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Richard D. Wolff’s Empire Trilogy: Strength in Domestic Critique, Missteps in Global Assessment [1]

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Date: 2025-06-06

Economist Richard D. Wolff has long been a bold and uncompromising critic of American capitalism and global hegemony. In a series of lectures culminating in his most recent analysis of the Ukraine war and international realignments, Wolff paints a sweeping narrative of imperial rise and decline. His earlier lectures

The Decline of the American Empire: An Expansive Critique of Power, Economics, and Denial

and

The Empire in Denial: Richard D. Wolff on the Political Spin of American Decline

offered trenchant insights into the structural causes of economic decay, elite denial, and the populist spin tactics used to disguise late-stage capitalist crisis. But in his most recent foray into international politics, Wolff’s analysis loses clarity, overreaches in its conclusions, and appears to conflate economic disruption with geopolitical submission.

This essay honors Wolff’s earlier strengths while offering a reasoned critique of where his argument falters in its third installment.

I. The Empire Unmasked: Wolff’s Most Compelling Argument

In his first lecture, Wolff lays out the economic and historical case for the decline of the American empire. He traces the pattern familiar to historians of past civilizations: a nation rises to global dominance through industrial strength and military might, sustains its supremacy through credit and consumption, and then declines when it loses control of production, trade, and public trust. Wolff captures this with sharp precision:

“The U.S. no longer consumes because it produces, but because others lend it the money to consume—and those lenders are beginning to walk away.”

He locates the inflection point in the 1970s, when the U.S. decoupled its currency from gold and shifted from production-based wealth to finance, debt, and imperial extraction. He convincingly argues that this transformation hollowed out the American middle class, ushered in globalization without labor protection, and converted the U.S. from a productive engine to a borrowing behemoth.

II. The Politics of Denial: His Most Precise Target

In TrumpPolitics, Wolff deepens the analysis by exposing the rhetorical scaffolding that props up America’s unsustainable economic model. He shows how political elites—Republicans and Democrats alike—blame foreign countries, minorities, or ideological “radicals” for domestic failures, rather than confronting the corporate-led decisions that offshored production, suppressed wages, and eroded public services.

Wolff’s deconstruction of Trump-era populism is especially effective. He makes it clear that tariffs, while sold as punishments on foreign adversaries, are in fact stealth taxes on American consumers. He reveals the political necessity of misdirection in a crumbling empire: if Americans understood that their suffering is the result of domestic corporate greed, not Chinese duplicity, the real class war would begin.

“Trump can't blame the corporations—he is a corporation. So he invents villains abroad to protect villains at home.”

In this context, Wolff is at his strongest: dismantling the illusions of free markets, exposing economic nationalism as a trap, and showing how elite propaganda sustains public confusion.

III. The Weakest Link: Geopolitical Overreach and the Ukraine War

Yet in his latest lecture, Wolff ventures into international affairs—and here, his analysis loses traction.

He repeatedly asserts that Russia “has already won” the war in Ukraine, based on the idea that the West cannot sustain its involvement and that Ukraine, being outgunned, is inevitably doomed. This is a sweeping claim that ignores the actual battlefield realities as of mid-2025: Ukraine has successfully mounted attacks on Russian logistics and oil infrastructure; it continues to receive and integrate high-tech NATO weaponry; and it retains sovereignty over key regions. The war, while brutal and far from over, remains contested—not conclusively lost.

Moreover, Wolff downplays or overlooks Europe’s growing military investment, intelligence coordination, and industrial mobilization. The EU’s collective GDP and war potential still dwarf Russia’s, and NATO, far from fragmenting, has grown in resolve and membership. These developments challenge the idea that the West is already retreating from its commitments.

More troubling is Wolff’s indifference to the moral dimension of the war. Ukraine is defending its sovereignty from an authoritarian, kleptocratic aggressor. Wolff focuses almost entirely on macroeconomic imbalances and the BRICS’ capacity to absorb Russian oil exports, but says little about the human cost of Russian aggression, democratic self-determination, or the rights of those living under siege.

Even if Wolff’s economic argument holds weight—that sanctions haven’t collapsed Russia, and that BRICS trade softens the blow—this does not make the war morally or politically insignificant. Defending liberty doesn’t require dominance—only commitment. And that distinction matters.

IV. What He Gets Right—and What He Misses

What Wolff Gets Right:

The economic underpinnings of war, debt, and imperial desperation;

The hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy , particularly borrowing from geopolitical rivals to fund proxy wars;

The manufactured uncertainty of Trump’s tariff policy, which paralyzes investment and disrupts global supply chains.

What Wolff Misses or Misrepresents:

The actual state of the Ukraine war , including Ukraine’s resilience and Europe’s escalating support;

The ideological stakes of authoritarian expansion, which matter regardless of GDP metrics;

The possibility of a post-imperial West that still champions liberty and multilateral cooperation, even from a non-hegemonic position.

Wolff tends to treat BRICS alignment and American decline in a value-neutral way, as if power balance alone defines justice. This omits what you correctly highlight: Russia is a kleptocracy with widespread human rights abuses and an unfree press; China jails dissidents and runs surveillance-heavy governance.

The West’s record is far from perfect, but the ability to:

Elect leaders,

Protest without imprisonment,

Criticize power (as Wolff himself does),

is not trivial—it’s foundational to sustainable freedom. A multipolar world dominated by BRICS without a strong liberal-democratic pole risks normalizing autocracy on the global stage.

In short, Wolff’s real strength lies in his domestic critique. When he stays focused on the structural injustices of American capitalism, he is incisive and indispensable. But when he extends that critique into blanket conclusions about global affairs, especially without regard to democratic values, his economic determinism becomes a kind of moral fatalism.

V. Conclusion: Clarity and Commitment in a Multipolar World

Wolff remains one of the most thought-provoking economists speaking truth to power. His willingness to challenge American exceptionalism, expose elite manipulation, and demand structural reform is vital. But even for critics of empire, there is a need for discernment.

In a world of rising autocracies and ecological collapse, we must defend not just new economic arrangements, but the values of freedom, responsibility, and justice. A less dominant West can still be a principled one—if it remembers what made its ideals worth defending in the first place.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/6/2326310/-Richard-D-Wolff-s-Empire-Trilogy-Strength-in-Domestic-Critique-Missteps-in-Global-Assessment?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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