The Dialectic At Work

In this episode of Dialectic at Work, the dialectic explores the history of economic thought from mercantilism to modern capitalism, highlighting how historical contexts shaped economic theories and the role of markets, merchants, and wealth accumulation.  The Dialectic at Work is a podcast hosted by Professor Shahram Azhar & Professor Richard Wolff. The show is dedicated to exploring Marxist theo...

"Studying history is the most important teacher" In this episode of Dialectic at Work, the dialectic explores the history of economic thought, focusing on Marx's approach to understanding capitalism, the importance of studying history, and the evolution of economic theories from feudalism to modern capitalism. Other key topics include the role of surplus value in economic growth and the influence...

In this episode of Dialectic at Work, the dialectic explores the diversity within economic theories, Hegel's influence on Marxist thought, and how different theories illuminate and obscure aspects of understanding economics. Featuring Professor Richard Wolff, it delves into the philosophical foundations of economic debates and the importance of recognizing multiple perspectives. The Dialectic at W...

In the 1960s, Louis Althusser imported the concept of 'overdetermination' from Sigmund Freud into the domain of Marxian analysis. In the 1980s, Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick developed this idea into a Marxian Critique of Political Economy in their seminal book Knowledge and Class. Yet, many of the premises of the concept and its applications remain fuzzy to people, even students of Marxian the...

Zohran Mamdani was declared the winner of the New York City mayoral election on November 4th, 2025. He ran as a Democratic Socialist. He ran as an immigrant. He ran as a Muslim. He ran on a platform of affordability, and he ran without taking a dime from corporations. He defeated a member of a political dynasty and the billionaires who backed him, and he did so with a resounding majority of the vo...

State intervention or private interest? Public investment or private? More taxation or less? More regulation or less regulation? We are often asked to comment on these questions because, in popular perception at least, they are the 'central' concerns of left-leaning economists. But, as we will discover in this episode, while these may be essential concerns (particularly for Keynesian economists),...

Most things in life--- automobiles, lovers, cancer --- are essential only to those who have them. Money, in contrast, is equally important to those who have it and those who don't. Both accordingly have a concern for understanding it. Both should proceed in the complete confidence that they can.", so writes John Kenneth Galbraith in his famous book "Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went."  But what...

A popular myth propagated ad nauseam may begin to sound like the truth to some. It is no different for the "risk" theory of profit: the claim that capitalists "create" profits by assuming risk to capital. This theory was born out of the rise of the financial bourgeoisie as a dominant class; from the standpoint of this class, as Marx points out, "production is just an unavoidable middle". For the f...

It is often argued, naively in our view, that "economics" is a science. Yet, it is easy to see that while discredited and unscientific theories, such as the Phlogiston theory in chemistry, can easily get replaced by better ideas, there has always been resistance to the development of revolutionary thought in Economics. This has earned the discipline the title of the "dismal science". In this episo...

Marx, an analyst of real businesses? You must be crazy. Well, before you arrive at that conclusion, consider the following: Procurement time, lead time, inventory management, freight costs, and supply chain management: these are terms commonly encountered by business analysts and participants alike on an everyday basis. Contemporary corporations, such as Amazon and Walmart, have developed elaborat...

This week, the dialectic sat down with Professor Richard Wolff again to discuss the relational interplay between value and prices.   About The Dialectic at Work is a podcast hosted by Professor Shahram Azhar & Professor Richard Wolff. The show is dedicated to exploring Marxian theory. It utilizes the dialectical mode of reasoning, that is the method developed over the millennia by Plato and Aristo...

This week, the dialectic sat down with Professor Richard Wolff again to discuss Karl Marx's Capital, Volumes 2 and 3. The Dialectic at Work is a podcast hosted by Professor Shahram Azhar & Professor Richard Wolff. The show is dedicated to exploring Marxist theory. It employs the dialectical mode of reasoning, a method developed over millennia by Plato and Aristotle, and continues to explore new di...

To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx's ideas have inspired a wide range of individuals to formulate a more nuanced understanding of the stakes of the American project. Historians have highlighted the imprint made on the United States by Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smi...

In the last episode, we discussed the importance of Capital Volume 2 to the project of Das Kapital. In this episode, we delve deeper into the first four chapters of the book, starting with the three circuits. We observe how the world of finance is interconnected with production and retail, and how these three circuits, in turn, interact to form the totality known as the world capitalist system.  T...

Most professionally trained neoclassical economists have never bothered to read Capital Volume 1—let alone know about the existence of its two companion theoretical volumes (2 and 3) and three historical volumes. While it's generally advisable to refrain from speaking on topics one hasn't deeply studied, bourgeois economics remains full of lively debates peppered with claims that begin: "But Marx...

Was Marx a Eurocentric thinker? Is his work only pertinent to Western societies? What were his views on colonized societies? What about the question of gender? How did Marx's views on non-Western societies change over his lifetime? In this episode, Shahram meets Prof Kevin Anderson, author of "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads", a new book by Verso that analyzes Marx's late works (1869-1882), so...

Do you feel tired, alienated, bored, and powerless at work? Do you feel exploited? This episode of Dialectic at Work provides an economic theory that could explain your daily experiences at the workplace. It builds on the discussion with Professor Richard Wolff in the previous episode and dives into the first volume of Capital, which deals with the Production of Surplus Value. Prof. Wolff explains...

Professor Richard Wolff's co-author, colleague, and friend, the late Stephen Resnick, would tell his students about his discussion, as a student at MIT, with Paul Samuelson. He asked Samuelson: "What is there in Marx that is both valid and absent in neoclassical theory"? To this, Samuelson responded: "Class analysis." In this episode, Shahram and Professor Wolff use the dialectic to explore how Ma...

In this episode, the dialectic goes to work with a professor of sociology and environmental historian, Professor Jason Moore, to explore the following question: can the issues of climate change and class consciousness be isolated from one another? How did Marx conceptualize Nature, and where do human beings fit into the web of life? How does the notion of a 'climate emergency' benefit the ruling c...

This week, the dialectic goes to explore the question of 'free trade, trade wars, and protectionism'. What did Marx think about the question? Is it something of concern to the working-classes? How should they respond to a situation in which the capitalists of one country engage in trade wars with capitalists of another country?  To help us understand how Marxian economists and activists view this...

Welcome to another season, and the first episode of Season 2, of the dialectic at work: a podcast dedicated to understanding Marxian theory. Thank you all for your continued support.  About The Dialectic at Work is a podcast hosted by Professor Shahram Azhar & Professor Richard Wolff. The show is dedicated to exploring Marxian theory. It utilizes the dialectical mode of reasoning, that is the meth...

In this episode, Professors Shahram Azhar and Richard Wolff continue their discussion and analysis of the seminal book Knowledge and Class. Professor Wolff reflects on how he and his friend and co-author Steve Resnick developed their own language and theories around class.    About The Dialectic at Work is a podcast hosted by Professor Shahram Azhar & Professor Richard Wolff. The show is dedicated...

In this episode, the dialectic goes to work to explore one of the most fundamental concepts in Marxism: class and class analysis. What is class? What do Marxists mean when they deploy this term? In this episode we discover, via the seminal book Knowledge and Class, how the concept of surplus is used to develop a theory of classes in society. The fundamental and subsumed class framework, first deve...

This week, and in the next few weeks, the Dialectic goes to explore one of the most important texts in Marxian political economy in modern history: Knowledge and Class. The book, written in 1987 by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff after decades of research and critical analysis, developed a new "non essentialist" Marxism. The Fundamental and Subsumed Framework, developed in this book, has been us...

This week the dialectic explores the Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded to Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson for their "contribution to Institutional Analyses" of long-run economic development.  We critically examine the claim that "settler colonialism" results in progress and development. Professors Wolff and Azhar discuss how the real economic history of colonized and indigenous peoples rebelled ag...