of soy-cialists?

Here’s another one: if you’re reading this on a smartphone, odds are, you can download a crypto exchange app from your respective app store, then drop some of your fiat currency into a crypto of your choice. If you did, then you just invested.

Just, you know, do your research, first. Don’t be dumb about it.

To those who have not, those who have are a mystery. Where such differences exist, the gap is often filled with a combination of ignorance and resentment. Socialism is about appealing to that ignorance and resentment. It’s the main reason why it attempts to divide the world between the haves and the have-nots. Where understanding exists, ignorance and resentment dissipates, and often, the difference between the haves and have-nots begins to shrink.

It’s amazing how many people want money as badly as they do, but they’d have more if they simply spent less of their money on things they don’t need. I suppose that listening to influencers peddle divisive bullshit is more attractive than self-development.

Let’s not kid ourselves: socialist influencing is a capitalist enterprise. The lives and minds it destroys is out-of-sight of the influencers who profit from their endeavor.