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"Most People Have No Idea What's About To Happen" | Richard Wolff's Last WARNING

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My job today is to talk to you about the

momentous changes going on in the world

economy. We are expecting a crash and

there is no end in sight. I am a

professional economist by training and

by the work I've done all my life. But I

had never expected to see in my lifetime

the kinds of changes now underway. When

they first began to surface a few years

ago, I was struck. I hadn't expected

this process to start, but I'm even more

amazed at the fact that it not only

started, but that it keeps accelerating

the rate of change. If some of what I'm

about to tell you is distressing or

disturbing, as it probably will be,

please be aware I am just the messenger.

I did not cause any of the things I'm

about to describe and analyze for you.

So, let me begin by telling you how the

global economy has changed. The changes

are momentous.

The two most focal points of the change

are about the country we live in, the

United States. and they're about the

United States because of the central

global role this country has played over

the last 75 years or if you like you can

make it a 100red years at least since

the second world war ended and arguably

since the great depression began the

role of the United States has been to be

the absolutely number one dominant

economic system in the world. Nobody

came close. World War II eliminated

those who might might have come to be

competitors. They never got there. And

before they might have, the war

eliminated them. What were those

countries? Germany, Japan, Britain,

Russia. Period. The war eliminated them.

In 1945,

the United States was king of the hill.

Other than Pearl Harbor, none of that

war damaged the United States. On the

contrary, the war put the unemployed,

the tens of millions of Americans

unemployed during the 1930s to work.

Half of them were put in the army and

the other half were given jobs producing

the uniforms, the guns, the ships and

the planes used by the military. The

American economy recovered by virtue of

war. For the rest of the world, the war

added to the destruction that the Great

Depression had already wreaked upon

them. So the United States was dominant.

Nobody was close. So the first thing

that has changed is the following. The

United States alone and the United

States with its major allies is no

longer the dominant economic system of

the world. This has to be understood.

Even though the culture and the

consciousness of the United States

cannot admit it, cannot face it, and is

engaged in an exercise of denial that

will become the great example of such

denial for many years to come. Let me

explain. First, the United States

inherited over this last 75 to 100 years

the colonial position that used to be

occupied by Britain, France, Holland,

Spain, Russia, Italy and the other

excolonial countries. Literally, the

British Empire in the 19th century faded

out and turned over the role of empire

to the Americans who grasped it, who

wanted it, and who pushed the British

aside in managing to take it all over.

And they are still doing that to this

day, even with the few scattered

remnants of the British Empire that

still exist. But now, as has happened to

every empire in the history of the human

race, the rise of the empire is followed

by the peaking and the decline of the

empire. And we are now well underway on

the ride down. What are the signs? Well,

I don't have enough time to give you a

full catalog, but let me go through a

few of them. Recent wars were extensions

that failed. The Korean War at best a

stalemate. The Vietnam War, the US lost.

The Afghanistani war, the US lost. The

Iraq war, the US loss. The Ukraine war,

the loss is coming. If it isn't already

here, and most of the information that I

get, it's already here. That's a big

sign. But there's another and easier way

to give you the sign of the decline of

the empire. And here I will just give

you a simple economic statistic. The

United States economically speaking is

the center, the core, the power within

an alliance which goes these days by the

name G7,

the group of seven. That's the United

States plus Britain, France, Germany,

Italy, Canada, and Japan. That's the G7.

Before the year 2020, the total output

of goods and services, a statistics we

call GDP, gross domestic product, the

gross domestic product of the G7

altogether before 2020 was larger than

the GDP of the new emerging dominant

economic block and they have a name

called BRICS BRRI. I CS the core power

there is the People's Republic of China

bricks stands for China plus its allies

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South

Africa. They recently added six more

countries and dozens have applied to

join them. In 2020, the total output GDP

of the bricks, China and its allies, was

the same as that of the United States

and its allies, the G7. But so rapid has

the G7 fallen and the bricks risen that

right now the share of global output

accounted for by the United States and

its allies G7 is about 29%

of global production whereas the share

of total output accounted for by China

and its bricks allies is 33%.

It's over the dominance economically

speaking of the United States which was

the foundation of the political,

cultural and military dominance is over

and the gap is widening quickly. This

year the expected growth of the GDP of

the United States will be in the

neighborhood of 2.5%.

The estimated GDP growth of the People's

Republic of China will be 5 12%.

You cannot sustain the position of the

United States with gaps like that which

have been the norm for 30 years. The

global economy is changing. Now the

second big momentous change that is the

decline of American capitalism

internally not the empire now the

economic system. Now of course the

declining empire undermines American

capitalism which like in every example

in history became dependent on the

enormous wealth its empire brought home.

A decline in the empire will undermine

American capitalism is already doing

that. But I want to show you some of the

indices. And that brings me right up

against the denial I spoke to you about

a moment ago. The president needs to

have his spokespersons

telling us all the time how great the

economy is. leading CEOs, commentators,

and others as usual chime in with

whatever the dominant argument is. But

when you want to assess an economy, it's

complicated. It's a little bit like

going to a doctor if you're not feeling

well. If the doctor only looks at one or

two statistics about your body, your

best advice would be to go find another

doctor. Because of course, a proper

assessment of your health, like a proper

assessment of an economy's well-being,

requires looking at lots of statistics.

To pick up with my medical metaphor,

urine analysis and blood analysis and

X-rays and cat scans and all the

apparatus we've become used to. And the

medical doctor will expect to find signs

that you are in good health intermingled

with signs that you aren't. And the job

of the doctor is to weigh the

complexity. We don't have that. We live

in a culture shaped by advertising above

all else. And in advertising, you only

talk about the good aspects of what

you're trying to sell, real or imagined.

and you spend a lot of energy hiding or denying

denying

whatever contradicts. So the government

points to low unemployment, correct? And

declining rates of inflation, also

correct. Two interesting statistics. But

to think that the economy is good

because those indicators are positive

would be the equivalent of you're having

a serious cancer but your doctor telling

you to go home because your temperature

and your platelet count are adequate.

So, let me just give you an idea of why

you might want to rethink the notion

that the American economy is anything

other than in deep trouble. We are

expecting a crash. Some people think it

will be difficult. The language for

that, a hard landing. Some think it

won't be so difficult. That's called a

soft landing. We await this because our

system is unstable. It has an economic

downturn on average every 4 to seven

years. And that has been true for centuries.

centuries.

It's an instability we have tried but

failed as a capitalist economy to

overcome. There's even an entire

economics called Keynesian economics

designed to overcome and it has not

worked. For example, in this new

century, the 21st century, we've had a

crash in the year 2000, so-called dotcom

crash, we've had a crash in 2008 and 9,

the so-called subprime mortgage crash.

And we've had a crash in 2020 and 2021

called the COVID 19 crash. Three crashes

roughly 20 years once on average every

seven years right on schedule. This is a

very bad quality of this economy and it

has failed to overcome them. Indeed, the

last two, 2008 and 2020, were

respectively the second and third worst

crashes in capitalism's history.

Number two, the level of inequality in

this country is beyond words. From the

$250 billion dollar of Elon Musk to the

following statistics, one in six

children is what we nowadays call food

insecure. We used to be more honest

before denial set in and called it what

it is, hungry. The level of debt

incurred by government, corporations,

and households is the highest in the

history of this country with no end in

sight. I could go on. We have a record

level of homelessness in the United

States right now. We have social

problems extraordinary and there are no

solutions. And we're experiencing what

often happens when an economy

experiences the end of its empire, the

growing number of problems it cannot

solve. We're beginning to see people

freak out, look for scapegoats to

explain the collapse of everything that

seemed to have been secure and now

isn't. And so we scapegoat immigrants.

Somehow those poor people trying to

cross the border are the root of all

evil. We live in an extraordinary time

of change. And I will come back to that.

The second big point about all this is

that at the same time that all of this

is going on, there is now a genuine

global capitalism. Here's what I mean.

Because this notion of capitalism is

elusive. The denial enters here too. By

capitalism I mean organizing the

production of goods and services so that

a small group of people sit at the top

called employers

and a mass of people sit at the bottom.

They're called employees.

The employers buy the labor capacity of

the employees. The employees come to

work 9 to5 5 days a week more or less

and they do what they are told. Sit

there, work with this machine over there

in this relationship to other people and

to and then at 5:00 get up, leave behind

whatever you poured your brains and

muscles into doing. go home, have pizza,

a beer, and come back tomorrow and do

all that again. You have no control

whatsoever. The people inside that job

where you work tell you what to do. They

are not accountable to you. We have

never had democracy inside the

workplace, which is where most adults

spend most of their waking hours. We are

busy electing mayors of our towns where

we reside. But we do not understand what

it means that we do not elect the people

who run the factories, offices, and

stores where we spend our working lives.

Why not? If democracy is a great idea,

where is it written that it belongs

where you sleep, but not where you work?

Think about it. The world now from the

United States to the G7, from China to

the bricks is a world in which

production of goods and services is

organized in the employer employee

model. The only difference is that the

employer can be a private citizen or it

can be a government official. And we are

very taken with that debate. I would

urge you to open yourself to the thought

that that debate is stale, minor, and

these days largely irrelevant. For the

mass of people, the difference is

marginal. Whether the people telling you

what to do are state officials or

private citizens, what big difference

does it make?

Okay, now with a world a wash in the

employer employee relationship and yet

at its throat a conflict between two

huge blocks, one declining the US, the

G7, one rising, China and the bricks.

What is to be done? Where are we going?

What are the implications of this? World

leaders, unsurprisingly,

are all caught up in the changing world

economy. They're all caught up in huge macrolevel

macrolevel

entities, governments, nations, all of

that. They're wondering, understandably,

what the implications are of a declining

American empire. And we're all watching

those implications cuz they are grabbing

our attention. Just to give you a few

quick examples, the calculation that the

United States could wage a proxy war on

the border of Russia in Ukraine and

provide the relatively small country of

Ukraine with weapons on a scale never

seen before to fight against a powerful

Russia was a calculation undertaken by

people who told us when that war began

that it would Russia that Russia

would soon be on its knees that the

Russian ruble would collapse and that

Ukraine would win. What was the mistake

made since none of those predictions has

come true and in almost every case the

opposite has happened. What was the

mistake? The mistake was to not

understand that Russia is part of the

bricks and that the bricks together can

sustain Russia as well or better than

the United States and the G7 can sustain

Ukraine. There it is. terrible miscalculation

miscalculation

costing unspeakable numbers of people,

their lives, their futures, their

wealth, their hopes, their dreams.

Similar mistake is being made by the

United States and Israel in Palestine.

Different story, different details, but

similar miscalculations.

The votes in the UN are very indicative.

On the ceasefire in Gaza, 153 countries

on one side, the side of bricks, 10

countries on the side of the United

States, and 20some abstain. The

isolation of Russia has not happened.

The isolation of the United States did

happen and it's happening more and more.

Here's the problem and it's if you like

the moment of the bad news before I give

you what I believe is good news. The bad

news is that the world is on a collision

process that we have seen before. We may

be watching living through the decline

of the American empire and the rise of

the next one. that just as the US Empire

literally grew out of a very subordinate

unit within the British Empire. So the

Chinese were a very poor backward

subordinate part of the world economy in 1949

1949

when the communist revolution in China

achieved victory. But they have come an unbelievable

unbelievable

distance. They've come as far as the

United States came out of its colonial

status. The difference is the Chinese

did it in 1/3 the time, making it an

achievement beyond anything the world

has seen. to give you a sense of the

scale. Every third world country, what

we used to call the third world, the

developing world, the less developed

world, whatever phrase you want, Asia,

Africa, Latin America, and so on, every

one of those countries used to have to

go to New York or London or Paris to get

help, to build a railroad, to build a

harbor, to uh invest in schools, to have

a decent health program, to be able to

find market for its goods. Every one of

those countries now has an option it did

not have before. It can go to China and

a huge number of them are doing it and

have been doing it for a dozen years or

more. China's importance in Asia and

Africa is off the chart relative to what

it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

With these economic connections come

political alliances, ideological shifts,

and military reorganizations.

The United States cannot stop the

process any more than the British were

able to stop the process. And let's

remember because it's crucial. The

British tried in 1776.

They tried to squash the independent

development of the North American

colony. They lost that war in 1812. They

tried again and they lost again. Only

after two defeats militarily did the

British give up. They even toyed in the

1860s with siding with the slave South

against the North. They didn't do it,

but they thought about it. They debated

it. There were forces who wanted it.

Only in the second half of the 19th and

the first half of the 20th did the

British collapse. The British Empire was

over. Oh, they held on desperately, but

it was over. And World War I signaled

it. Before World War I, the United

States was a dter nation. Britain was a

creditor after the World War I roll

reverse over. So, one outcome of what

we're watching could be the United

States Empire finishing its decline,

certainly furthering it, and the further

rise of China. That's certainly part of

what is now going on, and there is no

end in sight. We've had a trade war with

China. Remember that was a signal

activity of the Trump administration.

We've had a tariff war with China. That

was a basic part of the Trump

administration and the Biden

administration has continued that. Did

it stop the growth of China relative to

the United States? A big fat resounding

no. It didn't. And it's not going to.

The effort to destroy the computer chip

industry of China is a failure. The

company singled out for that purpose.

Huawei just announced it has its own

better chip. The signs are everywhere.

So here's the issue. Will the United

States repeat the effort of Britain to

use military means to hold back? Is that

what the noise around Taiwan and the

American fleet in the South China Sea,

is that what that's about? Are you going

to try to do what the British failed to

do with us to the Chinese, a country

with four times the population and its

own nuclear weapons? Really? Well, if

so, well, then, you know, there's not

much more to say. Or are you going to

recognize what happened between the

United States and Britain and sit down

with the People's Republic of China or

the bricks and work out a live and let

live arrangement in the world economy

the way the United States and Britain

did in the second half of the 19th and

the first half more or less of the 20th

century. And then we have the

fascinating side issue which deserves

much more attention than a denialobsessed

denialobsessed

America gives it. Are the Chinese going

to be another empire like the US was

like the British were like the Dutch

before them and so on? Or are the

Chinese with the BRICS alliance as a

hint going to be a collective

international empire from the beginning?

More interested in inclusion than

exclusive dominance. What are the forces

that might take them in that direction?

and what might the rest of the world do

to foster that direction for the story

that we are living through. Now,

finally, I want to go back to something

that unites the world in a positive way

given everything I've said. And that

takes me back to Cherishk's novel, to

Vera Pavlova's life, to Lennin's

pamphlet, and to worker cooperatives.

Because one thing that is happening now

is something that socialists have been

dreaming about for two centuries. The

two centuries that there's been

socialism. And what they've been

dreaming about is captured in the slogan

workers of the world unite. You have

nothing to lose but your chains. Beyond

a slogan that has not been effective.

But now workers around the world have

something fundamentally

in common. Whether they're in the United

States or China or Nigeria or Finland,

the overwhelming majority are organized

into factories, offices, and stores, organized

organized undemocratically

undemocratically

by a small group of people who make all

the basic decisions. what to produce,

how to produce, where to produce, and

what to do with the output that

everybody's labor together generates.

All of those key business decisions are

made by an unaccountable

small minority, the owner of the

business. The board of directors, if

it's organized as a corporation, boards

of directors usually have 10 or 20

people on them. Employees can number in

the hundreds of thousands or even

millions. Now, there is no mechanism

through which the employees have a

democratic control over the employer

that all these workers have in common.

Whether the employer is a private

citizen or group or a public official,

they have that in common. And I am

confident that sooner or later that commonality

commonality

will finally become the issue that has

to be dealt with in one way in the

capital so-called capitalist west. in

another way in the so-called socialist

east. Because the fact of the matter is

with all of the changes that distinguish

existing socialism from capitalism,

those changes do not include a break

away from the employer employee

organization of the workplace.

Let me conclude then we have a long

history of what Marx called class

divided societies. We have the society

where a master class controls the class

of slaves, master and slave. We have

feudalism where a class of lords

controls a class of surfs. And we have

capitalism which promised liberty,

equality, fraternity and democracy as

part of its revolt against slavery

against feudalism in the French and the

American revolutions and so on. But what

capitalism promised liberty, equality,

fraternity, what it promised it could

not ever deliver. And the reason is at

its core in the production of the goods

and services without which no society

can survive. It installed and did not

question a fundamentally undemocratic

undemocratic

arrangement, a class divided structure.

Challenging that, saying that where we

want to go is to a society that democratizes

democratizes

the workplace, whether it's public or

private, is a call for fundamental

change that all workers everywhere can

understand and get behind. It would be a

way to reorganize

the global economy on the basis of cooperation,

cooperation, collaboration,

collaboration, non-hierarchical,

non-hierarchical, non-clashing

non-clashing

empire frameworks to work out our

problems. I think that the 21st

century's socialism will be one that foregrounds

foregrounds

the transformation

of the workplace. Not instead of what

socialists did in the 19th and 20th

century, not at all. but as the

recognition that the socialist movements

of the 19th and 20th century did not go

far enough. They changed much of the

macro part of society but too little

transformation of the micro level. what

goes on in the workplace. And lest I

been misunderstood,

the workplace includes the household,

the relationship between the people in a

household, in a family, as well as the

relationship of people in a workplace

situation. the democratization of all of

that, the demand for gender equality,

for workplace equality. These are the

directions in which a socialism of the

21st century will complete the amazing

beginning that socialism achieved in the

19th and the 20th century. But in

addition and finally to all of that, we

better face these issues of a changing

global economy, of a changing American

capitalism, because the alternative, and

here I borrow from a very important

group at the end of World War II, it's

this new socialism that I'm talking

about based on a transition of the

economy from hierarchical capitalist to

ealitarian worker cooperatives. It's

either socialism or it will be barbarism

of the sort shown to us already in

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