This is one half of his program, the other being an interview with Sheila Bair who once served as chairman of the FDIC, one of the regulatory agencies of the government. She, like several people in government, express a sense of frustration and powerlessness with regard to regulating banks-- they are much too powerful in their eyes.
I find this segment featuring an interview with Prof. Richard Wolff much more interesting. It is, indeed, rare when anyone is allowed to question capitalism in media controlled directly by the ruling class or indirectly through their government controlled media as is the case here. Moyers hints at this in his concluding statement: "This is all very provocative and very controversial." These are code words to indicate that the material discussed is "verboten" in capitalist polite society. You, see, capitalism functions very much like a religion: one can be excommunicated, that is, punished in a variety of ways if one is critical of the fundamental tenets of the religion--private ownership and control of the economy being a cornerstone of capitalism. I hope that Moyers is not fired by PBS as essentially happened before.
However, Wolff is careful not to use words like "revolution" or "socialism" and seems to suggest that worker cooperatives can be set up on a large scale legally within the capitalist system. This, of course, is nonsense. Capitalists can, and do, tolerate occasional such enterprises, but not on any scale that threatens their rule. But, he does argue that our current economic problems are "systemic" and for the principle of democratic control of enterprises, and that sort of argument is bordering on blasphemy.
My point is that workers ought to be-- all of us who work in an office, a factory or a store—ought to be in the position of participating in the decisions governing that enterprise. And I do that not only because I believe in democracy. And let me say that if you do believe in democracy, it's always been a mystery to me why that democracy that you believe in doesn't apply to the place where you work. After all, five out of seven days of every week, most of your adult life, you're at work.
