In 1988, Wolff co-founded the journal Rethinking Marxism. In 2010, he published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, which was also released on DVD. In 2012, he released three new books: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books); Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick; and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books). In 2019, he released his book Understanding Marxism.[9]
Wolff hosts the weekly 30-minute-long program Economic Update, produced by the non-profit Democracy at Work, which he co-founded. Economic Update is on YouTube, Free Speech TV, WBAI-FM in New York City (Pacifica Radio), CUNY TV or Cuny Television (WNYE-DT3), and available as a podcast. Wolff is featured regularly in television, print, and internet media. The New York Times Magazine has named him "America's most prominent Marxist economist".[10] Wolff lives in Manhattan with his wife and frequent collaborator, Harriet Fraad, a practicing psychotherapist.
"Everything you expect about how the world works probably will be changed in your life, that unexpected things happen, often tragic things happen, and being flexible, being aware of a whole range of different things that happen in the world, is not just a good idea as a thinking person, but it's crucial to your survival. So, for me, I grew up convinced that understanding the political and economic environment I lived in was an urgent matter that had to be done, and made me a little different from many of my fellow kids in school who didn't have that sense of the urgency of understanding how the world worked to be able to navigate an unstable and often dangerous world. That was a very important lesson for me."[12]
The first co-authored academic publication by Wolff and Resnick was "The Theory of Transitional Conjunctures and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism,"[original research?][16][non-primary source needed] in which they presented principles and arguments that informed their later works. They formulated a non-determinist, class-analytical approach for understanding debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. They have discussed Marxian theory and value analysis, overdetermination, radical economics, international trade, business cycles, social formations, and the Soviet Union; and have compared and contrasted Marxian and non-Marxian economic theories.
Wolff's collaboration with Resnick began with an engagement with Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar's Reading Capital and extended to an interpretation of Karl Marx's Capital Volumes II and III, presented in their work Knowledge and Class. According to their analysis, Marxian class theory is understood to involve the study of the conditions under which specific forms of performance, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labor occur. The authors propose that while there could be a wide variety of forms of surplus appropriation, the Marxist tradition typically focuses on addressing ancient (independent), slave, feudal, capitalist, and communist class processes.
Marx used the word "exploitation" to focus analytical attention on what capitalism shared with feudalism and slavery, something that capitalist revolutions against slavery and feudalism never overcame.
In 1989, Wolff joined with a group of colleagues and students to launch Rethinking Marxism, an academic journal that aimed to explore and further examine Marxian concepts and theories within economics as well as other fields of social inquiry. He served as a member of the editorial board of the journal for more than two decades. Currently, as of April 15 2025,,[when?] he continues to serve as a member of the advisory board of the journal.
In the spring of 1994, Wolff become a visiting professor at University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. As of this date,[when?] Wolff continues to teach graduate seminars and undergraduate courses and direct dissertation research in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and, most recently, in the graduate program in international affairs (GPIA) at The New School.
Wolff was a founding member of the Green Party branch in New Haven, Connecticut,[citation needed] and the party's mayoral candidate for that community in 1985.[18] In 2011, he advocated for the creation of a new political party with broad left-wing support in the United States.[19] Since 2008, Wolff has given public lectures in various locations in the United States and abroad. He is a regular lecturer at the Brecht Forum. Wolff is also often a guest on television and radio news programs and, within the United States, has made appearances on television and radio programs and contributed to various publications and websites.[20][better source needed] Furthermore, in 2011 Wolff hosted a weekly radio/TV show and podcast on economics and society, Economic Update, at WBAI in New York City.[21]
One of his students, George Papandreou, served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011. Wolff remembers Papandreou as a student who "sought then to become both a sophisticated and a socialist economist."[22][better source needed] However, CUNY Economics professor Costas Panayotakis observed that "after being elected Greek prime minister in the fall of 2009 on a platform that excoriated austerity as the wrong kind of policy to be adopted at a time of deep economic crisis, George Papandreou has reversed himself and, faced with a debt crisis, called in the International Monetary Fund and implemented an austerity program widely criticized for its severity."[23]
Projects
Wolff is a co-founder of Democracy at Work, a non-profit that produces media and live events advocating workplace democracy and critiquing capitalism.[24] The organization is based on his 2012 book, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Wolff also hosts the nationally syndicated program Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff, which is produced by Democracy at Work.[25]
Reception
In a review of Wolff's book Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, Hans G. Despain, writing for Marx and Philosophy, argued that the ideas presented in the book "deserve wide support and wide debate to repoliticize the American population and rejuvenate the American workforce and citizens."[26]
Resnick, Stephen A.; Richard D. Wolff (1987). Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN0-226-71021-1.
Fraad, Harriet; Richard Wolff; Stephen Resnick (1994). Bringing It All Back Home: Class, Gender and Power in the Modern Household. Pluto Press. ISBN0-7453-0707-8.
Wolff, Richard D.; Stephen Resnick; David F. Ruccio (1988). Crisis and Transitions: A Critique of the International Economic Order. Westview Press. ISBN0-8133-0757-0.
Gibson-Graham, J.K.; Stephen A. Resnick; Richard D. Wolff (2000). Class and Its Others. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. ISBN0-8166-3618-4.
Gibson-Graham, J.K.; Stephen A. Resnick; Richard D. Wolff (2001). Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN0-8223-2709-0.
Wolff, Richard D. (2009). Capitalism Hits the Fan. Olive Branch Press. ISBN978-1-56656-784-8.
Wolff, Richard D.; Stephen A. Resnick (2012). Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN978-0262018005.
Wolff, Richard D. (2012). Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN978-1608462476.
Wolff, Richard D. (2016). Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN978-1608465958.
Wolff, Richard D. (2019). Understanding Marxism. New York: Democracy at Work. ISBN978-0359467020.
Wolff, Richard D. (2019). Understanding Socialism. New York: Democracy at Work. ISBN978-0578227344.
Wolff, Richard D. (2020). The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself. New York: Democracy at Work.
Wolff, Richard D. (2024). Understanding Capitalism. New York: Democracy at Work. ISBN978-1-7356013-6-6.
^Wolff, Richard D. (producer, host) & WBAI Staff (October 2011). Economic Update—Richard D. Wolff. New York, NY: Pacifica Foundation. Archived from the original on October 6, 2011. Retrieved April 8, 2025.
^Psychari, Εirene; Wolff, Richard D. (January 24, 2011). "Interview in 'To Vima' Newspaper—Greek Publication". RDWolff.com. Richard D. Wolff [publisher]. Archived from the original on March 15, 2013. Retrieved April 8, 2025.[independent source needed] Note, the author that appears at the citation website is the Greek author, Ειρηνη Ψυχαρη (whose name is presented there as in upper case Greek); it is transliterated here, and Wolff's name is added as interviewee, but also as he appears responsible for the appearance, in English at the citation, of what were originally Greek-language published responses.
