In this first part of a longer interview Wolff summarizes the effects of neoliberalism on workers throughout the world with special emphasis on workers in the advanced capitalist countries. I think you can skip his commentary about bringing about change that he deals with in the remainder of the interview, but this first part, I believe, gives some accurate insights about the plight of workers in the advanced capitalist nations confronting the current contradictions that neoliberal capitalists have created.
“If you make a tiny group of people, say five percent, very very wealthy, and you plunge the mass of people into a declining, frightening situation, you will have a political explosion.” The shift of employment to low-wage countries and the dismantling of the New Deal and the welfare state have created a structural crisis of capitalism and, at the same time, a political crisis. The working class is “agitated and worried”. “The rich, knowing that the mass of people are angry, have decided to manage the situation by buying the political system, by literally taking it away from any democratic foundation.” The anger of the working class has contributed decisively to the shift to the right in Germany, the ascent of the Front National in France, the election of Donald Trump, and Brexit.