He’s a good entry point for normies, but he’s no ML. In terms of solutions, he’ll bring up co-ops, for instance. But I’ve never heard him significantly disparage any AES state, and I think that’s a huge plus. He’s often seen with Michael Hudson, who is a much better economist and doesn’t sugar-coat things as much, making him a good next step for normies on their journey, though he’s not explicitly ML, either. Radhika Desai is also great.
He’s pretty good when it comes to spreading the message. I used to watch his monthly “economic updates” and he was well-informed, entertaining and a decent analyst. I think he can be very convincing to the average non-communist Westerner. He’s been pushing the idea of creating worker co-ops a lot, and his organization is pretty good at offering help to unionize as far as I can tell.
He gets criticism from communists because:
One of his main talking points is that AES (Soviet Union, China, etc) are not really socialism/communism and are instead state capitalist. According to him, it wasn’t for lack of trying, but because their economic, political and diplomatic issues were so extreme after their revolutions, that they had to stop the transition to stabilize, but never restarted again. As far as I can tell, he still supports their existence, and maybe I can see his reasoning, but it’s a vast oversimplification and very close to revisionism (if not there already). His support for China has grown a lot in more recent years, as he sees that the their economic model is similar to the one he espouses.
Similar to above, his books receive criticism that they misrepresent with multiple errors how AES economic systems worked/work. His own proposals, when written in detail and a more academic way, seem to rile people up about his perceived misunderstandings.
His constant push for an anarchosyndicalist economic model might harm the perception of future Marxists towards ML.
I haven’t listened to him much in recent years, but I honestly find some of this criticism to be a bit harsh. I think at least to some degree it is a part of his strategy (as he occasionally brings up the point indirectly), in that he won’t be listened to by the average American/West European if he starts outright praising the Communist Manifesto, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc etc.
His important contribution is how many people he’s converted to leftists over the years. Whether they end up being anarchists, anarchosyndicalist, social democrats, democratic socialists, or whatever else is immaterial, as they usually trickle into Marxism-Leninism over time (at least judging from my experience lurking in online communities connected to him for a while, sometime ago). I consider him one of the currently best stepping stones towards Marxism.
Ben Norton. He gets it right where both Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson have certain glaring weak points. The reason for this is pretty obvious: he has way more direct first hand experience of global south socialism (first in Latin America and now in China) than they do.
(And also because Hudson is a bit of a Trotskyist…)
Edit: And of course there’s Radhika Desai, i’m glad another response mentioned her, i almost forgot. You also have Vijay Prashad who is very good at communicating to “normies” but he doesn’t go as much in depth as i would personally like.
But just because i think some are better than others doesn’t mean there isn’t something of value to be gained from listening to all of them. Wolff is a very good communicator when it comes to the basics, and Hudson has some very unique economic insights at times.
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